Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/08/14/an-incredibly-cruel-magic-tric.html
…
2 Likes
I’d hate to see how he performed the “sawing a woman in half” routine.
30 Likes
Reminds me of the scene in ‘The Prestige’ where a bird is made to disappear, only it is revealed it was just crushed at the bottom of the cage. This was apparently a real trick magicians used to perform.
16 Likes
Take ye one damfel and lay her upon your board. With a saw-toothèd blade cutte her in twain. The damfel will expire, but youre guests will be overjoyèd at ye spectakelle. Then paye a cunstable to take her awaye, with a shillinge he will be glad.
40 Likes
“The Aristocrats!”
Why pluck the bird and then knock it out?
4 Likes
You only knock out the bird just before the trick. You might pluck a day or two ahead. Not gonna waste good brandy knocking it out twice.
Now days we wouldn’t do the trick this way. We have chloroform, ether, and all sorts of sleeping and paralytic agents!
8 Likes
Apparently this ‘trick’ gets even older all the way back to the 14th century:
http://www.godecookery.com/incrd/incrd.htm#002
Also maybe the first description of ‘choking the chicken’…
8 Likes
I guess I’m the only one who didn’t know what a
capon was? Because I originally mistook it for:
9 Likes
Oof. The cruelty doesn’t begin with this trick. Poor little cock.
4 Likes
Now that I would kinda like to try.
ſ
4 Likes
I was thinking mob boss, which made it seem like an interesting way to take out another crime family
1 Like
Pray tell me, how would you come into possession of a hare‘s blood or meat without taking it violently from said hare?
1 Like
Sometimes they’ll give them up volunt-hare-ily.
11 Likes
This is even more fun if you use an Orange Trumpus. But you need a really bigly serving platter.
1 Like
Slicing up a live animal… Hilarious!
Yet another thing to bring up as an example when people long for “the good old days”…
3 Likes
This is my kind of culinary magic trick, the effortless deboning of a chicken by the legendary Jacques Pépin:
5 Likes
Well, at the end of the explanation, the author wrote “Et è provata”, which translates to “And it’s proven”.
1 Like
3 Likes
One more entry to put on the list of “Things to remind people of, when they insist humans haven’t made moral progress in modern times.”
Spinoza and Descartes weren’t unusual for their times in insisting that animals lacked souls and were therefore incapable of suffering. Cat-burning persisted into the 1800s as a form of entertainment.
5 Likes
