“Of man’s inhumanity
to man there are many chronicles, but his inhumanity to those he is supposed to
love and cherish has been less well-recorded. In remedying this deficiency Of
Bridles & Burnings relates a tragic history of punishment which should have
been documented long ago. The authors
describe how and why over a thousand years, by both law and custom, British
women were pilloried, executed and transported and made to undergo a host of
savage humiliations contrived by masculine ingenuity. In tracing the roots of
these punishments and the ancient prejudices against women they reveal why man
chose to inflict such suffering on those without political or economic power,
whose ‘crimes’ often resulted from society regarding women as mentally and
morally inferior.”
Mankind
as a whole has been discriminatory for as long as mankind has been. Whether it’s been restrictive laws and
conditions against minorities, institutionalised racism or full scale wars
against neighbours, people are often not very nice to those that are not the
same as they are. More recently things
haven’t improved and let’s be honest about this, they probably won’t be getting
better soon.
When
I saw this book, I nearly didn’t pick it up.
There’s so much nastiness in the world that I don’t know that we really need
to be reminded about how nasty we once were to half of our own society
(societies), although if you read the news it’s fairly obvious that this is an
on going problem… maybe not to the extremes or as often as presented in this
book, but on going nevertheless. After much ummminng and ahhhing I finally relented
and picked it up when I realised that this is probably the only book on this
subject that I have ever found and therefore a book “of interest”.
The
chapter titles will give you a fair idea on the details contained therein:
Burning and Drowning
Branks*
Whipping
Ducking stool
Hanging
Penance
Imprisonment
Stocks, Pillory, Thew and Cage
Transportation
Witches
*“A scold's bridle, sometimes called a brank's bridle or simply branks, was an instrument of punishment used primarily on women, as a form of torture and public humiliation. The device was an iron muzzle in an iron framework that enclosed the head. A bridle-bit (or curb-plate), about 2 inches long and 1 inch broad, projected into the mouth and pressed down on top of the tongue. The curb-plate was frequently studded with spikes, so that if the offender moved her tongue, it inflicted pain and made speaking impossible. Wives who were seen as witches, shrews and scolds, were forced to wear the branks, locked onto their head.” Wikipedia
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