The Incredibly Disturbing Historical Practice of Gibbeting

Gibbeted bodies would stink so badly that nearby residents would have to shut their windows to keep the wind from carrying the bodies’ stench into their homes.

Gibbeting was the practice of locking criminals in human-shaped cages and hanging them up for display in public areas as a warning to others. The gibbet itself refers the wooden structure from which the cage was hung.

In most cases, criminals were executed prior to being gibbeted. However, criminals were occasionally gibbeted alive and left to die of exposure and starvation.

Although gibbeting originated in medieval times, the height of its popularity in England was in the 1740s. The method lost popularity even after a 1752 law declared that the bodies of convicted murderers had to be either publicly dissected or gibbeted.

Authorities made gibbeted bodies difficult to remove by hanging them from 30-foot-tall posts. Sometimes, they made the posts even taller. On one occasion, they even studded a post with 12,000 nails to keep it from being torn down.

Blacksmiths who were tasked with making gibbet cages often had a hard time doing so, since they often had no prior knowledge of the structures. Consequently, the cages’ designs varied greatly. They were also expensive to make