The Big Book of Pain: Torture & Punishment Through History

by Mark P. Donnelly

  This is an example of a baker’s cart. There were many variations on this punishment. A baker, having been found guilty of selling underweight loaves of bread or of ‘weighting’ his loaves with the inclusion of sawdust, etc, would be chained to this cart filled with heavy weights and be paraded through the streets with a loaf of bread around his neck. Baker’s guild ordinances tried to mandate against such ‘mistakes’ and frequently, in an effort to avoid this outcome even accidentally, we find that bakers would give an extra loaf of bread away for free with every dozen purchased (just in case there was any shortfall). This then, is the origin of the baker’s dozen.

  This is not to assume that harsh, and sometimes grotesquely novel, punishments did not take place in the realm of England. In 1241, Henry III – that otherwise enlightened monarch, more concerned with making a fast buck than torturing his subjects – introduced the highly creative form of terminal torture known as being hanged, drawn and quartered. The victim was first pulled from the ground by a noose and left to dangle until they lost consciousness. They were then brought down and revived only to be castrated before having their stomach ripped open, their entrails drawn out and tossed onto a fire before their still-living eyes. Only then was the victim’s head struck off, ending their unspeakable suffering. The various bits and pieces of the carcass were subsequently displayed around the countryside as an example to others who might have been contemplating treason. But it hardly seemed to matter what Henry did, be it gentle or cruel, the crime rate skyrocketed. What was needed was a total reformer, a man who cared nothing for what people thought and was willing to whip society into shape at any cost. What was needed was Henry III’s son Edward.

  Edward I – also known as Longshanks, Hammer of the Scots and probably a lot less savoury things – ruled from 1272 until 1307 and spent every waking minute (at least those minutes when he was not busy slaughtering the Scots or the Welsh) reshaping the English legal system. He gathered the smartest lawyers and prelates in the realm and augmented their numbers by importing still more lawyers from Rome. Slowly, methodically, Henry and his advisors disassembled the feudal system and built a new system of justice. One of the first issues they tackled was the right of a prisoner to refuse to plead to charges levied against them. Under Edward’s rules, anyone who refused to answer charges were chained, face down, to a dungeon floor and fed a small piece of stale bread one day and given a small cup of brackish water the next. If a week or so of this failed to loosen their tongues, they were pressed beneath an increasing amount of weight; they either lodged a plea or were slowly crushed to death.

  Here we see an image of three poor souls being hanged, drawn and quartered. On the right we see the hanging (though he will be cut down while still alive), then the drawing out of the entrails, evisceration and castration is shown center. This would be followed by decapitation and then the ‘quartering’ of the body into segments which would be boiled in tar for preservation (shown left) to be displayed in different parts of the kingdom as a warning to others. Note how the executioner with the knife holds up the heart of the victim for the approval and satisfaction of the assembled crowd.

  Known as peine forte et dure (long-lasting, intense pain) this new approach to juris prudence was not only like Edward himself – strong and hard – but became the standard, judicial operating procedure for the next three centuries. It must be understood that such measures were not considered torture. Torture was technically illegal in England under the terms of Magna Charta. Being chained to a dungeon floor, fed garbage and slowly pressed to death was just a method of convincing a person to make a plea – after all, if a person was innocent, why would they hesitate to plead their case? For all his harsh treatment of accused felons, Edward was truly and deeply concerned with the corruption permeating the English court system. The main charge levied against local judges was that they arrested innocent men, threw them into prison and only released them after they had paid an exorbitant fine. It was a natural outgrowth of the eminently profitable outlawry system. When witnesses could not be found to support the system’s pre-determined verdicts, totally uninvolved people were dragged off the streets and tortured until they offered evidence against innocent people and complete strangers. Juries were ‘packed’ with friends of the judges and sheriffs who shared in the ill-gotten booty of rigged trials. The predictable result of such corruption was that virtually no one had the least respect for either the law or those who enforced it; when juries were not coerced into bringing in the verdict, which the judge or sheriff wanted, they routinely let guilty men go free simply because they hated the system more than they hated the criminals. Furious that his kingdom had become so debased, Edward threw out everyone accused of bribe-taking, coercion, blackmail and influence peddling and replaced them only to find that after a few years the new officials had become just as corrupt as the old ones.

  This image shows the process of pressing (peine forte et dure) but does little to convey the true agony of the experience. The victim here seems almost relaxed. But in reality as more and more weight is added it becomes increasingly difficult to breathe. Eventually the ribcage will collapse and the lungs will be compressed resulting in slow suffocation.

  There were places, outside England, where the system ran more efficiently; if not the judicial system itself, then at least the mechanism for dealing with lawbreakers. In twelfth-century Russia anyone tortured without the specific approval of the local prince was allowed redress for his pain and was even able to sue for compensation; the moral being that if you wanted to torture someone you had to go through proper channels first. By 1300, those mechanical innovators, the Germans, had invented a machine capable of lopping off a criminal’s head with frightening efficiency. What this guillotine-like device looked like is unknown, but in its first year it was used to cleanly, swiftly and bloodily do away with five men in the town of Zittau. Naples, in Italy may have used such a device slightly earlier, and only seven years later a similar machine was in use in Ireland. It did not take long for the English to catch on and by the middle of the 1300s a beheading machine was in constant use in the Yorkshire town of Halifax. There, on market days, the excitement of buying, selling and general merrymaking was added to by the steady chop, chop, chop of the Halifax gibbet.

