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Short Stuff: Hanged, Drawn and Quartered · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Dave's He's here with us in spirit.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: I can feel and I can feel his presence wrapped
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: around us in a big hug um. And that means,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: of course that this is short stuff, very loving, harmonious
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: episode about disemboweling, being beheaded, um, and having your innards
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  Speaker 1: burnt in front of your very eyes. Yes, we're talking
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: about the old timey punishments and one of the reasons
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: that you hear about things like being drawn and quartered
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: and you know, all this disgusting taking stuff taking places
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: that kings and nobility would do the stuff to. Really,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: I mean that was the intent, was to try and say, hey,
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  Speaker 1: you don't want this to happen to you, don't do
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: this kind of stuff. They weren't only sat us, they
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: might have been that too, but it was really as
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: a countermeasure to try to keep people from committing crimes. Uh. Yeah,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: it was like basically saying like this is this is
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  Speaker 1: what happens if you mess with me the king. It
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: just shows like not everybody can do that, even its
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  Speaker 1: historically speaking, not everybody can order somebody to do that
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  Speaker 1: to another human being and get away with it. And
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  Speaker 1: that's kind of what the monarch was showing, like this
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  Speaker 1: is what happens. And so it was reserved for the
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  Speaker 1: worst possible crimes you can think of, which was the
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  Speaker 1: crime against the monarchy, like treason, you know. Yeah, and
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: we're specifically talking about being hanged, drawn and quartered, which
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: is a real thing, but it's just not quite in
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: that order. And they don't know why we say it
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: that way. It's kind of weird, right, And they left
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: out some pretty important parts too, but they were just
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: it's it's one of the lazi early more lazily named
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: I was made up a word, but I said no, No,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: it was one of the more lazily named punishments. But um.
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  Speaker 1: It started out in the thirteen century. I think the
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: first person was a pirate who will talk about by
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  Speaker 1: the last name of Maurice Um and and then um.
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  Speaker 1: It went all the way up until the nineteenth century.
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  Speaker 1: Even it wasn't until eighteen seventy that it was taken
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  Speaker 1: off of the books where it was finally outlawed in
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  Speaker 1: England as a punishment for crime. Yeah, I think it's
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  Speaker 1: we should read here the actual English law text. So
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  Speaker 1: here goes, uh, that you be drawn on a hurdle
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  Speaker 1: to the place of execution, where you shall be hanged
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  Speaker 1: by the neck easy enough to understand, uh, and being
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  Speaker 1: alive cut down. Okay, your privy members shall be cut off.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: I think we know what that's all about. Private parts,
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  Speaker 1: and your bowels taken out and burned before you, your
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  Speaker 1: head severed from your body, and your body divided into
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  Speaker 1: four quarters to be disposed of at the king's pleasure,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: which I mean it is. Yeah, that's owningly, you can
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: still kind of get what they're saying in a lot
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  Speaker 1: of ways, but well we'll explain it just to be
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: a little more graphic. So the first part is drawing
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: right where you're put on like a sled aboard something
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  Speaker 1: like that, and you're dragged behind a horse. Um, And
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  Speaker 1: typically you're dragged in London from Newgate Prison to the
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: execution grounds in a place called Tyburn, which, now that
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  Speaker 1: I am aware of this, I want to go tour
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Tyburn next time we're in London. I'll bet they have
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: some pretty gruesome like guided tours, you know. Yeah, and
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  Speaker 1: when you say dragged on a sled, um, it's not
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  Speaker 1: like fun Santa Slay style right style or Indiana Jones style. No,
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  Speaker 1: probably even worse than that. I think the idea is
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  Speaker 1: that that part is also painful and humiliating their people
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  Speaker 1: along this little parade route, like throwing garbage at you.
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  Speaker 1: When you finally get there, you're in pretty rough shape.
