Word: gibbeting
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...flats of Dagenham, for instance, where the last of the river pirates were hanged on a gibbet a few centuries ago, Ford Motor Co., Ltd., of England has one of the biggest, busiest automobile plants in Europe-34 acres, 15,000 men under one roof. Furthermore, as of the time I was there the car and commercial vehicle sections of the British motor industry had already exceeded their export goals...
...without the dire consequences predicted by Ellenborough, gibbet and gallows were prescribed for fewer & fewer crimes. When murder was crossed off the list last week, only three capital crimes remained: high treason in time of war, piracy with violence, arson in dockyards...
...sacrificial killing of a friend to provide companionship in the spirit world for the late Sir Ofori Atta, high chief of the state of Akim Abuakwa (TIME, Aug. 26). Beefy Leslie Hale, a Laborite, related that four times in the last two years the five men had missed the gibbet by last-minute postponements of execution; that itself was a terrible punishment. Winston Churchill growled that the five Africans had been "subjected to torture" by "cat-and-mousing them up to the scaffold." This, he stormed, was "an affront to every decent tradition . . . a matter affecting the life and honor...
Four horse races had been run off smoothly when the announcement came: there would be a special added attraction. As the 1,100 spectators watched, a goose was hung by the feet from the gibbet. It hung limp, its wings free, its long, greased neck dangling. Out onto the track rode four gentlemen riders on muleback, dressed in breeches, boots and gaily colored shirts...
...successful. The goose had pulled its neck up as far as it could. The honking, the frantic beating of its wings made the mules skittish. Two riders missed completely. But the third was not to be foiled by a goose, rules or no rules. He trotted up to the gibbet, stopped, worked his mule under the goose, and grabbed. His pull nearly lifted him off the mule's back...