The Big Book of Pain: Torture & Punishment Through History

by Mark P. Donnelly

  Taking Japan’s long history into account, it seems that the seventeenth century was a period of particular judicial brutality, specifically in relation to the persecution of individuals who adopted Christianity. It seems especially eerie that religious persecution in Japan would so closely mirror, in both intensity and time period, the activities of the Spanish Inquisition. Here, as in Spain, men, women and children were murdered in an orgy of religious intolerance. Some were humiliated by being stripped naked before being thrown from a cliff or tossed into the boiling, natural cauldrons created by Japan’s numerous active volcanoes. Other accused Christians had their limbs roped to four oxen which were then driven in opposite directions, ripping the victim to pieces. In September 1622, fifty Christians were simultaneously burnt alive in the city of Nagasaki. How very much like an inquisitional auto-de-fe this gory spectacle must have been. Precisely forty years after this particular mass execution, an equally terrible persecution of Christians took place in the same city. On this second occasion, September 1662, two European chroniclers, Francois Caron, a Frenchman and Joost Schorten, a Dutchman, were on hand to record the events.

  They forced the women and more tender maids to go upon their hands and feet … through the streets; that done, they caused them to be ravished … by villains and then throwing them so striped and abused, into great deep tubs full of [poisonous] snakes and adders. Binding the [young men] about with combustible matter … and also their fathers … [they] set fire to them, whereby they underwent inconceivable torments and pains: some they poured hot scalding water continually upon them [and] tortured them in that manner till they died, [some of] which endured two or three days … hundreds of them being stripped naked, and burnt in the foreheads [branded] that they might be known, and driven into the woods and forests, all men being commanded by proclamation, upon fear of death, not to assist them with either meat, drink, clothing or lodging. Once a year they precisely renewed their inquisition, and then every individual person must sign in their church-books, with his blood, that he renounces Christianity.

  As it was in both the Orient and Europe, the system of juris prudence and punishment on the subcontinent of India was inextricably linked to both religion and maintenance of the social structure. In India, however, it was religion itself which dictated the shape of the social hierarchy. Hinduism, the official religion of untold millions of Indians, had its origins long before the first Hindu texts, the Vedas, were written down sometime around 1000 BC. Integral to this belief system was a rigid, inflexible division of social classes known as castes. The original caste system, in descending order, from top to bottom, ran as follows: the kshatriyas, the brahmans, the vaishyas and, at the bottom, the shudras (known as untouchables). Although originally the highest social order, by 500 BC the exalted position of the kshatriyas had been overtaken by the brahmans and, once in power, the brahmans did everything they could to retain control of the system. Integral to maintaining their hold on society was controlling all governmental and judicial functions and, through these offices, making it both impossible and illegal for those of lower castes to climb the social ladder. More than forty ethnic sub-groups were declared ‘impure’ and their treatment at the hands of their brahman masters, and the mogul emperors who controlled vast swaths of Indian territory, was no better than one would expect for subjugated peoples living in a primitive society.

  Conveniently for the brahmans, the Vedas texts, and the later Laws of Manu, both provided as much support for the repression of the lower classes as the rules of the Spanish Inquisition did for the cruelties inflicted on Jewish conversos and Moorish moriscos. Like their very un-Christian counterparts in Spain, the brahmans insisted that only through ample punishment could the undesirable and criminal classes be ‘saved’ or, in this case, find a better incarnation when reborn into a new life here on earth. As was true of burning heretics and witches, the belief was that the more suffering that accompanied a person’s punishment and/or death, the greater their chances of being ‘purified’. Add to this the vast size and fractured political structure of old India and what emerges is a system of injustice haphazardly applied at the whim of hundreds of local rulers.

  As was true of their early medieval European counterparts, when there were no witnesses to verify charges, Indian courts routinely relied on trial by ordeal to decide right from wrong or, as the Indians put it, dharma from adharma – justice from injustice. In Europe this often took the form of the accused being forced to reach into a cauldron of boiling water and extract a hot stone; the Indian incarnation having the suspect bury his arm, or arms, in a pot of cow dung mixed with boiling oil. If he pulled out his arm with no ill effects, he must, therefore, be innocent. Even more pernicious were trial by poison and trial by fire. In trial by poison, the accused had to thrust their hand into a covered basket containing a poisonous snake in an attempt to retrieve some small object. If they could fish around long enough, find the object and extract it without receiving a fatal bite, they were declared innocent. In trial by fire, they were required to walk across a bed of red-hot coals without having their feet blistered. Less painful at the time, but no less random, was the drawing of lots. The words dharma (justice) and adharma (injustice) were written on leaves, small pieces of parchment, or other objects and then placed in a jar from which the accused would extract one at random. Dharma says you are innocent, adharma declares guilt.

  In instances where there were witnesses to a purported crime, providing testimony was not an option. As in the rest of the world, reluctant witnesses were routinely tortured until they remembered things ‘correctly’. In at least one creatively sadistic instance, Indian authorities took a novel approach to forcing a witness to testify. Knowing that a man will often feel more concern for his family than for himself, local officials seized a potential witness’s infant son, threw him in a bag containing a furious cat and threatened to beat the bag with bamboo poles if the man did not speak. Both his memory and willingness to testify instantly reappeared.

