How do you press someone to death? 
 
And why can't the state take their property?  Is it because they ain't got a flat tax?   

I am so sorry but I'm going to have to answer you.

Pressing to death is done by putting a door on someone, then weights on the door. If they were kind they le you lay on a rock so your ack would snap - if they didn't then your fingers, eyes, mouth, nose and toes would all be bleeding copiously before you died.

He didn't get taxed because pressing was not actually an execution, it was a way of asking questions. So, having died under the weights he hadn't pleaded guilty and so his land could not be confiscated.

One of the few executions by pressing happened to the saint Margeret Clitheroe, who's house I once worked in.

Quote from: Pica Pica on June 25, 2007, 06:53:18 AM
I am so sorry but I'm going to have to answer you.

Pressing to death is done by putting a door on someone, then weights on the door. If they were kind they le you lay on a rock so your ack would snap - if they didn't then your fingers, eyes, mouth, nose and toes would all be bleeding copiously before you died.

He didn't get taxed because pressing was not actually an execution, it was a way of asking questions. So, having died under the weights he hadn't pleaded guilty and so his land could not be confiscated.

One of the few executions by pressing happened to the saint Margeret Clitheroe, who's house I once worked in.

Just when I thought you folks was civilized.   Now i want to live in Brazil.

It was a while ago. Now if we hate someone we hound them with pepperami until they crash their car or something.

Quote from: Pica Pica on June 24, 2007, 04:02:27 PM
If that is true we should bury it at sea and hope it don't swim in circles.

That'd do, but considering that Blackbeard spent the most interesting parts of his life trying to look as if he'd managed to set his own head on fire, it seems appropriate. If difficult.

QuoteAnother bad pirate is John Gow, pressed to death for stealing haddock. He was pressed so the state wouldn't confiscate the land, it went to his cousin.

I wonder why he ended up a haddock-stealing pirate if he had land.

Charles Gibb didn't quite manage to completely steal anything. He tried to steal six thousand or so Spanish silver dollars, with his pals and himself rowing out to the ship from the shore in two boats. On the way back with the money they crashed their boats together in the dark and sank them, lost all the money, and ended up swimming to  and nearly freezing to death before forcing their way into somebody's house with threats and braggery. The somebody tapped them gently on their little heads after they went to sleep. At his trial Gibb claimed that he'd killed 500-some people, and kidnapped a woman and raped her more or less continuously for six months before forcing her to drink poison. It is pretty clear that none of that ever happened and Gibb was just trying to avoid the embarrassment of confessing that his only attempt at piracy was a pathetic disaster. His dad was at the trial, see.

Becky, for gruesome execution information you might enjoy The Hanging Tree Execution and the English People by V.A.C Gatrell. Audiences at public hangings used to sometimes get really angry when it took a long time for somebody to choke to death on a short drop. So they came up with the long ("Newgate") drop but it took them awhile to work out the maths, so they'd often cause the condemned's head to pop off. This so incensed the crowd that they stopped having public executions. Much less selling lemonade at them.