Premature Burial - Execution

Execution

In ancient Rome, a Vestal Virgin convicted of violating her vows of celibacy was "buried alive" by being sealed in a cave with a small amount of bread and water, ostensibly so that the goddess Vesta could save her were she truly innocent. This practice was, strictly speaking, immurement (i.e., being walled up and left to die) rather than premature burial. According to Christian tradition, a number of saints were martyred this way, including Saint Castulus and Saint Vitalis of Milan. In medieval Italy, unrepentant murderers were buried alive. This practice is referred to in passing in canto XIX of Dante's Inferno.

In ancient China, during the Warring States period, 400,000 soldiers of the kingdom of Zhao are supposed to have been buried alive after they surrendered to the armies of Qin in the Battle of Changping in 260 BC. During the reign of the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huangdi it is said that approximately 400-700 scholars were buried alive near the capital in Burning of books and burying of scholars. They were condemned for saving books from destruction after an imperial ban on the classics, ordered by the emperor in order to strengthen his reign and secure his legitimization, by eliminating other social and historical narratives. After the emperor's death, the warlord Xiang Yu defeated Qin's armies at the Battle of Julu in 207 B.C., and is said to have ordered that the 200,000 surviving Qin soldiers be buried alive.

Within the Holy Roman Empire a variety of offenses like rape, infanticide and theft could be punished with live burial. For example the Schwabenspiegel, a law code from the 13th century, specified that the rape of a virgin should be punished by live burial (whereas the rapist of woman was to be beheaded). Female murderers of their own family, or of their own employers, could also risk to be buried alive. In Augsburg 1505, a 12 year old boy and a 13 year old girl were found guilty of killing their master, in conspiracy with the cook. The boy was beheaded, the girl and the cook were buried alive beneath the gallows. The jurist Henke observes that in the Middle Ages, live burial of women guilty of infanticide was a "very frequent" punishment in city statutes and Landrechten. For example he notes those in Hesse, Bohemia, Tyrol. The "Berlinisches Stadtbuch" records that 10 women between 1412-47 were buried alive there, and as late as in 1583, the archbishop of Bremen promulgated (alongside with the somewhat milder 1532 Constitutio Criminalis Carolina punishment of drowning) live burial as an alternate execution method for mothers found guilty of infanticide. As noted in, a woman buried alive would then afterwards be impaled through the heart.This combined punishment of live burial+impalement was practiced in Nuremberg until 1508 also for women found guilty of theft, but the city council decided in 1515 that the punishment was too cruel, and opted for drowning instead. Impalement was, however, not always mentioned together with live burial. Eduard Osenbrüggen relates how a live burial of a woman convicted of infanticide could be carried out, and actually occurred, for example, in a case in Ensisheim from 1570:

Das Urtheil befahl dem Nachrichter, die Thäterin lebendig in das Grab zu legen, "und zwo Wellen Dornen, die eine under, die ander uff sie, -, doch das es Irn zuvor ein Schüssel uff das Angesicht legen, in welche er ein Loch machen und ihr durch dasselb (damit sie desto lenger leben und bemelte böse Misshandlung abbiesen möge) ein Ror in Mund geben, volgens uff sie drey spring thun und sie darnach mit Erden bedecken solle" The verdict commanded the executioner to place the perpetrator in the grave alive, "and place two layers of thorns, the one beneath, the other above her. Prior to that he should place a bowl over her face, in which he had made a hole, and to give her through that (in order that she would live for a longer time and expiate the evil act she was condemned for) a tube into the mouth, then jump three times upon her, and lastly cover her with earth

Dieter Furcht speculates that the impalement was not so much to be regarded as an execution method, but as a way to prevent the condemned to become an avenging, undead Wiedergänger.

In Denmark, in the 1269 promulgated Ribe city statute, a female thief was to be buried alive, and in the law by Queen Margaret I, adulterous women were to be punished with premature burial, men with beheading.

In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in feudal Russia, live burial as execution method was known as "the pit" and used against women who were condemned for killing their husbands. During World War II, Japanese soldiers were documented to have buried Chinese civilians alive, notably during the Nanking Massacre.

There are also accounts of the Khmer Rouge using premature burials as a form of execution in the Killing Fields.

During Mao Zedong's regime, there are accounts that premature burials used in executions.

In July 2012, a deformed baby girl was allegedly buried alive by her father in Khanewal, Pakistan.