  In all fairness to the Laws of Manu, it should be noted that in cases of petty crime the proscribed punishment for a first offence was a simple warning and, if the situation warranted, a fine commensurate with the offence. A second offence might either involve a much stronger dressing-down or some minor punishment and a considerably stiffer fine. A third appearance before the local justice would understandably bring a crushing fine often accompanied by some form of corporal punishment severe enough to leave a lasting impression. Continued offences and the person would be considered a hopeless criminal and physical mutilation would be imposed.

  Mutilation, whippings and physical abuse were common at nearly all levels of society – the brahman class, local chieftains and emperors being almost always exempt. Masters beat their slaves, parents beat their children and courts beat incorrigible, small-time criminals. For more serious offences, as well as for recidivists, there were more creative punishments. While local versions of such now-familiar implements of torture and humiliation as the stocks, the rack, branding with hot irons, prolonged duckings in the local pond, starvation and forcing limbs into boiling oil or water were all employed as widely in India as in Europe and the Far East. There were also local variants on torture.

  Memorably, the Indians seemed to excel in the use of sleep deprivation as a means of extracting confessions. Despite its use by Matthew Hopkins for eliciting confessions from suspected witches as discussed in Chapter 3, this inexpensive, non-lethal and highly effective form of torture would not be adopted by the West for many centuries after it had become a standard practice in India. The physical reality of India’s hot, humid climate also provided opportunities for breaking a person’s spirit and health not available to Europeans. If being pulled behind a cart and whipped was nasty, embarrassing and painful in Europe it could, quite literally, kill a person in India. Also unique to the climate are a selection of wildlife that will gladly inflict torture when given an invitation. A person tied to a tree and smeared with
honey will attract an army of carpenter beetles and red ants that can gnaw their way through the skin in a matter of minutes. Unchecked, they will completely devour a human being over the course of a day. Much like the Chinese punishment for prostitution – whereby a woman’s fingers were squeezed between slivers of wood – the Indians extended this procedure to crushing the feet of a convict, or suspect, between two heavy boards. We have seen many instances where a prisoner had their thumbs, or limbs, bound so tightly with cord that the flesh was cut through to the bone; in India a similar torture was inflicted by wrapping a digit or limb with a hot wire which was then doused with cold water. Instantly, the searing heat of the wire ended, only to be replaced by deep cuts made when the hot metal contracted.

  Indian torture masters were every bit as skilled with a humble length of rope as was the Spanish Inquisition. Prisoners’ heads were bound with ropes (either around the temple or by the throat) and the other end tied to their feet, either by forcing the man’s head forward past his knees, or bending him backwards as far as his spine would allow. Alternatively, one leg might be pulled so far forward that it nearly touched the victim’s shoulder, and tied in that position. For a truly satisfying moment of sadism, the torturer might then force the man to stand on his free leg, beating him savagely each time he fell over. The arms and legs might be interlaced in grotesquely painful ways and bound in that position or heavy, sharp rocks might be tied to a prisoner’s back, making it impossible for him to stand erect and impossible for him to lie down. Horrible as all these tortures are, the pain and physical exhaustion they inflicted were inevitably increased if the procedure was carried out under the blazing Indian sun. A report by British commissioners, assembled in 1855, recounts one such torture session imposed on a man and his son for failing to pay a land tax. ‘Both men [had] their legs tied together, and their heads tied to their feet in a stooping posture; their hands were tied behind them, and stones placed upon their backs; in which posture they were made to stand from six in the morning until noon. It will hardly be a matter of surprise that the father died the following month.’ In a similar incident, a man who was unable to pay a tax of one rupee, four annas (then the equivalent to six British pence, or about twenty modern American cents) had his hands tied behind his back and his head bound to his feet with a rope for two hours. The 1855 report mentioned above, which was delivered to Parliament that same year, contained the following paragraph:

  Among the principal tortures in vogue in Police cases we find the following – twisting a rope tightly around one arm or leg so as to impede circulation; lifting [a man] up by the moustache; suspending by the arms while [the hands are] tied behind the back; searing with hot irons; placing scratching insects, such as the carpenter beetle, on the navel, scrotum and other sensitive parts; dipping in wells and rivers till the party is half suffocated; squeezing the testicles; beating with sticks; prevention of sleep; nipping the flesh with pincers; putting pepper or red chilies in the eyes, or introducing them into private parts of men and women; these cruelties occasionally persevered until death sooner or later ensues.

  Like the Chinese, the Indians found more interesting uses for bamboo than making it into fishing rods. Two stout bamboo poles could be tied around a person’s chest and squeezed tighter and tighter until the ribs cracked. Fingers could be crushed between bamboo rods or, more creatively painful, the fingers of one hand could be tied tightly together and sharp-edged splints of split-bamboo driven between them with a mallet.

