Referee beheaded after killing player

[DreamGypsy]

53. Hanged, drawn, and quartered. A perfectly good punishment for male treason in England until 1870...

...but out of regard for 'human decency' treasonous women were burnt at the stake. Ah, those decorous English.

I guess that for rabid soccer fans, assault on a favorite player is akin to treason.

From Wikipedia, Hanged, drawn and quartered:

To be hanged, drawn and quartered was a penalty in England for men convicted of high treason, in use from 1351 although first recorded during the reigns of Henry III (1216–1272) and Edward I (1272–1307). Convicts were fastened to a hurdle, or wooden panel, and dragged by horse to the place of execution, where they were hanged (almost to the point of death), emasculated, disemboweled (drawn), beheaded and quartered (chopped into four pieces). Their remains were often displayed in prominent places across the country, such as London Bridge. For reasons of public decency, women convicted of high treason were instead burnt at the stake.

<snip>

Although the Act of Parliament defining high treason remains on the United Kingdom's statute books, during a long period of 19th-century legal reform the sentence of hanging, drawing and quartering was changed to drawing, hanging until dead, and posthumous beheading and quartering, before being abolished in England in 1870. The death penalty for treason was abolished in 1998.

<snip>

Hanging, drawing and quartering was abolished in England by the Forfeiture Act 1870, Liberal politician Charles Forster's second attempt since 1864 to end the forfeiture of a felon's lands and goods (thereby not making paupers of his family). The Act also limited the penalty for treason to hanging alone, although it did not remove the monarch's right under the 1814 Act to replace hanging with beheading. The death penalty for treason was abolished by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, enabling the UK to ratify protocol six of the European Convention on Human Rights in 1999.

The severed head of Jeremiah Brandreth,
one of the last men in England sentenced
to be hanged, drawn and quartered