Deep Dive
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Hello, my friends, Sakui here, and welcome back to the History of Everything podcast. And also, my wife is not with me. She is actually going and getting her hair done here currently, which means that I am by myself. Though, technically speaking, she would have been able to do this episode with me yesterday if I had it done on time. But I've been so busy with all the other projects that this episode, once again, is going out a day late. So I'm sorry. I know.
It's weird. It is probably something that I should be in trouble for. And speaking of which, yes, I know that was a horrible segue.
You can probably already see from the title that we're going to be talking about crimes, criminal punishment, if you will. Something that historically, at least in the Western world, is something that is fairly straightforward today. I mean, most people who have committed a crime can oftentimes expect that they're either going to pay a fine of a varying amount of money, or they can expect a certain amount of prison time to be set for them, depending upon the severity of what it is that they do.
Or, hey, you know, if the issue is light enough or the person perhaps influential enough, then maybe they could just get away with community service. These things, though, have not always been simple facts. That wasn't how it always was.
I mean, I'm sure that for anyone who is listening and or watching right now, you are well aware that the human mind has pretty much always been capable of coming up with terrible ways to punish criminals, to hurt people. This is a thing that has been done throughout all of human history.
Whether they are guilty or not at that point really doesn't matter, especially back in the day when standards of convicting someone was way lower. And as a result, people could get punished for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And maybe from that, they didn't actually have the money to get out of that situation in the first place. I mean, we're all familiar with the classics when talking about things for punishment, hanging, stoning, being burned alive at the stake.
Maybe, you know, if someone went and stole something, they would have their hand cut off. You know, the old phrase, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, that sort of thing. But the question really is then what if someone really wrongs you and you wanted to punish them in a very specific way in order to humiliate them and then dissuade them or others from doing the same thing?
What if somehow they caused a crop failure or something because they looked at you wrong one time and now maybe that means that they are very clearly a witch. Well, throughout the ages, some extremely brutal methods of torture and execution have come and gone, as well as a way to punish people for more simple offenses. It is really kind of a mess and it wasn't until recent times that we had things more standardized.
So today, my friends, I figured that we would go over some crimes and their punishments because I came across something rather weird and I want to put this first in this list to talk about. And initially, when I planned out this episode, this was supposed to be a much longer list. But then I realized as I was making it, oh, there are so many things that I could potentially talk about that I wouldn't even know where to begin. And simultaneously, I always like to tell the context and story behind set scenarios if possible.
So, on that note, let's talk about the first one that is on this list of really weird crimes and punishments. The Spankers of England. Serial Spankers, I should say. Okay, yeah, I know, I know. It sounds weird, it sounds weird, but hear me out on this. I'm sure that we are all familiar with the term serial killer. You know, a person that repeatedly goes and kills people. Yes, this is that. Except, instead of killing people, the offender liked to smack people's butts.
I know, before anyone says anything, I am not exaggerating or telling a joke here. I'm not making fun of the situation. This is a real thing. And in some cases, depending upon how long it went on or how depraved the person was, it could get really serious.
So for context of this, in 1681, it appears that at least one man, maybe more, but at least one man was roaming around the dark alleys of different streets in London. Things such as Chancery Lane, Strand, Federal Lane, Fleet Street and Holbrook. And they would go around these places once it is that the sun had set and things were getting dark.
The reason that this guy or people we don't necessarily really know was hanging around these places is because he was on the hunt and his prey were women, specifically those that were walking alone without friends or guardians or anyone who could actually protect them.
And when it is that this individual had identified a suitable target, then he would jump out of his hideout, bend her over his knee, lift her skirt up, and then repeatedly spank her butt. Yeah, and I am not making any of this up.
The probable first attack in this case was in New Street on a maidservant where the quote about it goes, and I quote again, who being sent out to look for her master as she was turning a corner, perceived a tall black man standing up against the wall as if he had been making water.
