Society has also revelled vicariously in those very same gory events it proposes to abhor under the guise of education (religious, moral, historic, whatever) from about the time such practises were banned I'd recon, with the only possible subconscious folk memory of the horrors of the circus being society's persistent inexplicable mistrust of clowns.
What the hell, it's all good clean fun.
I'm off to read some vicious, sadistic and gory stories of martyred saints, for the good of my soul of course.
