Imagine a scene like this: You are a medieval lawyer preparing your client for court. Your client is accused of witchcraft, one of the most heinous crimes. By the way, your client is a rooster!
This was exactly what happened in Basel in 1474, when a rooster was sentenced to be burned alive “for the heinous and unnatural crime of laying eggs” after a number of eggs were found in his cage. The execution, which followed the verdict, was “watched by an enormous crowd of townspeople and peasants, with the solemnity that can be seen in setting fire to an infidel.”
Pig dressed before execution
Perhaps surprisingly, this case is not the only animal trial in history. Many animals, from bears to monkeys, that were not exempt from human legal proceedings were brought to trial. Sometimes animals were dressed before execution, as in 1386 in Falaise, France. A pig found guilty of murdering a baby was dressed in a vest, underwear and gloves before being taken to the gallows. He was then castrated with a knife before being hanged.
As historian Peter Dinzelbacher says, the trials of animals in Europe were conducted with the same seriousness as trials for humans, with the participation of ordinary court members who were paid like a normal human trial.
dog in prison
Not all animals on trial were sentenced to death. In Austria, a drummer’s dog bit a city councilor in the leg. When the owner refused to take responsibility for the dog’s actions, it fell to the dog who was prosecuted and found guilty to bear the consequences of his behavior. Instead of being executed, the dog was sentenced to a year in prison in the “Narrenkötterlein”, an iron cage in the middle of town where criminals and infidels were imprisoned for mocking and exposure.
Pigs were prosecuted for crimes that often resulted in death, while animals accused of brutality were often sentenced to death for their behavior.
Mary the Elephant, killed by hanging
Much more recently, in an animal execution, Mary the Elephant was hanged by a crane until her death in Tennessee after being accused of murder. On September 12, 1916, Circus Elephant Mary killed Red Eldridge, a circus worker tasked with riding her.
According to records from that period, the elephant either killed Eldridge with a blow from its trunk, or became aggressive in deadly rage, “raising him 3 feet into the air, then throwing him to the ground in anger… And it is said that with all the force of his anger, his giant fangs completely plunged into his body. He trampled upon Eldridge’s dying body, as if he were seeking mortal victory, and threw it into the crowd with a swing of his large foot.
The crowd started shouting “kill the elephant”, which led to several different execution attempts. The first method, shooting Mary, had little effect, and the circus manager said “there are not enough guns in this country for her to be killed.” The electrical execution did not work either, as there was not enough electricity to carry out the execution, as evidenced by a railroad worker saying that 44,000 volts only caused him to “dance a little”.
Eventually, Mary was hung using a crane while being watched by a crowd of 2,500. At first the chains were broken, and then a stronger chain was used to complete the execution.
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