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Gibbet
A gibbet is any instrument of public execution (including guillotine, executioner's block, impalement stake, hanging gallows, or related scaffold). Gibbeting is the use of a gallows-type structure from which the dead or dying bodies of criminals were hanged on public display to deter other existing or potential criminals. Occasionally, the gibbet was also used as a method of execution, with the criminal being left to die of exposure, thirst and/or starvation. The practice of placing a criminal on display within a gibbet is also called "hanging in chains". Display Gibbeting was a common law punishment, which a judge could impose in addition to execution. This practice was regularized in England by the Murder Act 1751, which empowered judges to impose this for murder. It was most often used for traitors, murderers, highwaymen, pirates, and sheep stealers and was intended to discourage others from committing similar offenses. The structures were therefore often placed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Halifax Gibbet
The Halifax Gibbet was an early guillotine used in the town of Halifax, West Yorkshire, England. Estimated to have been installed during the 16th century, it was used as an alternative to beheading by axe or sword. Halifax was once part of the Manor of Wakefield, where ancient custom and law gave the Lord of the Manor the authority to execute summarily by decapitation any thief caught with stolen goods to the value of 13Penny_(British_pre-decimal_coin), d or more (), or who confessed to having stolen goods of at least that value. Decapitation was a fairly common method of execution in England, but Halifax was unusual in two respects: it employed a guillotine-like machine that appears to have been unique in the country, and it continued to decapitate petty criminals until the mid-17th century. The device consisted of an axe head fitted to the base of a heavy wooden block that ran in grooves between two uprights, mounted on a stone base about high. A rope attached to the blo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wapping
Wapping () is a district in East London in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Wapping's position, on the north bank of the River Thames, has given it a strong maritime character, which it retains through its riverside public houses and steps, such as the Prospect of Whitby and Wapping Stairs. It also has a Royal Navy shore establishment base on the riverfront called HMS President and home to Tobacco Dock and King Edward Memorial Park. Many of the original buildings were demolished during the construction of the London Docks and Wapping was further seriously damaged during the Blitz. As the London Docklands declined after the Second World War, the area became run down, with the great warehouses left empty. The area's fortunes were transformed during the 1980s by the London Docklands Development Corporation when the warehouses started to be converted into luxury flats. Rupert Murdoch moved his News International printing and publishing works into Wapping in 1986, resulting in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Kidd
William Kidd, also known as Captain William Kidd or simply Captain Kidd ( – 23 May 1701), was a Scottish sea captain who was commissioned as a privateer and had experience as a pirate. He was tried and executed in London in 1701 for murder and piracy. Kidd had captured a French ship, commanded by an English captain, as a prize. He had been commissioned by the Crown as a privateer for this expedition, but the political climate of England turned against him in this case. Some modern historians, for example Sir Cornelius Neale Dalton, deemed his piratical reputation unjust and said that he was acting as a privateer. Documents found in the early 20th century in London court papers supported Kidd's account of his actions. Life and career Early life and education Kidd was born in Dundee, Scotland prior to October 15, 1654. While claims have been made of alternate birthplaces, including Greenock and even Belfast, he said himself he came from Dundee in a testimony given by Kidd t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Execution Dock
Execution Dock was a place in the River Thames near the shoreline at Wapping, London, that was used for more than 400 years to execute pirates, smugglers and mutineers who had been sentenced to death by Admiralty courts. The "dock" consisted of a scaffold for hanging. Its last executions were in 1830. History The British Admiralty's legal jurisdiction was for all crimes committed at sea. The dock symbolised that jurisdiction by being located just beyond the low-tide mark in the river. Anybody who had committed crimes on the seas, either in home waters or abroad, would eventually be brought back to London and tried by the High Court of the Admiralty. Capital punishment was applied to acts of mutiny that resulted in death, for murders on the High Seas, and specific violations of the Articles of War governing the behaviour of naval sailors, including sodomy. Those sentenced to death were usually brought to Execution Dock from Marshalsea Prison (although some were also transport ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pirates
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, vessels used for piracy are pirate ships. The earliest documented instances of piracy were in the 14th century BC, when the Sea Peoples, a group of ocean raiders, attacked the ships of the Aegean and Mediterranean civilisations. Narrow channels which funnel shipping into predictable routes have long created opportunities for piracy, as well as for privateering and commerce raiding. Historic examples include the waters of Gibraltar, the Strait of Malacca, Madagascar, the Gulf of Aden, and the English Channel, whose geographic structures facilitated pirate attacks. The term ''piracy'' generally refers to maritime piracy, although the term has been generalized to refer to acts committed on land, in the air, on computer networks, and (in scienc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hanged, Drawn And Quartered
To be hanged, drawn and quartered became a statutory penalty for men convicted of high treason in the Kingdom of England from 1352 under King Edward III (1327–1377), although similar rituals are recorded during the reign of King Henry III (1216–1272). The convicted traitor was fastened to a hurdle, or wooden panel, and drawn by horse to the place of execution, where he was then hanged (almost to the point of death), emasculated, disembowelled, beheaded, and quartered (chopped into four pieces). His remains would then often be displayed in prominent places across the country, such as London Bridge, to serve as a warning of the fate of traitors. For reasons of public decency, women convicted of high treason were instead burned at the stake. The same punishment applied to traitors against the King in Ireland from the 15th century onward; William Overy was hanged, drawn and quartered by Lord Lieutenant Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York in 1469, and from the reign of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rye, East Sussex