But she had not passed far, but with great speed and violence seized her, and in a trice, laying her across his knee, took up her linen, and laid so hard upon her backside, as made her cry out most piteously for help, the which he no sooner perceiving to approach, as she declares, than he vanished. Yeah, okay, this is going to require some clarification because we're talking about
Not exactly old English, but this is English from the late 1600s. So it's going to vary. And the use of language is very different at that point versus what it is today.
For clarification, the description of a tall black man is possibly a reference to the clothing that the person was wearing, including like wearing a black mask rather than the actual ethnicity of the individual. That is something I need to clarify right now. When I say a tall black man, it does not necessarily mean that it was actually a African ethnicity man.
That is not what we are saying here. At the same time, when it uses phrases like, oh, making water, that is talking about a guy that it looked like he was just standing out of the way peeing in an alleyway or something.
So, yes, there is a little bit of confusion there, but that is what that means. And then at the end, he just seems to disappear. Now, my friends, when I go and describe this, there is not much consistency with, you know, how it was all done, like how it is that this person would assault people. It could be that he would use his bare hands and actually physically spank them, or it could be that he was smacking them with a birch rod, which we're going to be explaining here later. There was really no way of knowing what kind of weapon this individual would use.
But consistently, the way the stories would go is that before the victim could properly react, could scream for help or turn around with enough time to actually identify who this individual was, he would vanish into thin air. Every single story would go like that, that he just somehow disappeared away while at the same time shouting the word Spanko. No, I'm not even getting it. It sounds ridiculous. It sounds ridiculous that I am saying this. He would just shout Spanko and then disappear.
So the question then becomes, okay, well, this guy gets caught, right? Well, no, not this one. No one could actually go and identify the man. Not the London police, not anyone, which was really, when I talk about this, a massive embarrassment for the police, by the way. Newspapers would call this guy the Whipping Tom, and soon thereafter, that name and his signatory shout stopped.
Spanko became the only identifying characteristics that anyone could actually agree upon. They didn't know necessarily how tall he was, what he was wearing, what his powers were, if he was a supernatural creature, what it is that he could do. No one understood what was happening.
And so people were afraid. Terror took over the streets and women being afraid of being assaulted would go and carry around pocket knives or other kinds of weapons in order to be able to keep themselves safe. Little sharp objects, anything they could. This was just the women, mind you.
ordinary men were also trying to catch him as well. And one of the tactics that they would use, these vigilante groups, is that they would patrol the streets of London dressed up as women and hang around in areas where he was supposed to operate in. And so that way, you know, being then dressed as women, if they were grabbed, they were already prepared at that point to be able to grab and restrain him. But the thing is, it didn't work. For the longest time, the criminal's stealth
allowed him to escape capture. Many people began wondering if this individual wasn't even a man, if he was actually some kind of supernatural creature that could just vanish before being caught by people. Which I will say this on that note, there are all kinds of myths and stories about supernatural entities in London. This was a huge thing in the late 1600s and 1700s. And it's just so incredibly weird, but interesting.
Eventually, though, two men end up getting caught or at least accused. A man along with an accomplice and the man, if I recall correctly, was a basic little shopkeeper, like had a little corner store, sold items. But the record of that trial of him actually being arrested and then sentenced, well, that's been lost. We have no real history or information about it.
This meant that the public for years afterwards still doubted whether or not the actual person had captured, whether this whole thing was real, whether the actual whipping Tom was on the loose still or whether or not he had been captured. We don't know. So you're probably listening to me right now and then wondering, Stack, why are you telling the story that without a punishment? Isn't that not the whole point of this episode? First place?
Well, yes, but that was the opener. And this is why I wanted to go into detail, because that part comes 30 years later in 1712. See, between the 10th of October and the 1st of December, 1712, there was a string of attacks that took place near Hackney, which is a village about three miles northeast of London.
