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n In February 1967, Mr Michael Jagger and Mr Keith Richards ofnthe popular beat-combo the Rolling Stones (and their art-dealer chum, Robert Fraser) were arrested for thenpossession of drugs when eighteen police officers raided Redlands, the countrynhome of Mr Richards. The prosecution case against them was based on the few amphetamine tabletsnfound at the scene and the smell of cannabis in the house, which might, ornmight not, have really been the scent of burning incense.
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| Mr Richards at his Redlands home, accompanied by Mr Jagger |
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nThere were four tablets in Jagger’snjacket, and Fraser had four more in his pockets, and so all three men were chargednwith, and found guilty of, possession of Class A drugs. Fraser was sentenced to six monthsnimprisonment, Jagger to three months and Richards to twelve months, which manynpeople thought was a little too excessive for them having a few pills aboutntheir persons. William Rees-Moggs, editor of The Times newspaper, wrotenan editorial Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel?, rhetorically asking ifnthese famous musicians would have received the same treatment if they had beennjust ordinary citizens. Was it not the case that they were being made annexample of, that they were getting what was coming to them?
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| William Rees-Moggs – Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel? |
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nOn appeal, thensentences were reduced to conditional discharges; Jagger had spent three nightsnin gaol and Richards one night (Fraser’s case was slightly different, he laternpleaded guilty to the possession of heroin and served six months hard labour).nRees-Moggs editorial headline is a slight mis-quotation of a line fromnAlexander Pope’s satirical poem, Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot, which actuallynreads, “Who Breaks a Butterfly upon a Wheel?”
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| Detail – Pieter Brughel – The Triumph of Death |
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nIt is a phrase that meansn‘Why expend such force on such a fragile victim?’; in effect, why use ansledgehammer to crack a walnut? I have written earlier this month (see here and the following half dozen posts) about variousnmethods of capital punishment used in the past and had intended to add a piecenon breaking on the wheel but thought twice about it. However, in the light ofnyesterday’s post, which ended with a mention of Francesco Arcangeli’snexecution, I have had a rethink of my second thoughts (I think).
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| Breaking on the Wheel – detail from Hogarth’s South Sea Bubble |
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nBreaking onnthe Wheel was a dreadful punishment (not that beheading, pressing, hanging, etcnaren’t, but bear with me), with its origins lost in history – Aristophanesnmentions a torturer’s wheel in his Lysistrata (411 BCE), and Athenaeus,nLucian and Josephus, amongst other classical writers, also refer to the wheel.
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| Breaking on the Wheel |
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nThere were a variety of ways that wheels were used as methods of torture andnexecution, from simply driving a cart over a person’s body, tying them to thenoutside rim of a wheel and rolling them along, tying them to the spokes andnrotating the wheel, or tying them to the spokes and breaking their limbs bynstriking them with a club or rod.
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| Breaking the long bones with big stick |
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nA variation was to fasten a person inside anbarrel lined with nails and roll that along the ground, or wrap them around thenoutside of the barrel and roll them over spikes or sharp rocks.
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| Nailed into a nailly barrel with nails |
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nBy far thencommonest method was to tie the victim to the spokes of the wheel, or to a pairnof beams in an X shape (the St Andrew’s cross), and strike the long bones ofnthe arms and legs with a sledgehammer, a cudgel or an iron bar, ending with thencoup de grâce (blow of mercy) to the stomach.
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| Breaking the long bones with a big stick [Two] (oh, and pulling toe-nails out too) |
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nAt times, a judge mightnsentence a criminal to remarkably cruel torture, as in the case of theneighty-six year old Jean Calas of Toulouse, who was suspected of beingncomplicit in the strangling his own son Anthony, in 1761, and to make himnreveal the names of his accomplices was sentenced to be,
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n“… broken alivenupon the wheel, to receive the last stroke after he had lain two hours, andnthen to be burnt to ashes.”n
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| Jean Calas broken on the wheel – 1761 |
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nAlthough rare, breaking on the wheel was usednin Britain, as in the case recorded by Robert Birrel in his Diary,
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n“RobertnWeir broken on ane cart-wheel, with ane coulter of ane pleuch, in the hand ofnthe hangman, for murdering the Laird of Warriston, quhilk he did, 2 Julii 1600.”n
n[‘ane coulter of ane pleuch’ is ‘a coulter of a plough’, ancoulter being the knife that cuts the soil ahead of the ploughshare.]n
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| A variety of ways to kill people – Spot the Breaking on the Wheel |
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nOf allnthe people whose names are associated with the wheel, surely the most familiarnis that of St Catherine of Alexandria, which is somewhat ironic as there is nonevidence whatsoever that she ever actually existed. The legend is thatnthe young pagan Catherine lived in Alexandria, where her studies introduced her tonChristianity, to which she then converted. When the emperor Maxentius began hisnpersecutions, an eighteen-year-old Catherine went and began to rebuke him fornhis tyranny.
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| St Catherine of Alexandria (with her wheel) |
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nHe could find no defence to her arguments so sent for fiftynphilosophers, none of whom could answer her either, so he had the lot of them executed.nHe offered to marry the beautiful maiden but she refused him, claiming she wasnthe Bride of Christ, so he had her flogged and thrown into gaol, where she wasnvisited by his wife and an army officer, both of whom were converted, alongnwith two hundred soldiers assigned as guards. Maxentius had the whole bunch of this lotnexecuted too, and Catherine was sentenced to be killed on a spiked wheel. When shenwas placed up it, it miraculously broke into pieces, the flying pieces of whichnkilled several onlookers, so Maxentius had her beheaded with a sword instead. Quite why the sword didn’t burst into shards and take out a few more pagans is something left to your imagination (maybe Christ thought it was safer for the rest of creation if his Bride was just that little bit nearer to him).
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| Catherine’s Wheel |
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nThe story isnnow best remembered through the firework called the Catherine Wheel.
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