Death by burning
A method of execution involving combustion or extreme heat.
Immolation, or death by burning, is a way to die through fire or extreme heat, used in executions, murders, or suicides. For centuries, societies publicly burned people as a capital punishment for treason, heresy, or witchcraft. The most famous method is burning at the stake, where the victim is tied to a wooden post as flames are set below.
Quick Facts
- Earliest documented execution
- 18th century BC
- Most recent documented execution
- 2026
- Notable early legal code
- 18th-century BC Code of Hammurabi
Facts from the source article.
Effects
The body experiences burns to tissue, changes in fluid content and distribution, tissue fixation, and shrinkage, especially of the skin. Internal organs may shrink from fluid loss. Muscle contraction can cause joints to flex into the pugilistic stance, with elbows and knees bent and fists clenched. Skin shrinkage around the neck may be severe enough to strangle the victim. Fluid shifts in the skull and abdominal hollow organs can produce heat hematomas. The body's organic matter may be consumed as fuel. Cause of death is often determined by respiratory tract damage, such as edema or mucosal bleeding from inhaling hot gases. Complete cremation requires extreme circumstances. Pain is greatest early in the process before nerves are burned; many victims die quickly from suffocation due to hot gas inhalation. Those who survive often die within days from pulmonary edema as lung alveoli fill with fluid.
Historical use
The 18th-century BC Code of Hammurabi specified death by burning for looters of burning houses and for priestesses who left cloisters to frequent inns and taverns. Incest between a man and his mother after the father's death could also be punished by burning both alive. In Ancient Egypt, Senusret I rounded up rebels and burned them as human torches. During the civil war under Takelot II, Crown Prince Osorkon burned several rebels alive. Adulterous women might be burned, though Jon Manchip White doubted such punishments were often carried out, as the pharaoh had to ratify each verdict. In the Middle Assyrian period, a law text prescribed punishment for a prostitute who veiled herself like a wife. Neo-Assyrian King Ashurnasirpal II committed mass executions to monument as proof of might. In Genesis 38, Judah ordered Tamar to be burned for suspected extramarital pregnancy, but she proved Judah was the father. Hebraic law prescribed burning for ten sexual crimes, including a married daughter of a priest committing adultery and various incestuous relationships. The Mishnah describes a specific manner of burning the criminal.
Modern burnings
In the modern era, deaths by burning are largely extrajudicial, committed by mobs, criminals, or paramilitary groups. In 1941, Polish natives with German police locked 340 Jews in a barn and set it on fire during the Jedwabne pogrom. During the 1943 Khatyn massacre, SS-Sonderbataillon Dirlewanger and Schutzmannschaft Battalion 118 locked 149 Belarusian villagers into a shed and set it on fire. The World Jewish Restitution Organisation reported that German staff of Auschwitz burnt children alive in 1944. In another 1944 atrocity, the Waffen SS locked 452 French women and children in a church and set it on fire; German prosecutors charged an alleged perpetrator in 2014. SS-Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann ordered the massacre, claiming retaliation for French partisans burning SS-Sturmbannführer Helmut Kämpfe alive. In April 1945, SS camp guards of Dora-Mittelbau, with local authorities, set a barn on fire with over a thousand inmates trapped inside. After the war, at Ebensee, a mob tied an SS guard to a crematorium tray and slowly roasted him to death. During the post-World War II expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia, a Czech mob in Prague in May 1945 hanged several Germans upside down, doused them in fuel, and set them on fire.
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