A local man that we actually at this point have the name of called Thomas Wallace would go and attack lone women just like the previous case, raising their skirts and then beating them with, quote, a great rod of birch that the blood ran down their tender bodies in a sad and dreadful manner. End quote. So this guy is going around attacking women and then basically taking a wooden horse
whip like substance, which again, we're going to explain the whole thing with Birch here in a second and beating them until they bled. It's way more severe in comparison to the first round, which appeared to have more of a prankster manner.
He was eventually arrested after 70 women reportedly had been attacked, which I don't know if that is real. That number is insane. But arguably from there, it gets worse. And when you when I say that, you may wonder, OK, how is it that this kind of situation could get worse? I mean, did he break out of prison and start attacking people more?
No, it was actually during his trial, during the investigation of it, I should say, that when we get the information about what this guy actually believed, that it comes to light just how twisted and demented he was. See, he pled not guilty and then said that all the women that he attacked, quote, deserved 10 times more than either whip or rod could possibly afford them.
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Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. Yeah. Yeah, apparently the entire reason that he did this was as a form of revenge upon all women after apparently one, per the reports, had been false to him.
Now, what exactly that means, I don't really know. I'm not sure from the language, whether it's describing one cheating on him or abandoning him or something along those lines. But basically, this guy went full on incel Joker mode.
And I'm not saying that as a kind of thing to make a social argument of some kind. I mean, this is a stereotype that is associated with a very specific part of the Internet that you could probably understand what it is that I mean when I describe that. In his mind, all women were the enemy and he specifically was going to punish them.
In fact, he claimed that his plan was to attack 100 women before Christmas Day. Then for whatever reason, he was going to stop his attacks during the 12 days of Christmas because I guess that's just that nice thing to do. And then once New Year rolled around, he would start up his attacks again.
Like, I don't even really know how else to describe it. It is so specific. That's just what he planned on doing. And as you can likely guess, the courts were not pleased. He was very quickly found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment for one year at Bridewell Prison. Now, when I go and describe this, that seems rather light, doesn't it? I mean, this guy went and assaulted 70 women. And the only thing that happened is he went to prison for one year.
What gives? How is this weird? That doesn't make any sense. Well, this is why I included it in the episode.
In prison, just like what he did to women, he was also birched. Now, for clarification, I said before that I would explain what it is that this means. It means that he was hit with a birch rod, which is something composed of twigs as a kind of whip. Now, depending upon who makes it and what we're describing, a birch rod can vary. Either it can be a literal larger stick that is made of birch, or it could be a bunch of twigs that have been lashed together as a pseudo form of whip.
And this would happen to him twice a week by two maids, quote, till the blood on his back comes in six places. So he would be lashed until it is that his back bled from at least six different places. Yeah, he was also to be stood in the pillory once each at the Royal Exchange, Temple Bar and three times at St. Margaret's Hill in Southwark.
And then after that, after a year of going through all this, he was eventually released from prison. And after that, he was then, quote, made to run the gauntlet through 200 maids, wives and widows in cheap side.
For clarification on what that part means, because I know a bunch of people are probably a little bit confused if they've heard that phrase before, to run the gauntlet means to take part in a form of punishment in which the person that has been judged as guilty is forced to run between, typically in history, two rows of soldiers who, as the person runs through, they would strike out and attack them, either with sticks, their fists, other weapons, etc.,
Now, sometimes historically, this was used as a method of execution where sharpened weapons were used. And other times it was just used as a form of humiliation punishment. Like there were cases of back in the day of pike and shot tactics where you had these mercenary companies that would be fighting extensively and discipline was key in this formation.
If you were a person that was a coward and fled, you could be made to run the gauntlet whereby all of your teammates, that's not the right word, where all of your fellow soldiers, your fellow mercenaries would then punish you by, as you ran through, stabbing you with their halberds. Yeah. In this case, as he ran through a bunch of women that were also armed, perhaps here with birch rods and other things, as he would go through, would hit him repeatedly.
So yeah, that is how it ends with whipping Tom's. Then that's, as you can probably imagine, that is why I introduced that here to the story. That is the whole thing that inspired this episode in the first place. Moving on. If you thought that what it is that we just covered was pretty light, how about something that is more on the opposite end? And by that, I mean horribly extreme. The execution of Balthazar Gerard.
