January 06, 2008
Burning a man's eyes with lime.
The NY Public Library has scans of an 1804 book from China that shows 22 engravings of common punishment methods of the day.
Is it weird that I want some of these as prints?
Sorry for the Metamark redirect, the URL exceeded 140 characters, I promise it just goes to the NY public library website
Via
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Excellent stuff - err, you know what I mean. I think I've seen the wooden collar called a "kangue" in some English texts. Not seen the word "bastinade" before - seems most apt. They were very keen on getting a confession, a tradition that has survived into modern day policing requiring edicts against beating such out of people. They didn't show tattooing the face and banishment, which was another fun piece of Imperial law.
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My To Do list just got much longer! And much more interesting...
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I think 'bastinade' is an anglicisation of 'bastinado' which is Spanish, and which I've come across somewhere before (possibly Candide). My understanding is that it means beating the soles of the feet, though in the picture here the bloke's aim looks as if anywhere below the waist will do.
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I recognized 'bastinade' as well but couldn't say why*. It's used in Atwood's Handmaid's Tale and Stephenson's Baroque Cycle trilogy, according to wikipedia. Ordinarily, I'd suspect that I learned the word when reading about the Spanish Inquisition. But that's clearly impossible.
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Nobody expects to learn about words when reading about the Spanish Inquisition.
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An NZ movie called "Stick Men" uses "bastinado". It's a Guy Ritchie-style movie about some guys in a pool tournament, and the women's team calls themselves Bastinado because it means, they say, "to beat someone...with a stick". Actually not a bad movie for a ripoff.