september_16_1997 vicious As late as the Victorian era in England, hanging, drawing and quartering was still an accepted method of capital punishment for treason. In this form of punishment, a fire was lit as the man was hanging, and while still barely alive he was cut down, his head severed with a cleaver, disembowelled, and the head and entrails cast into the fire. Paints a pretty picture, don't it? Kat Daley adds: "Oh, you left out the best parts! After being hung, the traitor was revived, his genitals were cut off and burned before his eyes, then his entrails were drawn from a hole in his stomach and burned, THEN his head was cut off. It's no fun if he loses consciousness too quickly! Actually, he might have been cut (or torn by horses) into four pieces before being beheaded, but I'm not quite clear on the order." Ben Granby also writes: According to The Encyclopedia of Execution, (a book with many fine contemporary eye-witness accounts) you were initially correct about later methods of hanging, drawing and quartering. People often confuse drawing and quartering with torn apart by horses which was the French method of executing assassins (or would be assassins) and was only done twice - officially. But severing the limbs for English traitors occurred after death 000417 what's it to you? who go blather from