Today’s Ultimate Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
In Surinam, situated on the South American coast, the torture method of breaking on the wheel was carried out to its ultimate and horrific end, no coup de grâce being administered. J. G. Stedman recounts in the book of his travels there between 1772 and 1777 how, in one execution, he saw a slave tied to the wooden cross. The slave’s left hand was then chopped off by the executioner using a hatchet. Next, seizing a heavy iron bar, he rained repeated blows on the victim, breaking his bones to slivers until the blood, marrow and splinters flew around the scaffold.
The slave, still alive, was untied. In his writhings he fell off the wheel on to the ground, cursing his tormentors. Such was his agony that he begged that his head should be shopped off, but his pleas were ignored. For six hours he endured the torment of his shattered limbs until his guard, motivated either by compassion or intolerance, knocked him on the hood with the butt-end of his musket.
Culled from: The Book of Execution by Geoffrey Abbott
Arcane Excerpts: Paternal Impressions
Here’s another bizarre excerpt from the fabulous Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine by George M. Gould and Walter L. Pyle (1896), this time on the topic of “paternal impressions” – the theory that physical conditions of the father can imprint upon his offspring:
Paternal Impressions.—Several [cases of Paternal Impression] are on record, but none are of sufficient authenticity to warrant much discussion on the subject. Those below are given to illustrate the method of report. Stahl, quoted by Steinan, 1843, speaks of the case of a child, the father being a soldier who lost an eye in the war. The child was born with one of its eyes dried up in the orbit, in this respect presenting an appearance like that of the father. Schneider says a man whose wife was expecting confinement dreamt that his oldest son stood beside his bedside with his genitals much mutilated and bleeding. He awoke in a great state of agitation, and a few days later the wife was delivered of a child with exstrophy of the bladder. Hoare recites the curious story of a man who vowed that if his next child was a daughter he would never speak to it. The child proved to be a son, and during the whole of the father’s life nothing could induce the son to speak to his father, nor, in fact, to any other male person, but after the father’s death he talked fluently to both men and women. Clark reports the birth of a child whose father had a stiff knee-joint, and the child’s knee was stiff and bent in exactly the same position as that of its father.
Likely stories, all of them!
Garretdom: Another Fiendish Woman
Let’s continue our series of newspaper articles with the title “A Fiendish Woman” with an excerpt from the August 31, 1865 Paxton (Illinois) Record:
A fiendish woman in Dubuque, named Berlin, attempted to castrate her husband, last Sunday night, while he was asleep. She used a razor, and inflicted a terrible wound. The man lies in a critical condition, though hopes are entertained of preserving his life and manhood. The woman took $350, all the money there was in the house, and left. She has not been apprehended. It is stated that she was prompted to the crime by jealousy, but it is evident that devilishness had a good deal to do with it.
Fiendishness Count:
Sulfuric Acid – 1
Molten Lead – 1
Razor – 1
