I’ve noticed this on a lot of TV Westerns. A wanted criminal, in order to elude capture, will ambush an innocent person, knock him out, and switch clothes with him as a decoy. But how practical would this be in real life? An unconscious person is going to be dead weight. It has to be extremely difficult and tiring to undress an unconscious person, then dress him in your own clothing, with the possibility that that person might wake up at any moment, even if you only remove your outer clothing such as shirt, pants, and boots. Was this ever done outside of a TV writer’s imagination?
Note to mods: I’m asking about real-life examples, and not about specific TV programs, so I put this in GQ instead of in Cafe Society.
The whole idea is to take the other guy’s clothes so you can blend in with the prison guards/ soldiers/ flying monkeys/ etc. Why bother to dress him in your clothes? You’d be better off to gag him and tie him up in case you’re not gone by the time he comes to.
Usually, in the episodes I see, it’s so the innocent person gets confused with the wanted man in order to create a delay in going after the real criminal. The posse has a description of the clothes the wanted man is wearing and they assume they have their man. By the time he is cleared, the wanted man is long gone.
Of course, that’s how it works on TV. I know that “Bonanza” is not a documentary.
The “harmless knocking someone out” thing is very difficult to pull off in real life. In reality, a blow capable of knocking someone out can also cause permanent injury or even death.
TV tropes, as usual, has a page devoted to this subject:
If you scroll down to the “real life” section on that page, you’ll note that it doesn’t contain a single successful real world example, but instead lists a handful of events that show it doesn’t really work that way in real life.
There are plenty of real world examples of someone taking another person’s clothes in order to escape, sneak by the enemy, etc. German soldiers were taking American uniforms off of dead soldiers and were using them to try to sneak through the lines at the end of WWII so that they wouldn’t be captured. It was a risky business, because dressing as your enemy is one of those cases where you can be shot and killed on sight for it and it’s not a war crimes violation, even if you surrendered.
Another real world example is Charles Victor Thompson. He was a prisoner who had been sentenced to death for the murder of his ex-girlfriend and her lover. He managed to get a hold of some civilian clothes and kept them hidden. One day, after a parole meeting, he changed into his hidden clothes and flashed his prison ID at the guard and said he was from the attorney general’s office, and as stupid as that sounds, it worked. I don’t know if the guard didn’t bother to look at the ID or if he was just poorly trained or what, but he let the prisoner out of the prison without so much as a second thought.
That’s probably about as close to the OP’s scenario as you are going to get in the real world.
I considered that, too. In real life, a hard blow to the head is likely to kill someone or put them in a coma for awhile. But if you just robbed a bank, you’re probably not going to care if your victim lives or dies, you just want to get away.
My question, though, is the writer of the TV episode always has the bad guy dresss the other guy up in his clothes, as well as wearing the other guy’s clothes. I assume it’s not always that easy in real life, though. And note, I’m talking about TV episodes where some guy is camping out on the trail by himself, Little Joe Cartwright, for example, and a murderer or robber knocks him out, takes his clothes off, and puts his own clothes on the other guy. I know TV writers do this for the sake of the plot, but how easy or hard would this be to do in actuality if you were not a very bright criminal and went ahead and did this?
Why is it so tough? He’s unconscious, and can’t resist.
Now, what’s really tough is to dress somebody who is fighting, kicking, and screaming —i.e. A 4 year old who doesn’t want to go to kindergarden.
As for the OP–I would think that the main problem is that it’s an illogical thing to do, both in real life and as a plot device.
Once you’ve knocked him on the head, what difference does it make if he is dressed in your clothes, or if he’s naked? He’s laying on the ground, not moving, and none of the pursuing cops or cowboys is going to mistake him for you, for more than a few seconds. And if you have to make your getaway in only a few seconds, then you don’t have time to dress the body in your clothes.
Googleing “dressing corpse” confirms that it is difficult and slow. And that, given a choice, funeral directors just slit the clothes open and wrap them over the front.
There is also a whole body of literature/youtube on dressing quadriplegics, but that’s more technical and less anecdotal.
As a nurse, I have undressed and dressed quads and others who could not assist in any meaningful way. It is hot, heavy, slow work for the most part. I have also dressed unwilling toddlers and agree that it is also quite the challenge .
Thanks. This is what I’m looking for. I suppose I noticed this mostly because it really wouldn’t be logical. TV writers quite often do take great liberties with stretching logic to a fine point in the name of entertainment. In fact, if the guy comes to, he can easily describe the clothes he was wearing.
I was thinking about the toddler issue too. I’ve had to dress resisting or just limp toddlers and it’s really not that easy. And they’re just little! Doing that to a fully grown man is even harder. And dragging him anywhere - like behind a dumpster - is going to be extremely hard - that’s probably 150-200 pounds of dead weight.
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