  All the accounts given above were carried out by legitimate govern-mental bodies but in the far-flung provinces, where petty war lords and minor moguls reigned supreme and uncontested, these ‘official’ tortures were inevitably augmented by locally devised punishments, many of which were supremely cruel. In at least one village in the Cuddalore district, the local favourite seemed to be hanging a miscreant by the heels, binding his waist tightly with a rope and then stuffing red-hot chilli powder up his nose. The precise results of this ghastly procedure were omitted from the official British report, saying only that they were ‘too revoltingly indecent to be referred to’. In 1718, the local mogul of Bengal, named Murshid Aly Khan, forced those who would not, or could not, pay their taxes, to drink a mixture of water buffalo milk and salt until they died of diarrhoea.

  In a torture reminiscent of one practiced in ancient Greece, victims of unrestrained, remote Indian justice were sometimes bound and sewn up inside the hide of a freshly slaughtered water buffalo. As the skin dried and shrank in the blazing sun, it slowly squeezed the life out of the poor wretch. If the weather was cloudy, or if it was the rainy season and there was insufficient heat to shrink the skin, the condemned was simply left to lie in the open until they died of thirst or the insects devoured them.

  If India is home to innumerable strange and deadly insects and serpents, it is also the land of that great, placid beast the elephant and inevitably these gentle, two-ton giants were employed as unwitting assistants in the administration of various forms of torture. Like a piston-driven variation of the rack, a man whose leg was chained to an elephant’s hind leg could find his limb ripped from its socket when the animal was instructed to do no more than walk across a courtyard: a 400lb leg, moving forward with enough force to propel an elephant, exerts an amazing amount of pull. In a grizzly finale to this performance, it was common to have the elephant end the miscreant’s suffering by instructing it to step or sit upon on the prisoner’s head.

  If nearly every culture on the planet has suffered unspeakable tortures at the hands of their leaders, the people of Africa can legitimately be said to have suffered twice; first under the laws of their own societies, and later under the harsh dictates of slave masters who used them as forced labour.

  Execution by elephant was a novel means of dispatching convicted criminals and was, so far as we have been able to determine, unique to India as a judicial punishment. This illustration (found in an illustrated Victorian English magazine) should not require any further explanation to show how this method of execution was carried out.

  For its part, Africa has never been blessed with cohesive government. Since the dawn of time it has been ruled by local chieftains and petty war lords who only knew how to retain their precarious hold on power through terror and corruption. Such politics make for unhappy and rebellious peoples who can only be held in check by increasingly harsh measures. If justice in tribal societies was harsh, that which took place between competing groups was even harsher. Although it was never universally practiced, some African tribes, particularly those in the Niger and Cameroon regions, punished prisoners of war by eating them. Sometimes these captives were merely slaughtered, cooked and devoured while on other occasions, and in other places, they were slowly cut away a piece at a time; forced to watch as their captors taunted them and devoured chunks of their body until they finally bled to death. The reasoning and motivations behind cannibalism are nearly as many and varied as the tribes which practiced it and are far too complex to go into here. The authors have, however, covered this practice in detail in their book Eat Thy Neighbour: A History of Cannibalism (Sutton Publishing, 2006). As was true with inner-tribal relations, punishment within given tribes was often meted out with unparalleled cruelty; the method of torture being dictated by the specific nature of the crime and the rules of the tribe.

  Among the most appalling crimes in many African societies was that of adultery, and the punishments were even more terrible than the practice of stoning to death imposed on adulterous women by the ancient Hebrews. Among the Ibo tribes of Nigeria, a couple caught en flagrante delicto were forced to have sex before a crowd of onlookers. When they reached climax, they were tied together in a final embrace before having a sharpened stake driven through their bodies. The impalement was carefully calculated so as not to kill them immediately and the pair were then carried through the village while being spun around the pole like human propellers. The end of this march-of-death was the local river, where the couple was thr
own into the water near a nest of crocodiles, there to meet their bloody ends amid thrashing tails and snapping serrated jaws. Amazingly, this same tribe had at least two additional forms of punishment reserved for adulterers. In the first alternate punishment, the condemned pair were paraded through the village and taken to a grove of sacred trees where they were laid on top of one another and bound together, the man’s head in the woman’s crotch and vice-versa. Then they were strung up in the trees in such a manner that the man’s head was facing downward. In this position they were simply left until they died; the man usually dying first as he was hanging upside down. In the final punishment for sexual relations outside wedlock the accused pair were tied to two stakes, situated about 4ft apart and arranged so the couple faced each other – the better to watch their mutual destruction. Over the next day they were given no food but were allowed to have all the water they wanted. The water, of course, had been highly salted and in a matter of hours under the hot tropical sun both parties were severely dehydrated and voraciously hungry. When the man was asked if he wanted something to eat it would have been nearly impossible for him to have said anything but ‘yes’. With that, a guard hacked off a piece of the woman’s breast and fed it to her lover, carefully staunching the wound so she would not bleed to death. This process was repeated, back and forth – the utmost care being taken to keep both victims alive for as long as possible – until one or the other expired from shock and blood loss. The survivor was then allowed to live for as long as they could make the carcass of their beloved last. Ritually enforced, mutual cannibalism. One can only assume that other crimes among the Ibo were met with equally creative forms of sadism.