Stupid Deaths: Tudor Archers

Between contestants, Death passes the time losing at rock-paper-scissors to one of his skeleton judges. First up is Thomas Curtes of Suffolk, contestant 1556, who arrives with an arrow lodged in his head and explains that he dared a skilled archer friend to shoot the hat off him during evening practice. The shot missed the hat, and Death decides the arrow could hardly have damaged a brain like his before sending him through to the afterlife. A second Tudor archer, Henry Pert of Nottinghamshire, contestant 1552, then appears with the same injury: he drew his bow so far that the arrow jammed, leaned in to see what was wrong and took it to the head when it released. Death hands him the prize for the day's most embarrassing archery death, and Thomas wanders back on to announce that he has only just understood Death's joke about him.

Oxford University's research project on accidental deaths recorded in sixteenth-century English coroners' reports links this sketch to two real cases: Thomas Curteys of Bildeston, Suffolk, who was killed when his friend Richard Lyrence shot at his hat and hit him just above the ear, and Henry Pert, a gentleman of Welbeck, Nottinghamshire, who shot himself in the head with his own bow.