Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2022 November 7

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November 7

Horseback hangings

In the Lucky Luke comics, hangings are performed so that the condemned sits on the saddle of a horse with his hands tied behind his back and with a noose around his neck. The executioner then fires a gun into the air. The gunshot scares the horse, which runs off, leaving the condemned behind. The condemned then hangs from the noose.

Were these hangings ever actually performed? Would they even work? JIP | Talk 11:31, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Pretty sure they were. This would have been more likely used by lynchers than by official executioners, though. It would be a "short drop" hanging where death comes from strangulation rather than the snapping of the neck seen in "long drop" hangings on a gallows. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:47, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Coming back to post a link to the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department website of an extract from a book on their early history: http://shq.lasdnews.net/pages/PageDetail.aspx?id=3053 --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:05, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Dunno about putting the condemned on horseback, but they did use a cart in a somewhat similar fashion: putting the condemned on the cart, tying the noose, and leading the cart away. For an actual situation where this all went wrong, see the fascinating article on Joseph Samuel, who survived three attempts to hang him in this fashion. Eliyohub (talk) 08:45, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

In Owen Wister's 1902 novel The Virginian – one of, if not the, first true 'Western' novel and strongly influential on later such works – the titular protagonist and companions (in Chapter XXX, A Stable on the Flat) hang two cattle rustlers (in a clump of cottonwood trees). Although the prose does not dwell on the minutiae, it indicates that they were mounted on horses which were then led away, leaving the men hanging. No gunshots to "scare the horses" feature; they would be unnecessary as a horse will move when led, and frightened horses would be an annoyance to deal with – this detail is probably added in Lucky Luke and other narratives purely for dramatic effect.

The novel is "a complex mixture of persons, places and events dramatized from experience, word of mouth, and his own imagination", so such a practice is likely to be authentic. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 5.64.163.219 (talk) 10:24, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

This also got me thinking - if the executioner is going to fire a gun anyway, why not just shoot the condemned dead? JIP | Talk 13:23, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

Chinese Wall

Those chinese-style rectangular lattice patterns, often laquered, typically seen in Chinese restaurants: do they have a name? Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.13.167.156 (talk) 18:25, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Can you find an example, in Google Images or wherever? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:55, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

You can find a lot of examples googling: "chinese-style rectangular lattice patterns"--79.13.167.156 (talk) 19:30, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

It's you that wants to know. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:48, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

I want to know as well. There doesn’t appear to be a common Chinese term for the subject. Viriditas (talk) 00:02, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Whichever of us next visits a Chinese restaurant with this feature, should ask them. Though I wouldn't be surprised if the answer is "partition". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:43, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

The OP is referring to the name of the decorative style, not the functional name of the piece of the architectural or furniture accessory. There are Chinese names in the literature for each individual style indicated by Dye, but I couldn’t find the Chinese name for the overall, general style, although I’m sure it’s either in that book or somewhere else. Viriditas (talk) 03:04, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

It's still worth asking. The shop owner will either know or they won't. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:08, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

I admire your optimism, but if you take a look at the Dye book, he spends a bit of time explaining how surprised he was to discover that the details of the decorative design had been lost to time, and that the Chinese culture of the 1930s and 1940s didn't know much about it except for practical knowledge, such as how to build it. I could be wrong, but from the brief passage that I read, I got the sense that the people were like "Here's how to build it, but we've been doing it this way forever and have no idea where it came from". Viriditas (talk) 20:12, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

TIL that we don’t have an article on Daniel Sheets Dye, professor at West China Union University, who wrote a popular 1937 book on the subject, which appears available on Google Books in part and in full and on Internet Archive.[1]. The original is called A Grammar of Chinese Lattice. The designs themselves are considered very old, going back thousands of years, however the source literature Dye works with mostly goes back to the early 17th century. He described it as a decorative art, and invents a classification system for the different designs based on geometry. On page 19, he provides 14 of the most common Chinese designs, of a larger group of 27 main designs indicated in the preface by way of illustration. One of these is probably what you are looking for. There’s a lot, so it would be difficult to give you an exact name unless you locate the specific design you are talking about. Viriditas (talk) 21:27, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

The Chinese search term 格子中式隔屏 gives quite a few Google image search hits of traditional lattice screens, but includes other types of folding screens.^[2]  --Lambiam 09:58, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Those are shoji screens used for partitions. OP is talking about the traditional Chinese lattice patterns that are used in the decorative arts, usually in interior design. You can see a list and description of them in the link to the Dye book up above. Viriditas (talk) 20:41, 8 November 2022 (UTC)