  Here we find two illustrations of early medieval beheading machines sometimes known as ‘fallbrett’ (or falling board). These ancestors of the guillotine were slow and gruesome affairs which took a distant third to the guillotine or the headsman’s axe in terms of efficiency. As the ‘board’ would frequently chew slowly through the victim’s neck, it was hoped that the first hit might paralyze the condemned to keep them still throughout the process.

  We know that as late as the mid-sixteenth century, the Halifax gibbet was still in use because in 1565 the Earl of Morton, regent of Scotland, watched it at work and was impressed enough with its efficiency that he carried the idea back across the border with him and had a similar device built in Scotland. Adding a novel twist to what could well have become stale entertainment, if a man stole a farm animal the object of his heist was used to haul in the rope attached to the Halifax gibbet’s blade. When the axe, or blade, was drawn to the proper height, the rope was released and thus even God’s lesser creatures could extract vengeance on their abductors. Occasionally, however, animals wound up on the wrong end of the rope. Literally. Throughout Europe, if an animal attacked a human it could be tried and, if found guilty, duly executed for its ‘crime’. In France, in 1386, a sow convicted of biting a child was dressed in women’s clothing and hanged. Only three years later a horse was hanged for kicking a man. So it was that the public execution of criminals, both human and animal, became as much a form of public entertainment as a judicial punishment.

  Saxon flagellation. From the Harleian MS. 603.

  If public humiliation and execution failed to change the habits of medieval Europe, the Black Death (1347–50) changed things beyond all imagining. As two out of every five individual
s, regardless of age, sex or social class, fell victim to the ubiquitous and pervasive disease, the political and social glue that held society together slowly dissolved. Fields and shops went untended, cities and towns became mass graveyards and crime skyrocketed. Groups of religious fanatics accepted this as God’s punishment on a sinful mankind and took it upon themselves to expiate the sins of the world by punishing themselves for all of humanity’s wrongdoing. These were the flagellants, and they wandered across the face of this devastated world, whipping themselves mercilessly, in the hope that their pain might ensure the salvation of all Christian souls at the final day of judgment.

  If the flagellants and their self-imposed punishment had no lasting effect on the social order, the Black Death certainly did. As civilisation buried the dead and tried to reassemble the shattered pieces of civilisation, it became obvious that there were no longer enough workers (either simple peasants or skilled craftsmen) to fill the endless number of job openings. And those who did remain alive quickly realised that they could virtually name their own price for their services. Terrified of the effects of unchecked inflation and of losing their hold on power, kings, noblemen and local authorities scrambled to keep the lower classes, and the economy, under control. Laws were passed declaring that wages and prices were to be frozen at pre–1346 levels. All able-bodied men and women under the age of sixty were required to take any job offered to them and anyone demanding, or paying, increased wages was to be fined or imprisoned. If a worker left one job to seek a higher-paying one elsewhere, they were to be confined, chained, beaten and given only bread and water until they learned their lesson. A second such offence carried a sentence of being branded on the chest with the letter ‘V’, for vagabond or ‘F’ for falsehood. Even giving charity (either food or money) to the poor was outlawed. Additional laws were passed to keep the old social structure securely in place. Sumptuary laws, decreeing that no one could wear clothing of a better quality than befitted their station in life, were passed throughout Europe. Both the quality and colour of cloth a person was allowed to wear were tightly regulated. All of society, at least those lower than the noble classes, was being publicly punished for trying to better themselves. It did not work.

  Used for the marking of convicted criminals, usually on the shoulder or shoulder blade but often also on the cheek or forehead (depending on the culture and the crime). His or her crime was specified by a code of letters or symbols which would have been easily recognizable to everyone in the land.

  When one plan fails, another is always devised to take its place. In 1381, when both the Statute of Labourers and the sumptuary laws failed to keep the working classes in line, the English Parliament enacted a flat tax of 1s on everyone over the age of fifteen. Considering the draconian measures that had preceded it and the fact that this was the second such tax in less than a year, it is hardly surprising that the peasants of Kent and Essex Counties rose in revolt. Under the leadership of anex-soldier named Walter (Wat) Tyler and a defrocked priest named John Ball, they ravaged the countryside, overran Rochester Castle, stormed London, burned and murdered their way through town, sacked the Tower of London, killed the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Treasurer and paraded their heads through the streets of the city. In an act of unparalleled bravery, the fourteen-year-old King Richard II met with Tyler and his mob in an attempt to arrange a truce. The boy-king promised that if the mob would go home, the tax would be rescinded, more latitude would be given to the peasants, serfdom would be abolished and no reprisals would take place. Tyler himself was killed when he made an attempt on the King’s life, but the mob of thousands quietly dispersed. Richard undoubtedly meant what he had said, but as a minor, his word was not yet law. The Privy Council forced him to renege on his agreement. Later, addressing the representatives of the peasants, Richard is recorded to have said: ‘serfs and peasants you are and serfs and peasants ye shall remain’. Hardly a statement likely to engender good behaviour among the masses.