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  Speaker 1: And then they hang you from a rope. But the
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: intent is not to kill you, so they don't like
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  Speaker 1: pull the gallows and you drop through the trapdoor and
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  Speaker 1: break your neck. You're The point is to hang you
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  Speaker 1: to where you're choking and you're asphyxiating and you think
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  Speaker 1: you're gonna die. But then they don't let that happen, right,
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  Speaker 1: They're like, no, no, no, we're gonna bring you back
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  Speaker 1: or cut you down before you can possibly die. So
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  Speaker 1: now we've got the drawn part, the hanged part. Now
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  Speaker 1: we get to, for my money, the worst part, where
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  Speaker 1: your genitalia is cut off. And by the way, we
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  Speaker 1: should say this from what I could tell, this specifically
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  Speaker 1: applied to men um, and I think because of this
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  Speaker 1: part um, out of propriety or a sense of propriety,
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  Speaker 1: women were burned at the stake instead so being hang,
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  Speaker 1: drawn and corded with specific for men um. But they
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  Speaker 1: would cut off your junk, and um, they would burn
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  Speaker 1: it in the fire in front of you. So by
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  Speaker 1: this time, I mean, you could possibly bleed to death
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  Speaker 1: from that, but you probably yeah, you were around long enough,
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  Speaker 1: I would guess to just to watch your junk burn
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  Speaker 1: up in front of you. Then after that, step two
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  Speaker 1: is they would cut you from the growing to the
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  Speaker 1: stern um and disembowel you. Right, yeah, I mean, who
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  Speaker 1: knows how long you live? I know we did an
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  Speaker 1: actual episode one of our early ones that before they
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  Speaker 1: were even like ten minutes long, kind of like these,
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  Speaker 1: except not as good. Uh, how long you live when
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  Speaker 1: your head was got off? Now, that was a long episode.
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  Speaker 1: I think it was like a good forty minutes. Oh,
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  Speaker 1: I don't think it was nearly that long. I'll bet
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  Speaker 1: you five dollars it was forty minutes. I bet it
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  Speaker 1: wasn't over thirty Okay, five dollars, look it up? Okay, okay,
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  Speaker 1: Uh where was I Oh? Yeah, So we don't know
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  Speaker 1: how long you live when you are disemboweled like that,
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  Speaker 1: but I would imagine that you bleed out pretty quickly,
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  Speaker 1: but you still might see like your guts spill out,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: which I mean, like we're really kind of like hitting
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: that part right there, chuck that, like you're seeing this,
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  Speaker 1: and I think it's because if if you just take
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  Speaker 1: half of a second and put yourself into the position
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  Speaker 1: of somebody, who's who's who is being done to, like
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  Speaker 1: seeing your body parts being tossed in a fire in
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  Speaker 1: front of you, when you know they're supposed to be
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  Speaker 1: like in your body or attached to your body. Still,
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  Speaker 1: the psych the psychological impact of that has to just
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  Speaker 1: be has to compound the pain exponentially too. It's a
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  Speaker 1: really mean thing to do on top of everything else.
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  Speaker 1: And also just just just to just to drive this
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  Speaker 1: home really quick to there are a lot of people
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  Speaker 1: standing around chanting for your death, yelling at you, maybe
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  Speaker 1: throwing garbage at you while this is going on too,
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  Speaker 1: So they're also your townsfolk are being mean to you too.
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  Speaker 1: That's right. So let's take a break and we've covered
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  Speaker 1: drawn and hanged and uh, what do you even call
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: that last part disemboweled disemboweled, and we'll cover scattered, smothered,
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: and covered. Right, that was beautiful, Thank you, nice work.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: So we're getting to the scattered, smothering, covered part. Don't
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: forget chunked, the talks. I think that's the final there's
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: I think there's one more. I think after topped. Even Yeah,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: there's something with Chili's. I think chili is topped. Oh
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: is it? I thought, though, no, no chili. There's also
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: like Hall opens. I think you can get on it. Oh,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: so scattered, smothered, covered, chunked, topped, and chili I guess
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: I don't think they call it that, but something. Yeah,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: that's all the way. And by the way, for those
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: of you who don't live near a waffle house, I
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: think there may be ton of you listening. These are
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: ways that you can order your hash browns. Yeah, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: how did you order him? Scattered, smothered, and covered? And
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: then I would get chunked. But I don't need pork
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  Speaker 1: anymore because pigs are way too smart to to eat
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  Speaker 1: No more chunk, which is unfortunate because pigs are also
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: far in away the most delicious animal we have domesticated.
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  Speaker 1: But yeah for you for taking the stand anyway. So, scattered,
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  Speaker 1: which means that it's not in a hockey puck, smothered
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: which means it has sautet onions in with it, and
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  Speaker 1: covered where they put a slice of non cheese cheese
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  Speaker 1: on it, right, what about you? I'm ashame to admit
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  Speaker 1: that I was a very boring person. I disliked my
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: hash Browns plane. I would get a double order, okay,
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  Speaker 1: and that was it. I would just get a double
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: order a hash brown I mean you, okay, I understand,
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  Speaker 1: But would you put like ketchup on it or something?
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: M hm, salt and pepper? Huh? Would it like egg
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  Speaker 1: yolk in mixed in there or anything? Okay? All right? Yeah, okay, yeah,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: I mean I'll mix it up with the eggs and
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: cover else is on the plane. You know, like totally insane?
