Crime -- Great Britain; Criminals -- Great Britain; Executions and executioners; Tyburn gallows (London, England)
In 1295 Tuberville was drawn on a fresh ox-hide (sur un quir de bof
fres), and one of the chroniclers expressly states that he was so
drawn that he might not die too quickly.[42] Something was also due to
sentiments of humanity. There is a case recorded from which it is clear
that “humanitarianism” was as odious to the judges of old time as it is
to-day to the advocates of flogging. The case finds a record in the old
books, because in it the judge evidently strained the law. A man was
arraigned in 1340, before Justice Shard, on an indictment charging him
with the murder of “his master.” It was found that murder had indeed been
done by the man, who, however, had for a year ceased to be the murdered
man’s servant. Shard inquired whether the servant had not a grudge
against his master, and did he watch him? The questions were answered
affirmatively, and Shard sentenced the man to death as guilty of petty
treason—the punishment due to a servant who killed his master. Shard
ordered that the man should be drawn by horses from the court in which
he was tried, and forbade, under pain of imprisonment, that any friars or
other persons should place a hurdle or anything else under him.[43]
Whether owing to compassion or to the ferocity of judges who had
discovered that the drawing as at first practised rendered a victim
insensible to the spectacle of the burning of his own bowels, it is
certain that the ox-hide became an established institution, for in a case
later than Turberville we hear of “the common ox-hide.” This in its turn
gave place to the hurdle, and this to the sledge—no doubt to the infinite
disgust of judges like Shard.
The following is a case in which drawing was carried out till the death
of the sufferers from mere dragging:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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