Now, this is going to require some context here because this is less of a weird punishment and more of a horrifying one that combines just about every terrible thing that you can imagine into one go. So if you've listened to this first part and laughing, you're probably not going to be laughing here at the next part. And if you are squeamish, I recommend not listening in the first place. In fact, I'm actually glad that my wife is not here to hear this because this will make her very upset.
For clarification, Balthasar Gerard was the assassin of the Dutch revolt leader, William the Silent of the House of Orange. This guy killed William the Silent in Delft on the 10th of July, 1584, shooting him twice with a pair of pistols. And afterwards, he would be tried, convicted, tortured, and then executed.
For context of what all this is about with the Dutch Revolt, I have spoken about it here before, but it has genuinely been quite a while. We are talking about the Eighty Years' War, the war from 1568 to 1648. This is the war in which the Netherlands sought independence from Spain, which led to the separation of Northern and Southern Netherlands and the formation of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, or in other words, the Dutch Republic. That is where they came into existence.
Gerard was a simple but interesting figure. He was actually a lawyer versus some kind of general layman. And he was not only that, but an ardent Catholic and supporter of the Spanish crown. He wanted the Netherlands to remain under the control of the Spanish. They controlled the territory up the coast through present-day Netherlands, and at the peak of its power, Spain's monarchy, which was led by King Philip II,
They were getting worried at this time, because remember, this is the late 1500s, and at this point, Catholicism has been fracturing for years with the rise of Protestantism. Here's the point that needs to be said.
The Spanish were arguably the peak Catholics in the entire European system. Absolutely. And this is something that in the case of the Dutch, which had become gradually more and more Protestant, both politically and actually religiously, that was a major issue.
The Dutch for years have been looking for a way to get out from under the rule of the Spanish, and one noble came along called William, Duke of Orange, and he would help to instigate things into a full-blown struggle. In 1566, the noblemen would sign the Compromise of Nobles and began funding varying different insurgencies across the northern provinces to resist Spanish rule.
As time went on and religious unrest grew, Calvinists and Protestants, which that's a whole other thing where I probably need to do something in order to be able to explain the variance in Christianity that arose at this time, they would begin to fight back. And as time went on, they would rally largely behind William. Now, my friends, it would take dozens of small military victories over the next 15 years in order for the Dutch to move to full-blown independence.
The 1580 Union of Utrecht and 1581 Act of Apparition would officially oust King Phil II from the Netherlands and install a new government. But it was not something that pleased the Spanish. Of course, Philip was very obviously not happy about this and he wanted William gone. So it is then, my friends, in the year 1580 that Spain would go and put a price on William's head. One individual would try and collect this bounty two years later by shooting him.
But that attempt actually ended up not working. And that is not the Balthazar individual that we're talking about here. This is another guy called Juan. And that ultimately ended up failing, which caused him to be captured and killed on the spot. Prince William I would actually survive being shot and from there would continue on for a bit.
However, with the fact that the bounty was 25,000 crowns, a significant amount, other people were bound to try. So it is then, my friends, that our guy Balthazar Girard started looking for a chance to get close to William and take him out. At first, he tried to join the army in Luxembourg, which didn't really work in getting him closer. So instead, he had to come up with another plan, something which he did propose to the Duke of Parma, Alessandro Farnese, in April of 1584.
Although the Duke didn't offer any kind of money to fund the operation in the first place, in fact, Gerard had to put up the startup money that he needed for the trip by himself. And also, he didn't really have much hope that Gerard was going to succeed in the first place. He did make a promise that in the event that Gerard succeeds, or rather, I should say that if everything goes to shit, that his family was going to be taken care of. This was enough that Gerard would go and make his attempt.
Here's what happens. Gerard first goes and presents himself to William in June as the son of a Calvinist, a guy who had been martyred, killed for his faith and tried to ingratiate himself. On the 8th of July, he returns and badly in need of new clothes. He manages to beg 50 crowns for a new set, you know, something that he is given.