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  Speaker 1: Were you just I would like the driest order of
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: hash Browns you've ever made. That's the beauty of it.
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  Speaker 1: They're never dry even without that stuff on him some parts.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: I've had some dry hash Browns. All right, I think
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  Speaker 1: we should move on. Alright. So the last step in
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  Speaker 1: this process is the quartering, and uh, this involves you
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: know kind of what it sounds like. They would I
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: don't think we mentioned before. After you got disemboweed, they
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  Speaker 1: would cut the heart out, throw that in the fire.
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  Speaker 1: You're almost certainly dead after that. Um, your head comes
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  Speaker 1: off during this last process off from the horror, and
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  Speaker 1: then um, finally you're genuinely quartered, as in your arms
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  Speaker 1: and legs are cut off. They boil those and some
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  Speaker 1: spices to make the flesh last as long as possible
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  Speaker 1: because your body parts are going on tour. That's right.
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  Speaker 1: So you're being sent like parts of you are being
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: sent to different like nearby areas. That is under the
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  Speaker 1: king's control to basically say like, hey, this is what
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  Speaker 1: happens to traders. This is the leg of this guy
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  Speaker 1: who was drawn in quarter. You all know what hang
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  Speaker 1: drawn in quarter does, and look at this. This is
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  Speaker 1: the result of that. So don't try anything against the king.
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  Speaker 1: That's kind of what what the point was. I didn't
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  Speaker 1: see anything about the torso, because there would be some
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: torso left over, but it just seemed like they would
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  Speaker 1: cut their arms and lays. Was the quarter the quarter part,
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  Speaker 1: But the that that also makes it confusing with another
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  Speaker 1: form of torture and sometimes capital punishment, which was being
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  Speaker 1: quartered right by horses, which is a totally different thing
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  Speaker 1: that England didn't even do. Yeah, yeah, that was you
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: know you've heard about when you have like each limb
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: is tied to a different horse. And then they yeah
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  Speaker 1: them in the different directions, but apparently didn't happen in England,
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: apparently might have probably happened in France under King Henry
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  Speaker 1: the Fourth after an asassination attempt. Uh. And then the
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: first person to be hang drawn in quarter do you
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  Speaker 1: mentioned was the pirate Maury's because he spoke at the
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: Pampatus of Love. That's right, that was back in twelve
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  Speaker 1: forty one, right, that's right. And then of course William Wallace,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: the Scottish rebel, he was drawn and quartered as depicted
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: in the Mel Gibson's snuff film Braveheart Um. And then
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: another very famous person who was sentenced to be drawn, hang,
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  Speaker 1: drawn and quartered was Guy Fawx, the Catholic revolutionary who
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: was trying to blow up Parliament, but he escaped the
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  Speaker 1: worst of it because he was clever enough to jump
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: down from the gallows head first and break his own neck,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: so he he was already dead when they did the
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  Speaker 1: worst of the stuff to him as part of his punishment. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And eventually things might have turned when a naval clerk
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  Speaker 1: named David Tyree was drawn and quartered because he had
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: a lot of press coverage. The rest of this stuff
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: is just there's not a ton of detail. But the
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: press really came out and wrote about what happened to Tyree,
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  Speaker 1: and things seemed to have kind of turned after that
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  Speaker 1: to a little bit more of a I don't know
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  Speaker 1: if it was just like they figured that it was
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: too cruel to be doing, or if they just decided
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: it's just all takes too much time and it's a
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: little too much. We needed to sort of get on
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: with it. Kind of too extra sort of because uh
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: that there were five men convicted in the Cato Street conspiracy. Uh,
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: and they were sinance to be hanged, drawn and quartered,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: but they ended up just hanging them, putting them up
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: there on the gallows and cutting their heads off and
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: saying can we just call it a day? Yeah. And
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: this guy that the House staff works article UM interviewed.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: His name is Richard Clark. He runs the website Capital
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: Punishment uk UM. He says that part of the reason
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: why this went out of fashion was because, you know,
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: well to do Londoners started um gentrifying areas around New
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Game Prison and Tyburn the public execution grounds, and they're
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: basically like, no, we don't really want you doing this
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: in our backyard. It really tends to bring out the
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: riff raff and the blood thirsty, and we kind of
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: want them over there. So they just did away with
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: it entirely in eighteen seventy. Yeah, that was it. That
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: was it for being hang drawn and quartered. Humanity took
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: one small step forward toward progressing to its ideal form.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: And that's it for short stuff, right, what does that mean?
• 13:29
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