Yeah, modern life may be monotonous with its 9-5 work week and overcrowded morning commutes; but you should be thankful you only have to suffer this and not some of the most brutal execution techniques in history.
Fire up Wikipedia or any website on historical capital punishment and you'll swiftly learn that humanity has been responsible for some of the most depraved ways of torturing and killing each other over the years.
Perhaps you're familiar with methods such as the brazen bull, keelhauling, breaking wheels or even being hanged, drawn and quartered.
However, this particular method is less bloody and more about eeking out a slow and painful death for the condemned.
Advert
Enter immurement, a form of punishment which involves locking someone in an enclosed space without exits.
Also known as live entombment, this form of sadistic torture differed from burying a person alive (where they would succumb to asphyxiation relatively quickly) and could see a person kept alive in misery for months or even years.
In some cases, prisoners were even given small amounts of food and water to make sure they stayed alive - and suffering - for longer periods of time.
If this description doesn't give you enough of a mental image about how brutal immurement is then checkout this animated clip from YouTuber Zack D. Films below:
Well, ain't that lovely.
Advert
Most cases of immurement can be traced back to the medieval period, a fact which shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone familiar with just how brutal our ancestors could be.
According to All That's Interesting, immurement was used by religious institutions to punish nuns or monks who were found to have broken their vow of celibacy, which was itself inspired by the punishment for the vestal virgins of ancient Rome.
The technique used as a method of human sacrifice during the construction of castles, believing it would give the building strength.
Records show that death by immurement lasted all the way up until the early 20th century.
Advert
One famous example is Mongolia, where a woman found guilty of adultery was locked inside a box featuring a single hole and left out in the wilderness to die a slow and painful death in 1913.
The woman's suffering would become famous after it was captured by photographer Stéphane Passet (which you can view here) and would later be published by National Geographic in 1922.
Another famous case of death by immurement occurred in Morocco when shoemaker Hadj Mohammed Mesfewi met his gruesome end this way after being found guilty of murdering at least 36 women in Marrakech.
Brenna Cooper