is a small town and civil parish in the Rother district of East Sussex, England, two miles from the sea at the confluence of three rivers: the Rother, the Tillingham and the Brede. An important member of the mediaeval Cinque Ports confederation, it was at the head of an embayment of the English Channel, and almost entirely surrounded by the sea. At the 2011 census, Rye had a population of 4,773. Its historical association with the sea has included providing ships for the service of the Crown in time of war, and being involved in smuggling. The notorious Hawkhurst Gang used its ancient inns The Mermaid Inn and The Olde Bell Inn, which are said to be connected to each other by a secret passageway. Those historic roots and its charm make it a tourist destination, with hotels, guest houses, B&Bs, tea rooms, and restaurants. Rye has a small fishing fleet, and Rye Harbour has facilities for yachts and other vessels. History The name of Rye is believed to come from the West Sax ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gallows
A gallows (or scaffold) is a frame or elevated beam, typically wooden, from which objects can be suspended (i.e., hung) or "weighed". Gallows were thus widely used to suspend public weighing scales for large and heavy objects such as sacks of grain or minerals, usually positioned in markets or toll gates. The term was also used for a projecting framework from which a ship's anchor might be raised so that it is no longer sitting on the bottom, i.e., "weighing heanchor,” while avoiding striking the ship’s hull. In modern usage it has come to mean almost exclusively a scaffold or gibbet used for execution by hanging. Etymology The term " gallows" was derived from a Proto-Germanic word '' galgô'' that refers to a "pole", "rod" or "tree branch". With the beginning of Christianization, Ulfilas used the term ''galga'' in his Gothic Testament to refer to the cross of Christ, until the use of the Latin term (crux = cross) prevailed. Forms of hanging Gallows can take several ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cuckold's Point
Cuckold's Point is part of a sharp bend on the River Thames on the Rotherhithe peninsula, south-east London, opposite the West India Docks and to the north of Columbia Wharf. The name comes from a post surmounted by a pair of horns that used to stand at the location, a symbol commemorating the starting point of the riotous Horn Fair, which can also symbolise a cuckold, a man whose wife had openly cheated on him. The Horn Fair was a procession which led to Charlton. It is said that King John, or another English monarch, gave the fair as a concession, along with all the land from the point to Charlton, to a miller whose wife he had seduced after a hunting trip, though this story is disputed. Cuckold's Point was also the location of a riverside gibbet, where the bodies of executed criminals (usually river pirates) were displayed as a deterrent to others, while it also gave its name to an adjacent shipyard during the 18th century. Cuckold's Point is near to Pageant Crescent, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Murder Act 1751
The Murder Act 1751 (25 Geo 2 c 37), sometimes referred to as the Murder Act 1752,Leon RadzinowiczA History of English Criminal Law and Its Administration from 1750 Macmillan Company. 1948. Volume 1. Page 801. was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain. Provisions The Act included the provision "for better preventing the horrid crime of murder" "that some further terror and peculiar mark of infamy be added to the punishment", and that "in no case whatsoever shall the body of any murderer be suffered to be buried", by mandating either public dissection or " hanging in chains" of the cadaver. The Act also stipulated that a person found guilty of murder should be executed two days after being sentenced unless the third day was a Sunday, in which case the execution would take place on the following Monday. On 1 July 1828, this Act was repealed, as to England, by section 1 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1828 (9 Geo 4 c 31), except so far as it related to rescues and attem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guillotine
A guillotine is an apparatus designed for efficiently carrying out executions by beheading. The device consists of a tall, upright frame with a weighted and angled blade suspended at the top. The condemned person is secured with stocks at the bottom of the frame, positioning the neck directly below the blade. The blade is then released, swiftly and forcefully decapitating the victim with a single, clean pass so that the head falls into a basket or other receptacle below. The guillotine is best known for its use in France, particularly during the French Revolution, where the revolution's supporters celebrated it as the people's avenger and the revolution's opponents vilified it as the pre-eminent symbol of the violence of the Reign of Terror. While the name "guillotine" itself dates from this period, similar devices had been in use elsewhere in Europe over several centuries. The use of an oblique blade and the stocks set this type of guillotine apart from others. The display ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gallows At Caxton Gibbet
A gallows (or scaffold) is a frame or elevated beam, typically wooden, from which objects can be suspended (i.e., hung) or "weighed". Gallows were thus widely used to suspend public weighing scales for large and heavy objects such as sacks of grain or minerals, usually positioned in markets or toll gates. The term was also used for a projecting framework from which a ship's anchor might be raised so that it is no longer sitting on the bottom, i.e., "weighing heanchor,” while avoiding striking the ship’s hull. In modern usage it has come to mean almost exclusively a scaffold or gibbet used for execution by hanging. Etymology The term "gallows" was derived from a Proto-Germanic word '' galgô'' that refers to a "pole", "rod" or "tree branch". With the beginning of Christianization, Ulfilas used the term ''galga'' in his Gothic Testament to refer to the cross of Christ, until the use of the Latin term (crux = cross) prevailed. Forms of hanging Gallows can take several ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
