Bamberg, Germany Quotes

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.

Until 1513, women convicted of adultery in Nuremberg were buried alive. After that, they were drowned. Schmidt advocated that they should be beheaded for a quicker, more merciful death. He got his way even though critics maintained that weak women might faint and he might be obliged to finish them off on the ground. Consequently, Schmidt took the precaution of seating the condemned woman in a chair and beheading her with his sword from behind.

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.

I believe that a sight so inconceivably awful as the wickedness and levity of the immense crowd collected at that execution this morning could be imagined by no man, and could be presented in no heathen land under the sun. The horrors of the gibbet and of the crime which brought these wretched murderers to it faded in my mind before the atrocious bearing, looks, and language of the assembled spectators. I came upon the scene at midnight…As the night went on, screeching and laughing, and yelling in strong chorus of parodies on Negro melodies, with substitutions of “Mrs Manning” for “Susannah” and the like were added to these. When the day dawned, thieves, low prostitutes, ruffians, and vagabonds of every kind, flocked on the ground, with every variety of offensive and foul behaviour…When the sun rose brightly, it gilded thousands upon thousands of upturned faces, so inexpressibly odious in their brutal mirth or callousness that a man had cause to feel ashamed of the shape he wore. When these two miserable creatures, who attracted all this ghastly sight about them, were turned quivering into the air there was no more emotion, no more pity, no more thought that two immortal souls had gone to judgement, than if the name of Christ had never been heard in this world

in Germany in 1851, the death of one Bertha Zillman in 1893 was witnessed by a number of journalists. She was sentenced for poisoning her husband, although the court heard evidence that he beat both her and their children. The execution was scheduled to take place on 31 October at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin at eight o’clock in the morning. Her hair was put up in a bun and her dress cut down to her shoulders, though she was given a shawl to cover herself. When the warden went to fetch her, she was prostrate with fear and had to be helped to the block by two male warders. She silently dropped the shawl and, with one swing, was beheaded by her executioner.

Public crucifixion is no fun.

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.

The cruelties committed against the Hottentots exceed everything that is said about it in Cape Town or what can be imagined.

History is merciless.

Some of our men cut off the heads of their enemies … others tortured them longer by casting them into flames. Piles of heads, hands, and feet were to be seen in the streets of the city …. In the Temple and Porch of Solomon, men rode in blood up to the knees and bridle reigns.

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

They promptly tore his fingernails out and he started telling things.

And in the general hardening of outlook that set in ... practices which had been long abandoned - imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions ... and the deportation of whole populations -- not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive

Death By A Thousand Cuts

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

Crucifixion is the most wretched of deaths.

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.

Take your time and strike a man so that he feels he is dying.

Public hangings [in England] were abolished in 1868. The last one took place outside Newgate Prison on 26 May of that same year. The man hanged was an Irish terrorist called Michael Barratt who had blown up the Clerkenwell House of Detention killing six people. A drunken crowd stayed up all night to witness the execution. They cheered wildly when the scaffold was brought out at dawn. More people – mainly young women and children – began to arrive. By the time a bell was sounded at eight o’clock in the morning to announce the arrival of the condemned man, the crowd stretched back as far as Smithfield.

The bodies of victims were ... the hangman’s property. Although obliged to sell the corpses of murderers to surgeons for dissection purposes, the executioner sometimes sold them back to the families if they offered a better price. It was often difficult to keep the body intact as the crowd would grab pieces as macabre souvenirs. On 18 December 1758, a riot broke out when the medics fought the family for possession of the victim’s body – however, the mob won and carried the corpse away in triumph. The hangman would also be allowed to cut up the rope that was used in the execution and sell bits off in the pubs on Fleet Street.

The felon would feel only a slight freshness on the back of the neck. With this machine, I chop your head off in a twinkling, and you do not suffer.

There's something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.

Assassination on the scaffold is the worst form of assassination.

The cutting of heads is become so much a la mode, that one is apt to feel of a morning whether their own is on their shoulders.