However, instead of going and buying clothes, he goes and gets a pair of guns, pistols. And then on the 10th of July, two days later, he shoots William point blank in the chest twice. The assassination attempt this time did not fail. William would become the second head of the Netherlands to be killed by an assassin's bullet. And Gerard was then very quickly captured, tried and sentenced to be tortured and then executed.
Now, here's why it is that we bring this here in the first place. It is because among all cases that we could describe of torture in history, Gerard's was exceptionally brutal. Like his level of punishment was truly insane. On the first night of his imprisonment, he was hung on a pole and lashed with a whip. Very basic. But next, his wounds were smeared with honey and a goat was brought in to lick the honey off of his skin because it has a very rough tongue. And the idea of doing this would be very painful.
Interestingly enough, the goat actually did not want to touch his body. It refused. And so they had to move on to other elements of torture in order to get the point across. After several other points in which, you know, his limbs were broken, parts of him were removed. He was left to pass the night with his hands and feet bound together in a ball so that sleeping would be difficult. During the following three days, he was then repeatedly mocked and hung on a pole with his hands tied behind his back.
It was very humiliating, but physically it was going to get significantly worse. At one point, one of the things that would happen is that a weight of 300 pounds, we were talking like 140, 150 kilograms being attached to each of his toes, like his big toes for half an hour that would dangle. So it's pulling him not quite apart, but dislocating them.
Subsequently, what would happen after this is that Gerard would be fit with shoes that were made of well-oiled, uncured dog skin. Now, the uncured part is very important because the shoes were two fingers shorter than his feet were, so they were already smaller on him. In this state, he was put before a fire.
And when the shoes warmed up because of the state that they were in, this caused them to contract, which would crush the feet inside of them to stumps. After the shoes were removed, his skin was broiled and was torn off. With his feet being so severely damaged, they moved on to his arms. With his arms raised up, they would be branded right inside the pits.
Afterwards, he was dressed in a shirt that would be soaked in alcohol, which, as you can imagine, would be incredibly painful. Lastly, burning bacon fat would be poured over him, and sharp nails were stuck between the flesh and the nails of his hands and feet. Eventually, after all of this was done, he was finally executed. His severed head was then displayed on a pike, and his arms and legs displayed on four gates of the city.
For everything that he had suffered, which was truly horrible, this is where we bring things into the aftermath. Yes, the king was dead. Yes, the killer was dead. But what about the promise? What about the thing that said that Gerard's family would be taken care of? Well, in comparison to most stories in history where things don't actually work out,
It kind of did here. Yes, Gerard went through horrible things, but his family was pretty well off after that. They were given a very good inheritance, making good of Parma's assurances. King felt the second actually gave William's former lands in three French provinces to Gerard's family and then took his siblings and made them into nobles. So they were actually elevated to peerage. That is horrible.
Actually quite nice considering everything that he had to go through. Ultimately, though, it wasn't really going to matter for the revolt. Gerard's cause would carry on for another 60 years until eventually the Netherlands would be freed after the signing of the Peace of Munster by the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands and Spain. It was done. But yeah, holy crap, that is a lot. Hi, everyone. This is Scott.
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Honestly, when I go and describe this, at this point, we should probably move on to something that is a bit lighter to finish things off. Or rather, I should say, not necessarily lighter, I should say more interesting in general, like getting a fine in ancient India.
Yes, I know at this point when we've gone and described things here that I've been talking about a lot of stuff in Europe, which most of the sources that we look at about these things, or at least I have immediate access to, are based in Europe, with most of these things being English sources. And I could have pulled things off of just some kind of general list that would have been put on Medium or some kind of other thing in order to get a list of weird punishments, but we wanted to be more specific when going and describing these things. If anyone out there, before I go into this thing about India, has
has any interesting punishments that they would like mentioned, send them in. Send them in. I know that my contact is there for people who wish to submit family histories, which is something that we're going to be bringing back here onto the channel. So if you want to send those in, we will not only be going back in and talking about people's families history, but also if you have any suggestions on these different punishments from cultures around the world, definitely send those in and we can compile that to another episode, which would be fun.
