Talk:Burning of women in England/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Mike Christie (talk · contribs) 22:33, 18 May 2014 (UTC) I'll do this review; I'll leave comments here as I go through the article.

• "High treason, or transgressions against the sovereign, was first codified...": the plural transgressions is a bit jarring with the singular verb "was"; I know the subject is "high treason", but rephrasing it would be nice. How about "High treason, defined as transgressions against the sovereign, was first codified..."?

• Done.

• In the article hanged, drawn and quartered, other sources are given for the assertion that women were not drawn for reasons of public decency. Are those sources independent of Blackstone, or do they simply cite Blackstone? If the former, it would be useful to add them here, since my interpretation of the current text is that this is simply Blackstone's opinion.

• Blackstone appears to be the root of claims that women were burned rather than quartered to maintain their decency. It was probably the general understanding at that time, but surprisingly, given the number of people executed in this way, there aren't all that many texts to go from.

• "De heretico comburendo" is italicized once but not on the other two occurrences. Is this because the writ is treated differently than the law? I'd have thought it would be italicized each time, as a foreign phrase.

• I'm not sure, but for consistency I've italicised them all. Someone may want to look at that phrase's article to make sure it's also italicised. Parrot of Doom 09:41, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

• I'd suggesting making it "Mary Troke [...] was hanged and burned", or "strangled and burned", since that is apparently what happened, given that Hayes was the last woman to be burned alive.

• I understand, but I'm concerned with repetition, and the sources of the time often don't make the distinction between the two - many simply say "burned/burnt at x".

  OK; I'm striking it, since by the end of the article the reader is in no doubt about this, but I wonder if other readers might be temporarily confused, as I was. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:35, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

• Do any sources give any statistics? Even rough numbers, such as a ratio to male executions over a long period, would be informative; or any particular years in which the number executions is known.

• I haven't been able to find anything in a source suitable for inclusion in a Wikipedia article.

• "what only subjects a man to hanging": was quartering no longer usual for men? If so I think that should be made clear; the Times seems to be arguing that women were then more severely punished than men, but I understand quartering was not finally abolished until some time later.
  • Quartering was relatively uncommon at that time, but I think the point the newspaper was making was that the burning of women was a gruesome affair and wholly disproportionate to the crime, especially compared to the punishment inflicted on men, which was less offensive. Basically, it wasn't fair. Parrot of Doom 09:48, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

    I see further down the article that men were typically only drawn and hanged, so apparently quartering was indeed rare. I think that point should be made earlier in the article to explain the newspaper's comment.

    • See my comment above. Parrot of Doom 09:48, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

      I'll pass for GA without this, but I do think it would be helpful to the reader to make it clear that the contemporary comments are not asserting that burning a dead woman's body is more barbaric than quartering a living man, which was my initial interpretation. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:35, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

• "but it may have been enacted by" -- I'm not sure what this means.

• Public executions were enacted by someone, usually a sheriff. Parrot of Doom 09:51, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

  As above I'll pass without this, but I don't think this is entirely clear to a reader -- "enact" is a word nowadays used more for legislation, and since Hammett introducees legislation in the next sentence, I found myself wondering if the sentence had been garbled in some way.

• One dead link, to God's Just Vengeance, needs to be fixed.

• I have removed it since Google Books has removed the edition I used when writing this article. Other editions may use different page numbers. Parrot of Doom 09:51, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

• More of a question than an issue: to many people the natural association for burning of women is witches. There's almost no mention of this in the article. Is this because the popular idea of burning witches is incorrect?

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:33, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

• Yes. Parrot of Doom 09:51, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

That's everything I can see; I'll place this on hold. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:12, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

The remaining points are miinor or matters of opinion, so I'm passing this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:35, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll take a look at the points you raised to see how they might be improved. Parrot of Doom 15:24, 21 May 2014 (UTC)