That’s gotta hurt – radishes and mullets
2,500 years ago, a man committing adultery in Athens might find himself before a crowd in the now. There he would be subjected to a grim legal punishment known as Rhaphanidosis. This involved a radish being shoved where the sun doesn’t shine. Before the radish went in, the guilty man would also have all the hair from his nether regions removed with hot ash.
The Romans did a similar thing to adulterers but used a gray mullet, the fish not the hairstyle, instead. The Romans clearly hated adulterers, and anyone found guilty could be fined, raped, castrated, or executed.
Put a lid on it - the iron coffin of Lissa
In the medieval period, people clearly thought quick deaths were a bit dull and boring, as so many methods of execution were designed to prolong the screams of the condemned. One such mode of dispatch is known as ‘The Iron Coffin of Lissa’.
The prisoner was placed in an iron coffin and over the course of several days, they were forced to endure the agony of watching the lid slowly shut. Inching towards them almost too slowly to see, eventually, they would feel the cold iron touch their nose. Then it was more suspense coupled with great physical pain as it slowly crushed them to death.
Bang out of order - riding the stang
For centuries, rural Britain played host to a bizarre form of community punishment. In the north of England and Scotland, it was known as ‘Riding the Stang’, and in parts of southern England it was called ‘Skimmington Riding’. Whatever it was called there was one common factor, a boisterous rabble of rowdy villagers taunting and embarrassing the offender with an elaborate parade.
When a husband was known to have hit his wife, the young men of the village set out about creating the procession. The stang was a hurdle or pole on which a joker of the village would sit and be carried aloft through the streets. Pots and pans were banged, and whistles and horns were played. All the villagers would join in and typically the procession would move around the village before arriving at the home of the transgressor, who would presumably be peeking nervously through the curtains.
Sometimes the guy being carried around was part of the shaming crew, and on other occasions, it was the offender himself who was carted around. Some of the last recorded instances of ‘Riding the Stang’ were as recent as 1889.
A fate worse than death – the extreme execution of Balthasar Gérard
The execution of Balthasar Gérard shocked and sickened people across Europe, who were no strangers to all manner of gory public justice. He was dispatched to Delft, The Netherlands, in 1584 for slaying William of Orange. Gérard’s sentence was death preceded by torture, which lasted for 18 days.