  Detail of a Dutch engraving of about 1590, one in a series of fifty-three showing the massacre of the protestant citizens of Antwerp by the Spanish on 5 November 1576. Here we see three victims being tortured by suspension. The male is being suspended by his genitalia, the female by her breasts and the man in the background by his wrists. We do not think anything further needs to be said here to convey the agony of the victims which is not otherwise clear in the image.

  As enlightened as he had been as a teenager, the harsh realities of politics and life in the Middle Ages eventually made King Richard as hard as his ministers. In 1383, an Irish monk gained an audience with the king and openly accused the Duke of Lancaster of treason. Whether or not Richard looked into the matter is unknown, but his reaction toward the monk’s effrontery was recorded by a court chronicler. ‘Lord Holland and Sir Henry Greene, Knight, came to this friar and, putting a cord about his neck, tied the other end about his privy members and after hanging him up from the ground [by this rope], laid a stone upon his belly, with the weight thereof … he was strangled and tormented, so his very backbone burst asunder herewith, besides the straining of his privy members; thus with three kinds of torments he ended his wretched life.’

  By the end of Richard’s reign (1399) it was obvious that petty crime was completely out of control. To punish those who insisted on breaking the law, stocks were ordered to be constructed in nearly every town and village across England. As they had done in the past, the stocks provided both a means of non-damaging punishment and a satisfying form of public sport. Slightly less public, but equally effective, were the Jaggs; an iron collar attached to a length of chain fastened to the wall of the local church. Wrongdoers, particularly those who had broken church law, were locked in the Jaggs for a specified period of time so they might contemplate their sin in the shadow of God’s house. Similar iron collars and shackles were common in castle dungeons everywhere. In Carlisle Castle the iron collar was provided with such a short chain that if a prisoner happened to fall off the stone sleeping shelf they would almost inevitably strangle themselves. In some places such tragic accidents were avoided by fastening prisoners safely to the wall not only with an iron collar, but also with a waist band and shackles for the wrists and/or ankles – no chance then of tumbling out of bed and hurting yourself.

  This device, once locked about a victim’s neck, would tether them to a wall, post or similar fixed object. Whether publicly (such as within a church or town square) or privately (such as within a prison or dungeon) it was a cruel and merciless form of restraint which would frequently be used in conjunction with additional tortures or torments.

  In addition to stocks and chains there were specific forms of minor punishment devised for women. For common shrews and scolding housewives there was the ‘chucking stool’ – a chair to which these nagging women were tied before being processed through the town or village to the delight, taunts and hurled objects of passers-by. To make the humiliation as complete as possible, the chair had an open bottom and the woman’s skirts were hiked up before she was seated, leaving her rump exposed for the abuse and amusement of all and sundry.

  For such mouthy women there was also a device known as the ‘scold’s bridle’, a nasty little cage of iron straps that could be locked over the condemned’s head. When the face plate was closed an iron tongue, fastened to the inner face of the bridle, was shoved into the woman’s mouth, preventing her from hurling curses at her tormentors and often causing severe lacerations to the tongue, cheeks and gums. Once locked firmly inside the bridle, the woman was then paraded through the streets of town.

  This image shows the punishment of women in a poorhouse found to be too lazy. It is similar to the punishment of the chucking stool in that the only real tortures endured by these women are a result of their isolation and exposure to public ridicule. In the case of a chucking stool, this might be in the public market square, whereas here it is in the communal dining hall of the workhouse.

  For slightly more serious offe
nces there was the ‘ducking stool’. Intended specifically for women of loose virtue and those for whom a turn on the aforementioned chucking stool had not proven a sufficient deterrent to their nagging ways, the ducking stool was suspended over the local pond and its occupant given a free swimming lesson. The amount of time she was likely to spend in the water was substantially increased if she were suspected of being a witch. If an accused witch floated, the assumption was that God’s good, clean water – used, as it was, in baptism – had rejected her evil person; if she sank, she had been accepted by the water and was therefore not a witch. She may have drowned by the time the determination was made, but at least she had died free of guilt. The pillory was also in constant use during the 1400s. Those found guilty of brawling, habitual drunkenness, rumour mongering (especially if it was against a public official or a noble family), slander and blatant infractions of fair-trade rules were all subject to having their head and hands locked into the pillory’s wooden frame and exposed to the contempt of the public for a period ranging from a few hours to several days. For those who continued to insist on the life of a vagrant when they were physically capable of holding down a job, the standard punishment was to be stripped naked, tied to the back end of a cart and hauled through the public streets while being whipped until the blood dripped to the ground.