Larvatus Prodeo

A friend and I have been intermittently bickering, in a friendly fashion, over the historical garb (in England) of executioners. We are agreed on the black hood, but he claims that executioners traditionally wore red clothes so as not to show the stain of blood. I argued that they just wore dark commoner clothes, mainly because (a) executioner tended to be a part-time job, and apart from the hood there was no official uniform, and (b) red dye was expensive (really expensive) and reserved for the clothing those of high status, and (c) why wouldn’t the authorities want the executioner to not show blood on his clothing anyway? Wasn’t the very public spilling of blood in full view of the populace the whole point?

But I have a nagging suspicion that I may have been overly influenced by the depictions of executioners in popular culture, and every now and then this friend has an annoying habit of being right about obscure historical trivia which is downright perverse for such a tech-head. Now, our LP commentariat combines a diverse expertise, so I thought: hey, maybe one of you lot knows!

In the spirit of reciprocity, I offer up this thread as an open stumper-settling thread. Do you have a trivial, nagging contretemps hanging over your head, and need a definitive rebuttal? Some factoid you’ve always vaguely been curious about, but either never known where to find the definitive answer or been too self-conscious to actually exercise that level of pedantry? Some of us here live for pedantry: no matter how obscure, somewhere there’s likely a LarvyProdder who can offer up a cite fresh from their groaning bookshelf, or who will at least have a chance to show off use their google-fu for good instead of evil.

One other stumper from me: what on earth is the point of this (mildly NSFW) picture after the cut?
Continue reading ‘Settle a stumper and placate a pedant’