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Twain, Mark, 1835-1910

"The Prince and the Pauper, Part 9."

A repeal also passed of that law, the destruction of all laws,
by which the King's proclamation was made of equal force with a statute.
--Ibid. vol. iii. p. 339.

Boiling to Death.
In the reign of Henry VIII. poisoners were, by Act of Parliament,
condemned to be BOILED TO DEATH. This Act was repealed in the following
reign.
In Germany, even in the seventeenth century, this horrible punishment was
inflicted on coiners and counterfeiters. Taylor, the Water Poet,
describes an execution he witnessed in Hamburg in 1616. The judgment
pronounced against a coiner of false money was that he should 'BE BOILED
TO DEATH IN OIL; not thrown into the vessel at once, but with a pulley or
rope to be hanged under the armpits, and then let down into the oil BY
DEGREES; first the feet, and next the legs, and so to boil his flesh from
his bones alive.'--Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull's Blue Laws, True and False,
p. 13.

The Famous Stocking Case.
A woman and her daughter, NINE YEARS OLD, were hanged in Huntingdon for
selling their souls to the devil, and raising a storm by pulling off
their stockings!--Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull's Blue Laws, True and False, p.
20.

NOTE 10, Chapter XVII.


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