They Want to See the Thing Done Public Executions

2009 ◽  
pp. 19-44
Author(s):  
Amy Louise Wood
Keyword(s):  
Public Executions

“Killing the Elephant”: Murderous Beasts and the Thrill of Retribution, 1885–1930

2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Louise Wood
Keyword(s):  
New Age ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Crime And Punishment ◽  
Industrial Age ◽  
Public Executions

At the turn of the last century, circus elephants who had, in fits of distemper, killed circus trainers, workers, or spectators were regularly put to death. That alone is not extraordinary. What is fascinating is that the killings of these animals were not infrequently staged as public executions, with the elephant playing the role of the menacing criminal facing his just rewards before a crowd of eager witnesses. News accounts in turn reported these events as they would criminal executions, framing them as stories of murder, remorse, and retribution. This article treats these remarkable events as complex rituals through which larger tensions and conflicts surrounding crime and punishment in this period became manifest. These executions, performed as extensions of the modern circus, were commercial spectacles in and of the industrial age. Still, like circuses, they were also events full of ambivalence about this new age, as they acted out popular controversies over the nature of criminality, the meaning of justice, and the role of vengeance in modern life.

Conservative Representations of Executions

2020 ◽  
pp. 54-84
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Taïeb
Keyword(s):  
Corporal Punishment ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Criminal Code ◽  
Good Death ◽  
Political Force ◽  
The Public ◽  
Civilizing Process ◽  
The Law ◽  
Public Executions

Executionary publicity was not universally contested. Many people were still attached to the show of political force embodied by public executions, as well as the opportunity to morally “test” oneself. Faced with the advocates of this form of “brutalization,” the chapter examines the arguments that backed the preservation of public rituals of execution. It includes discussions about the demand for exemplarity and attempts to delegitimize the regime in its attempts to reform the Criminal Code; the plan to restore the use of corporal punishment and the whip as a deterrent to crime; the people's thirst for the guillotine in the wake of the Soleilland affair paradoxically led to a major victory for the pro-death-penalty camp; compartmentalization of the civilizing process and insensitivity to suffering of the general populace; the executions, brutalization and glorification of the violence of war; the diffusion of military values in service of executions being conditioned by “trivialization”; a martial relationship to executions, executions that attracted spectators; lastly the transforming of an execution into a good death “by self-punishment” and a “good death” by convincing the public that punishment was administered by an autonomous individual to himself rather than by the law.

‘For Publick Satisfaction’

2019 ◽  
pp. 120-146
Author(s):  
K.J. Kesselring
Keyword(s):  
Private Matter ◽  
Public Executions

Chapter 5 turns to the ways in which killings became ‘public’ in the sense of being made widely known, and how that contributed to making homicide public in the sense of being seen as an offence against a community. It examines public executions, the advent of printing—including both the new genre of the murder pamphlet and legal printing more generally—and the rise of the commercial stage. It examines the ways in which these discussions and displays helped inculcate a message that vengeance ought to be left to law, a public rather than private matter.

The Violence of World War, 1914–1920

2020 ◽  
pp. 34-53
Author(s):  
Laura Robson
Keyword(s):  
Political Repression ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
Military Campaigns ◽  
Extreme Violence ◽  
Public Executions ◽  
Imperial Reforms

This chapter investigates the unfolding of the war in the Arab provinces, examining how imperial reforms morphed into extreme violence as the Ottoman state enacted genocidal campaigns against Armenians and practiced political repression against Arab activists while European forces invaded, blockaded, and occupied the famine-stricken Levant. It focuses in particular on the rather sudden delegitimization of Ottoman authority in the Mashriq as a consequence of the multiple Allied invasions; the Committee of Union and Progress’s emerging policies of mass conscription, material requisitioning, and political repression in greater Syria and the Iraqi provinces, symbolized particularly by the public executions in Beirut and Damascus in 1915 and 1916. It also articulates how the Allied military campaigns in Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine aimed not only to defeat the Ottomans but also to establish the outlines of a postcolonial absorption of these territories and their resources into the British and French Empires.

scholarly journals Tiempos de violencia desigual: guerrilleros contra Franco (1939-1952)Times of unequal violence: guerrilla fighters against Franco (1939-1950)

2016 ◽  
pp. 105
Author(s):  
Benito Díaz Díaz
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
World War ◽  
La Paz ◽  
Security Forces ◽  
Palabras Clave ◽  
Public Executions ◽  
Siglo Xx ◽  
National Reconciliation

RESUMEN Tras la victoria del general Franco en la Guerra Civil, la paz no llegó por completo a todos los rincones de la geografía española. La falta de una política de reconciliación nacional, junto al mantenimiento de una intensa actividad represora, hicieron que algunos republicanos se refugiasen en la sierra, sin otro objetivo que el de salvar la vida. Con el tiempo, y en paralelo a la evolución de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, el Partido Comunista de España consiguió dotar de objetivos políticos a estos huidos y crear agrupaciones guerrilleras, lo que contribuyó a agravar la violencia rural. En este artículo, con documentación de archivos militares, de partidos políticos y de las fuerzas de orden público, y mediante el uso de la historia oral, abordamos la permanencia de la violencia en el mundo rural: asesinatos, ejecuciones extrajudiciales, fusilamientos públicos, ley de fugas, robos, secuestros, agresiones sexuales, así como otras formas de excesos y coacciones que fueron algo normal en el medio rural durante la década de los años cuarenta del siglo XX.   PALABRAS CLAVE: violencia, represión franquista, huidos, guerrillero, ejecuciones extrajudiciales   ABSTRACT After the victory of General Franco in the Spanish Civil War, complete peace did not come to all corners of Spain. The lack of a policy of national reconciliation, together with the maintenance of strong repressive activity, led some Republicans to take refuge in the mountains with no other purpose than to save their lives. Over time, and in parallel with the evolution of World War II, the Communist Party of Spain managed to provide these fugitives with political objectives and create guerrilla groups, which contributed to the aggravation of rural violence. In this article, using documentation from military archives, political parties and the security forces, as well as oral history, we address the persistence of violence in rural areas: killings, extrajudicial executions, public executions, ley de fugas, robbery, kidnapping, sexual assault and other forms of excesses and oppression that were normal in rural areas during the 1940s.   KEY WORDS: violence, Francoist repression, escapees, guerrilla fighters, extrajudicial executions

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