Of course, moving on to this thing with India, there's a reason why I'm bringing this up, even though it sounds like a weird way to end this episode since we're talking about monetary fines. After all, we've already talked about whippings and horrible executions. Why fines? Well, the answer, my friends, is because ancient India with Hindu laws had a very interesting way of handling things depending upon what caste you were a part of. And that is what makes it so interesting.
For context, India's caste system is among the world's oldest forms of surviving social stratification, which, though technically banned today, still kind of exists. The system divides Hindus into rigid hierarchical groups based off their karma, which is their work, and their dharma, which is the Hindi word for religion, but here essentially what it means is their duty, their obligation.
It's accepted at this point that this sort of system has been around for over 3000 years. It is old. The caste system basically divides Hindus into four main categories. You have Brahmins, you have the Kshatriyas, the Vaishyas, and the Shudras, the names of which I'm probably butchering. Now, many believe that the groups, when looking at things from a religious lens, originate from Brahma, which is the Hindu god of creation and kind of like the origin of all things.
At the top of the hierarchy were the Brahmins, from which you know, it derives from the name of Brahma. These were mainly the teachers, the priests, the intellectuals, the people that were believed to have come from Brahma's head. After that came the Astriyas, or the warriors and rulers, which supposedly came from his arms. After them, the third slot was the Vaishyas, the traders, the merchants, the skilled craftsmen. These were people that were created from his thighs.
And then at the bottom of this list were the shudras, the basic ones, the peasants, the people who came from Brahma's feet and did all of the menial jobs and basic labor. Or I say that the basic labor that didn't declare them to be untouchable, which was a whole other thing. The main cast were further divided into around 3000 other casts and 25,000 subclasses, each which had their own kind of specific occupation rules and everything else. It's very complicated.
Outside of that caste system, you have the Dalits or the Untouchables, which is a whole other thing in and of itself. For centuries, the caste system would dictate almost every single aspect of Hindu religious and social life, with each group occupying a very specific place in the hierarchy. And from there, people couldn't really do much. They were stuck.
Rural communities would then be arranged on the basis of caste, with upper and lower castes always living in segregated colonies by themselves. Water wells were not shared, food sources were not accepted, Brahmins were not able to accept food or drink from Shudras, they were too low, and one was only able to marry within one's caste.
Of course, these rules could vary depending upon where you were and the specific restrictions and how strict people were, but that is a general rule of thumb you could say. The system gave many different privileges to the upper castes, while sanctioning repression of the lower castes by the different privileged groups.
This is easily one of the most unjust and regressive and repressive systems in history, in the sense that it lasted for significantly longer than what most things did. And what's crazy is how it remained virtually unchanged for centuries, trapping people into fixed social orders from which they couldn't really get out of.
At this point, you're probably wondering, okay, why the heck am I mentioning all that? Well, when talking about crime and punishment, the level and type of punishment that you could get could also be determined or at least affected by what caste you were in. This is what brings us to the point of a fine. A fine could be imposed when damage was done to another person with the amount of the fine being dependent upon a number of different factors, the caste being one of them.
In the ancient Hindu tradition, it was generally accepted that if a warrior or a merchant or a peasant was not able to go and pay the fine, then that person would have to perform manual labor. Brahmins, though, did not. They were exempt from it. Brahmins could still pay the fine, but if they couldn't afford it all at once, then they would have to pay it in installments. So they were given some leeway.
The last resort in this case was to imprison the person if the offender could not perform the manual labor. Now, the amount of fine would vary according to what caste a person belonged to. As an example, a peasant would be estimated to pay around eight times the amount of damage. A merchant would pay 16 times the amount and a warrior have to pay 32 times the amount, which is a lot. And as you can imagine, for a maybe poor-ish soldier, that meant a lot of manual labor if they really screwed something up.
