William the Conqueror Quotes

No cruel and unusual punishment is to be inflicted? It is sometimes necessary to hang a man. Villains often deserve whipping and perhaps having their ears cut off. But are we in the future to be prevented from inflicting these punishments because they are cruel?

He was condemned to lose his eyes and genitals, a merciful punishment, for he deserved to be hanged

A convict is not to be scourged until the flesh fall from his body and he die under the lash, though he may have committed a hundred offenses, for each of which, separately, a whipping of twenty stripes might be inflicted.

You ... are to be hanged by the neck, but not until you are dead; for while you are still living your bodies are to be taken down, your bowels torn out and burned before your faces, your heads then cut off, and your bodies divided each into four quarters to be then at the King's disposal; and may the Almighty God have mercy on your souls.

Rogues and vagabonds are often stocked and whipped; scolds are ducked upon cucking-stools in the water. Such felons as stand mute, and speak not at their arraignment, are pressed to death by huge weights laid upon a board, that lieth over their breast, and a sharp stone under their backs; and these commonly held their peace, thereby to save their goods unto their wives and children, which, if they were condemned, should be confiscated to the prince

Crucifixion is the most cruel and disgusting penalty; the worst of deaths.

Crucifixion is the most wretched of deaths.

I went out to Charing Cross to see Major General Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could in that condition.

If, as is contended by the advocates of “deterrence,” cruelty in punishment is justified by the “deterrent” effect which these persons credit it with, then surely the rack, the wheel, and the thumbscrew are the last word of penal wisdom. If hanging and the plank-bed are “deterrent” and hence justifiable, then … the stake and the rack are more “deterrent” and hence more justifiable.

The punishments were whipping, putting you in the stocks and making you wear irons and a chain at work. Then they had a collar to put round your neck with two horns, like cows' horns, so that you could not lie down on your back or belly. This also kept you from running away for the horns would catch in the bushes. Sometimes they dug a hole like a well with a door on top. This they called a dungeon keeping you in it two or three weeks or a month, and sometimes till you died in there. This hole was just big enough to receive the body; the hands down by the sides.

The smack of the whip is all day long in the ears of those who are on the plantation, or in the vicinity; and it is used with such dexterity and severity as not only to lacerate the skin, but to tear out small portions of the flesh at almost every stroke. This is THE GENERAL TREATMENT of the Slaves. But many individuals suffer still more severely. Many are knocked down; some have their eyes beaten out; some have an arm or a leg broken, OR CHOPPED OFF; and many, for a very small or for no crime at all, have been BEATEN TO DEATH.

Every punishment is based, not on logic or the feeling of justice, but on the desire to wish evil on those who have done evil to you or to another person…. Everything about our present system of punishments and about all criminal law will be thought of by future generations in the same way that we think of cannibalism or human sacrifice to the pagan gods. “How did they not see the uselessness and cruelty of those things which they did?” our descendants will say about us.

A healthy person could survive on the cross for one or two days. The naked man would be jeered at and ridiculed. Insects would infest his mouth, eyes, and open wounds. With his hands nailed to the cross, he would have been unable to stop them. Left to the elements, unable to eat or drink, in constant pain, and brutally aware he was going to die, there can be no doubt that, as the ancients tell us, crucifixion was the worst of deaths.

Every kind of atrocity was inflicted upon their captives. They hung up the noblest and best-looking women naked, cutting off their breasts and stitching them to their mouths, so that the women appeared to be eating them and after this they impaled them on sharp stakes, run up the body.

The pillory and stocks, the gibbet, and even the whipping-post, have seen many a noble victim, many a martyr. But I cannot think any save the most ignoble criminals ever sat in a ducking-stool.

The Usage of Torture is contrary to all the Dictates of Nature and Reason; even Mankind itself cries out against it, and demands loudly the total Abolition of it.

Very cruel punishments are inflicted in some of the convict camps, such as scores of lashes on the bare back, for slight offences. Women also are brutally flogged.

What constitutes a cruel and unusual punishment has not been exactly decided. It has been said that ordinarily the terms imply something inhuman and barbarous.

The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messengers is execution or crucifixion or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides

Capital punishment may not be much of a deterrent against murder, but the sight of a few corpses swinging from a scaffold might work with drug dealers.

The greatest and most grievous punishment used in England for such as offend against the State is drawing from the prison to the place of execution upon an hurdle or sled, where they are hanged till they be half dead, and then taken down, and quartered alive; after that, their members and bowels are cut from their bodies, and thrown into a fire, provided near hand and within their own sight, even for the same purpose.

There are eight kinds of punishment: fine, fetters, flogging, retaliation in kind, civil disgrace, banishment, slavery, death

Mutilations of parts of Fingers, are proper to disable such as have abused their dexterous use of them, by Pocket-picking, Counterfeiting of Seals and Writings, etc. Mutilations of other parts, may serve to punish and prevent Adulteries, Rapes, Incests, etc. And the smaller Corporal pains, serve to punish those, who can pay no pecuniary mulcts.

If it was up to me, frankly I would be hanging some of the gang leaders from our street lamps.