Dismemberment

[1] In 2019, American psychiatrists and medical professionals Michael H. Stone, Gary Brucato, and Ann Burgess proposed formal criteria by which "dismemberment" might be systematically distinguished from the act of mutilation, as these terms are commonly used interchangeably.

They suggested that dismemberment involves "the entire removal, by any means, of a large section of the body of a living or dead person, specifically, the head (also termed decapitation), arms, hands, torso, pelvic area, legs, or feet".

The techniques by which the convicted person was executed varied widely but did, on occasion, include the elephant dismembering the victim by means of sharp blades attached to its feet.

The Muslim traveler Ibn Battuta, visiting Delhi in the 1330s, has left the following eyewitness account of this particular type of execution by elephants:[3] Upon a certain day, when I myself was present, some men were brought out who had been accused of having attempted the life of the Vizier.

On such occasions the elephant-driver rode upon them: and, when a man was thrown to them, they would wrap the trunk about him and toss him up, then take him with the teeth and throw him between their fore feet upon the breast, and do just as the driver should bid them, and according to the orders of the Emperor.

[5] The fate of Wilhelm von Grumbach in 1567, a maverick knight in the Holy Roman Empire who was fond of making his own private wars and was thus condemned for treason, is also worthy of note.

To begin, Karnhars had three strips of flesh torn from his back, before being pinched 18 times with glowing pincers, having his fingers clipped off one by one, his arms and legs broken on the wheel, and finally, while still alive, quartered.

[7] In the seventeenth century, a number of travel reports speak of an exotic "Turkish" execution method, where first the waist of a man was constricted by ropes and cords, and then a swift bisection of the trunk was performed.

William Lithgow presents a comparatively prosaic description of the method:[8] If a Turke should happen to kill another Turke ... he is brought forth to the market place, and a blocke being brought hither of foure foote high; the malefactor is stripd naked; and then layd thereupon with his belly downeward, they drawe in his middle together so small with running cords, that they strike his body a two with one blow: his hinder parts they cast to be eaten by hungry dogges kept for the same purpose; and the forequarters and head they throw into a grievous fire, made there for the same end – and this is the punishment for man-slaughter.George Sandys, however, during the same period, tells of a method as no longer in use, in a rather more mythologized way:[9] ... they twitch the offender about the waist with a towell, enforcing him to draw up his breath by often pricking him in the body, until they have drawn him within the compasse of a span; then tying it hard, they cut him off in the middle, and setting the body on a hot plate of copper, which seareth the veines, they so up-propping him during their cruell pleasure: who not only retaineth his sense, but the faculties of discourse, until he be taken downe; and then he departeth in an instant.In 1850s Persia, a particular dismemberment technique called shekkeh is reported to have been used.

When the shekkeh is to be inflicted in a merciful manner, the culprit's head is struck off, previous to bisecting the trunk.Sikh martyr Bhai Mani Singh was dismembered on the orders of Zakaria Khan, the Mughal Subahdar of Lahore after failing to pay tribute.

Depending on the forces supplied by the horses or other entities, joints of the hips and shoulders were quickly dislocated, but ultimate severing of the tendons and ligaments in order to fully dismember the limbs would sometimes require assistance with cuts from a blade.

Also referred to as "disruption", dismemberment could be brought about by chaining four horses to the condemned's arms and legs, thus making them pull him apart, as was the case with the executions of François Ravaillac in 1610, Michał Piekarski in 1620, and Robert-François Damiens in 1757.

The Liber Historiae Francorum, an eighth century chronicle, describes her death by dismemberment as follows:[23] Then King Chlothar ordered that she be lifted onto a camel and led through the entire army.

In paragraph 58 in his work, Jonas just writes: "but Brunhilda he had placed first on a camel in mockery and so exhibited to all her enemies round about then she was bound to the tails of wild horses and thus perished wretchedly".

According to Olfert Dapper, a 17th-century Dutchman who meticulously collected reports from faraway countries from seamen and other travelers, a fairly frequent maritime death penalty among the Barbary corsairs was to affix the hands and feet to chains on four different ships.

This having been done, he hung him up head downwards by the foot with which he had made him kneel; the other he pulled downwards with a heavy piece of iron, which cannot be described in words: thus endeavouring to rend the champion in two.