Afternoon all After being told by someone that the Three Cups in Rondebosch was named after Driekoppen which was the original name of Rondebosch. I have since found out that it is not the case but this is the gruesome reason why it was called Driekoppen.............................................. The display of bodies was also a prominent feature of sentencing. In fact, so keen were the authorities to bring the spectacle of execution to the citizenry that, as Botha (1970) tells us, two places of execution were established - one close to the western point of the Castle, and one overlooking the docks which was referred to as Gallows Hill. Sometimes executions were partly completed at one site, then finished at the other one. [p. 19]. In some cases, various totemic artifacts were displayed alongside the bodies of the guilty, as in the case which lies behind the original name for the land where Mowbray now stands - Driekoppen. In 1723 a burger Johannes Zacharias Beck, lessee of the wine and spirit license at Rondebosch, obtained for the purposes of putting up a tavern, a plot of land.[the] following year, a terrible murder was perpetrated at this tavern when three slaves cruelly did to death at night time two Europeans. The Court of Justice sentenced them as follows: Their limbs were to be broken without the coup de grace after which they were exposed on the wheel until death ensued, the one with and axe, the other with a knife and the third with a bludgeon above their heads. These were the instruments they had used in their dastardly act. They were then decapitated and the heads placed upon stakes near the spot where the crime had been committed.... [by] the older inhabitants of the Peninsula the origin of the 'Drie Koppen' is given as referring to this incident... [Botha, 1962, p. 281] Examination of cases such as these implies the following conclusion: punishment itself was not enough. The guilty parties had to be seen to suffer, and the suffering had to be in proportion to their crime. Even death did not deliver the victim from his or her function as a visible expression of VOC policy; hence, the display of bodies after executions, and the fact that mutilation and suspension were practiced on the bodies of suicide victims as well as criminals (Botha, 1962). Botha, C.G. 1962. History of Law, Medicine and Place Names in the Cape of Good Hope. Cape Town: Struik Ltd. interesting bit of fact. regards Heather Heather's South African Genealogy Help List www.genealogy.co.za Cape Town Family History Society www.genealogy.co.za/society/socweb.htm