Aaron Mahnke

Not to mention beheading and burning at the stake.

By the Middle Ages, torture was all the rage.

In comparison, bog death must have felt like a spa day.

And while I would rather do literally anything other than list medieval torture methods for all of you, I should mention that in the 1530s, boiling alive was added to the mix, which could take up to two hours.

Now, what would earn you one of these delightful afternoons exactly?

Well, in the 1700s, crimes punishable by death in Britain included murder, arson, forging currency, cutting down a tree, stealing a rabbit warren, destroying a fish pond, and

being out at night with a blackened face, just to name a few.

Luckily, in the 1800s, courts started to feel a little squeamish about executing someone for, say, counterfeiting stamps, and they started to rein it in.

By this point, hanging had become the standard penalty, with burning at the stake having been abolished in the late 1700s.

The idea was that hanging was more humane.

It was quicker.

An efficient, merciful way to die.

But unfortunately, no matter how painless an execution method may be, even death itself has a way of going terribly awry.

Mary Martin was only 22 when she climbed the Boston gallows.

She was a servant girl who had become pregnant with her employer's child.

And for a poor, unmarried woman in 1647, well, that was basically a death sentence in itself.

And so desperate to put the whole thing behind her, Mary had killed the child on the very day it was born.

First, she tried to smother the infant, but when that failed, she resorted to dashing it on the floor.

And yet it was all for naught.

The tiny body was still found and Mary was sentenced to hang.