Talk:Hanged, drawn and quartered

Meaning of "drawn"

"drawn" does not refer to being a cart pulled by a horse. It is to have your entrails drawn from your abdomen. That's is why it comes between being hanged and quartered. No, I'm not giving a reference because I'm not wasting my time referencing something so well-known and so obvious.

No, you're not wasting your time referencing it because you just made it up. [The condemned will be] laid on a hurdle and so drawn to the place of execution, and there to be hanged, cut down alive, your members to be cut off and cast in the fire, your bowels burnt before you, your head smitten off, and your body quartered and divided at the King's will, and God have mercy on your soul (my emphasis). ‑ Iridescent 2 10:15, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Then again you have Shakespeare's usage - Much Ado About Nothing, Act 3 Scene 2 - there is a certain amount of badinage about a character being hanged for not being truly in love, the character (Benedick) then claims to have the toothache, to which the response is "Draw it", then "Hang it"; then Claudio says "You must hang it first, and draw it afterwards". It seems to me that Shakespeare is directly using a reference to a widely known linguistic trope, which if it does not come from the capital punishment for treason, whence does it come? Here 'draw' is used definitively for the removal of a bodily part, albeit a tooth. I think Mortimer is not definitively correct. Urselius (talk) 10:45, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Just found this. The problem is that the word "drawn" has two meanings (at least). The specific penalty consisted of hanging (not contested) and quartering (not contested) but the word "drawn" has come means "the removal of the entrails from the living body". Very clearly being drawn on a hurdle, which conceded is part of the judicial sentence, without any simultaneous suffering would not be seen as a penalty, although hanging, emasculating and disemboweling clearly would be so seen. @Iridescent: No he did not make it up; that is what the phrase means. ----Anthony Bradbury^"talk" 22:49, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

The use of the word 'draw/drawn' to mean eviscerate is well attested, for example here:

" Tried on 12 and 13 September, Babington, Tichborne, Ballard and nine others were found guilty of high treason and were condemned to death. The first seven, including Ballard first, Babington second, and Tichborne fifth, were executed on 20 September 1586 by hanging, drawing and quartering. In Tichborne 's case, a contemporary manuscript account of the execution comments that though "he hanged longe, he was yet alive when they ripped him."14 In fact he made a memorable speech, and so impressed the crowd with his eloquence, piety, youth and good looks that they were much roused to pity; the Queen, perhaps worried at this development, mercifully ordered that those to be executed the following day should be hanged until dead before being drawn and quartered." The Works of Chidiock Tichborne (text)Author(s): RICHARD S. M. HIRSCH and Chidiock Tichborne, English Literary Renaissance, Vol. 16, No. 2 (SPRING 1986), pp. 303-318 Published by: The University of Chicago Press, p. 305

The meaning of 'draw/drawn' for being dragged behind a horse is not exclusive, it does not exclude the word also meaning eviscerate in relation to this method of execution. Urselius (talk) 11:28, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

The same phrase "hanged until dead before being drawn and quartered" is also used in Capital Punishment: A Reference Handbook, Michael Kronenwetter, ABC-CLIO, 2001, p. 204.

Move

Move to "Hanging, drawing, and quartering". Johnsmith212254 (talk) 17:11, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Why? Nikkimaria (talk) 22:02, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Incorrect link?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_de_Marisco

This link leads to a page about Lundy, which is a large island north of the county of Devon, in the UK.

Is this a mistake?

No - there is no article about Marisco, but the page exists as a redirect to a section in the Lundy article. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:38, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

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The Last Person to be Hanged, Drawn, and Quartered

The section titled "Later History" mentions the six conspirators of the Despard plot and further down mentions Jerimiah Brandreth. It say the Despard conspirators were sentenced to be "hanged, drawn, and quartered, but then goes on to describe them as merely being hanged and then posthumously beheaded. No mention of either drawing or quartering. The same for Jerimiah Brandreth. It merely describes him being hanged and then posthumously beheaded.

The same section also goes on a length about three women; Isabella Condon in 1779, Phoebe Harris in 1786, and Catherine Murphy in 1789; who were burned at the stake, not hanged. And once more, no mention of drawing or quartering. So who was the last person to be hanged, drawn, and quartered.

And no, "drawn" does not mean "drawn to the place of execution." If it did, it would be "drawn, hanged and quartered. (Medieval and Early Modern England might have been backwards in a figurative sense, but I'm pretty sure they understood the order of events in time.) It is rendered in numerous sentences handed down as "have your bowels torn out." Beetfarm Louie (talk) 18:46, 14 February 2024 (UTC)