If a Brahmin had to pay a fine, it could be 64 times the amount or even up to 100 times the amount in some circumstances. But really, at that point, it varies. The multiplier was different for each caste because it was determined that the mental and moral capacity of the person that committed the crime would have to be taken into account.
Like, if you recall how things work within Hinduism and reincarnation, the more moral you are, the more pure you are, all these other factors that have to be taken into consideration. When you are reincarnated back into the cycle, you can move up or down the caste system depending upon what you did in a previous life. So it was expected that if you were of a higher caste, that meant that you were a orator.
or moral person. So if you did something that was wrong, you needed to be punished more because that was actually a greater offense. It's an interesting thing to take note of. In fact, if you were a king and not just like a soldier, it could be even greater.
According to ancient Indians, the king had to pay a heftier fine for committing a crime because that was the individual that was the guiding ruler, the example, the father of his subjects. And so if he did something wrong, that meant that the king would have to pay a significantly greater amount. Like if a commoner had to pay X amount of goods for something, the king would have to pay a thousand times that.
Of course, when we describe this, it's not just fines. Other aspects of punishment could also be limited or affected. Let's say, as an example, that you did something in India that should cause you to be in prison, locked up, and placed alongside the road in order to show people what happens when you go and commit a crime, like killing someone's cow or something.
Brahmins could be sent to prison if they had committed a serious crime that normally required them to be mutilated, which would be, you know, the breaking of limbs, the cutting off of the nose, etc. These things were done repeatedly in history. But even though that happened, Brahmins were not able to be forced to commit manual labor. Instead, they
they could do little menial things. Like one of the examples that is given is they could clean dishes, but they wouldn't be able to go and do brickwork. That wasn't something that was done. That was too hard of labor. It had to be very light, which we go and describe this really does sound like if you were a Brahmin, if you were the upper of the upper class, you would typically get off easy, which yes, that is right. But it's also important to note that their cast had their own kind of specific punishments or at least received them more.
Remember, this was the highest caste in society, and they were supposed to be the peak of virtue. Severe violations of this trust could result in being branded. See, branding was oftentimes reserved to Brahmins who had done horrible crimes, like murdered another Brahmin, stolen things from people like gold, or did something like commit incest.
Now, not only would they be branded, but the brand itself could vary depending upon what specific crime they did. As an example, if they murdered another Brahmin, then they could be branded with the mark of like a human on their forehead. If they committed incest, then it's again, it's going to sound strange when I say this. They could have the female reproductive organs branded onto their forehead. If they stole gold, it could be a dog's paw that was put on their forehead.
There is all kinds of different things that could happen to them. And after being branded, that Brahmin would be cast out of their territory and not be welcomed anywhere else due to the fact that, well, they were branded.
Now, that being said, branding was not necessarily specific to just Brahmins. Other people could be branded for a variety of different offenses, but an offender could also be forgiven and not branded if they performed the proper rights, whether that is being forgiven by the actual person that they had wronged, by a court, by the king or whatever. It really does vary. But in the end, it's just one of the most interesting kind of systems that had so many levels of complexities in history.
Anyway, I think that is all that we're going to be covering here today. My friends, thank you for all of you who have been listening. I know that this was a little bit of an odd one. If there's anyone out there who has suggestions, their own little knowledge of punishments or interesting things in history, then by all means, send that in. Maybe we can compile another list as we're going to be doing more things in the future.
My wife actually just got back from her hair appointment here just now, and I know that one of the episodes we're probably going to do in the future is another one of those more laid-back listener special ones where we do things where general off-the-cuff questions are asked. If you have anything that you would like to be in that episode, then make sure to send that in once it is that we post the poll, either on Instagram or Patreon or whatever it is that we do there. Thank you, my friends, for listening. I hope you all have a good rest of your day, and I'll see you next time, my hoes. Goodbye, guys. ♪
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