The drawn and quartered punishment was a brutal execution method used in England for high treason. The person was hanged, disemboweled, beheaded, and cut into four pieces. It was outlawed in 1832 after being used for over 600 years. The punishment was not dismemberment, but the body was cut into five pieces. The head was kept near the Tower of London, and the body parts were sent to different parts of England. Women were never subjected to this punishment.
A prisoner sentenced to be drawn and quartered was subject to one of the most disgusting and cruel methods of execution available. It was a person who was hanged, disemboweled, beheaded and then cut into pieces. The person was usually alive when this method was employed, though not for long, and the pain of this kind of death is absolutely unimaginable. The punishment also put the person of ascension into heaven at risk even after confession, as it was believed that bodies must be kept whole in order for them to be resurrected at the second coming.
This style of execution was probably first employed in England by Henry III, who reigned 1216-1272. It was a punishment reserved for people who committed high treason. The average killer wasn’t drawn and quartered, and women have never suffered this punishment. The method was most often used in the UK.
There is some confusion about the term and a misunderstanding about how it was practiced. Some believe it meant attaching a body to four horses running in different directions to divide the body into four. This is not the case. Drawn can mean hung, or it can mean drawn to the place where the execution took place.
The person was hanged by the neck, but this was usually not fatal: the prisoners were frankly lucky if this resulted in their deaths. He was then disemboweled and had his genitals removed, which were burned. The beheading came later, and then the remaining body was cut into four parts. Technically, this isn’t dismembering a body, since the body was cut into five pieces. The head was normally kept near the Tower of London and the body parts would be sent to different parts of England, as a gruesome message of the price high treason would cost.
It would take England a good 600 years to finally ban this extremely brutal punishment, and it was finally outlawed in 1832. It’s hard to think such a punishment existed when England was civilized in so many other ways. However, being hanged, drawn and quartered was the sentence of many, including Guy Fawkes. The ruling occurred under British rule once in what is now the United States, convicting Joshua Teft of supporting the Narragansett tribe during a war with Britain. The Founding Fathers could technically have ordered the same sentence for others convicted of treason during the Revolutionary War, but they did not, although many convicted of treason were executed in other ways.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
