Europe In England, the use of boiling alive as a method of execution was rare. This arose from a February 1531 incident in which the
Bishop of Rochester's cook,
Richard Roose, gave several people poisoned
porridge, resulting in two deaths. A partial confession having been extracted by
torture, the sentence was thus imposed by
attainder and without
benefit of clergy. His execution took place on April 15, 1532, at
Smithfield. Boiling to death was employed again in 1542 for a woman, Margaret Davy, who had also used poison. During the reign of
Edward VI, in 1547, the 1531 act was repealed. But according to the
Melrose Chronicle, Adam of Melrose was "burned alive", rather than boiled, and Alexander II executed up to 400 for the crime against the clergy. (
Netherlands)
William de Soules, a nobleman involved in a conspiracy against
Robert the Bruce, was reputed to be a sorcerer consorting with evil spirits, and was boiled alive in 1321 at
Ninestane Rig. Around 1420, Melville, the sheriff of the
Mearns and laird of
Glenbervie, who was resented for his strictness, was apprehended by some other nobles and thrown into the kettle. The nobles are said to have each taken a spoonful of the brew afterwards. Boiling as an execution method was also used for
counterfeiters,
swindlers and
coin forgers during the
Middle Ages. In the
Holy Roman Empire, for example, being boiled to death in oil is recorded for
coin forgers and extremely grave murderers. In 1392, a man was boiled alive in
Nuremberg for having raped and murdered his own mother. Coin forgers were boiled to death in 1452 in
Danzig and in 1471 in
Stralsund. Even as late as 1687, a man in
Bremen was boiled to death in oil for having been of valuable help to some coin forgers who had escaped justice. In the Dutch town of
Deventer, the kettle that was used for boiling criminals to death can still be seen.
Asia and his son In
Nishapur,
Iran in the 740s
Abu Muslim boiled the leader of the rival
Alid Propaganda to death in a cauldron. In 16th-century Japan, the semi-legendary Japanese bandit
Ishikawa Goemon and his son were boiled alive in the 1590s by
Toyotomi Hideyoshi. In 1675, a
Sikh martyr called
Bhai Dayala was boiled to death in
Delhi after he refused to convert to
Islam. He was put into a
cauldron full of cold water which was then heated to boiling point. Sikh scriptures record that Dayala recited the
Japji of
Guru Nanak and the
Sukhmani of
Guru Arjan as he died.
Americas Thomas Ewbank relates in his 1856 book
Life in Brazil that he was told of an
enslaved Afro-Brazilian being publicly boiled to death by a plantation owner as punishment for acts of insubordination.
Modern times The government of
Uzbekistan under
Islam Karimov (1991–2016) has been alleged to have boiled suspected terrorists. In a
United States Department of State document from 2004, the following is written:Former ISIS commander Abu Abboud al-Raqqawi referred to ISIS's brutal execution methods, among which was boiling prisoners alive in engine oil: In the 2010 documentary
El Sicario, Room 164, the masked sicario interviewee claims that the Mexican cartels boil in oil those found to be working for the police. ==Depictions in Western culture==