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Burnt At The Stake - Lewes Bonfire Celebrations

July 16, 2011 at 22:29 by v

Should you find yourself being burnt at the stake as per “De Heretico Comburendo” your legs and arms are likely to be consumed first because the limbs are relatively thin and surrounded by oxygen, making them easy to ignite and burn. At a few hundred degrees your skin blackens and the fat inside your body starts to sizzle. After a couple of minutes, your flesh will start to split open.

Next, your limbs start to move, the hands and feet clench, the arms flex up to the shoulders and the legs spread, think of bacon cooking in the frying pan. This danse macabre is caused by the flexor muscles, as they cook in the heat, they shrink and contract more powerfully than the extensors that cause the limbs to straighten, making the limbs contort.

 

Bones will blacken but remain relatively intact at lower temperatures, however if accelerants (Tar) have been used, to increase the temperature, the calcium inside the bones will be destroyed. These calcined remains are grey and lightweight and so fragile they can easily be crushed by hand. As the heat rises, the liquid and moist tissue inside your head starts to boil.

Often, the pressure in the skull is such that, unless there is a release point like a sword wound, the cranium will crack or even explode, like an overdone boiled egg. Think what it might be like if it is raining, the upper part of the body would take longer to burn and would be sizzling.

The good news is that hopefully you will have lost consciousness from smoke inhalation long ago, providing the wind isn’t blowing the fumes away from you! . Or a friend has slipped you a pouch of gunpowder so that it explodes and kills you outright early on.

“Imagine Ten Pour Souls At Once Suffering This Fate Without The Gunpowder And Witnessed By Lewes Folk On June 22nd 1557 – Lewes Will Never Forget”

Read also “Execution By Hanging” and “Beheading”

 

Posted in: Bonfire Night History, Religion And Popery Tagged in: execution, martyrs, popery and religion, protestant reformation

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