Hanging Cage: Dick Seamen Cox Oort
What happens when your punishment doesn’t end with your execution, but with your body being locked inside an iron cage and left hanging for everyone to see?
In this episode of Torture: A Dark History, Kevin Young and Dan Hourigan explore the disturbing history of the hanging cage, a punishment designed not only to kill, but to turn the dead into a warning for everyone who passed by.
We’ll travel across Europe, England, America, and Asia, following the stories of criminals, pirates, rebels, and prisoners whose bodies were displayed in cages after their executions. We’ll meet Kohlhans the Robber, James Aitken, Captain William Kidd, and others whose deaths became public spectacles long after the execution itself was over.
But occasionally, the line between execution and torture became disturbingly blurred. We’ll look at stories of people supposedly placed inside the cages alive, left exposed to the elements with no food or water, and forced to endure days of suffering while crowds watched from below.
We’ll also explore the different forms these cages took, from simple iron frames to custom fitted “man cages,” and see how similar practices appeared in France, Germany, England, colonial America, China, Japan, Korea, and beyond.
And because this is Torture: A Dark History, Kevin and Dan bring their own morbid sense of humor to a punishment where even death apparently wasn’t enough.
If you’re interested in hanging cages, gibbets, public executions, Captain William Kidd, highwaymen, pirates, witchcraft accusations, historical torture, medieval and early modern punishment, and the darker history of public spectacle, this episode is going to leave you looking at old city gates a little differently.
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