The Big Book of Pain: Torture & Punishment Through History

by Mark P. Donnelly

  * * *

  PRICKING

  * * *

  Invented as a means of determining whether or not a woman was a witch, pricking involved jabbing the victim with an iron needle mounted on the end of a wooden handle.

  According to the theory of the day, a witch had places on his or her body, properly known as stigmata sagarum, which, thanks to the intervention of the Devil, were impervious to pain. In practice, everyone has small places where there are few nerve endings, particularly on the back. Alternately, when a victim has been jabbed often enough, the nervous system will simply shut down. Some witch hunters, notably the notorious Matthew Hopkins, the self-styled Witchfinder General of England, carried a witch-prick with a retractable needle. When the device was pressed against the victim’s flesh, the needle retracted into the handle, making it appear as though they had been jabbed, but with so slight a pressure that it often went unnoticed.

  Skewers for pricking.

  * * *

  SAW

  * * *

  There is really very little that can be said about this method of torture which is not abundantly clear in the accompanying images. Obviously this is a form of execution, but it is one that would be slow and painful. It should be noted, however, that in the images where the victim is suspended upside-down and the torturers/executioners begin cutting them in half at the groin, the victim (owning to the fact that the brain is maintained with a supply of blood and oxygen) will remain alive throughout the horrific ordeal until the saw reaches the heart or lungs.

  Sawing.

  Aftermath of a scalping.

  * * *

  SCALPING

  * * *

  Although it may extend back into the mists of history, the practice of scalping is first recorded in the annals of that doughty Viking king of southern England, Canute (reigned 995–1035). Centuries later, the practice was revived by the French – who were busily trying to wipe out every English settlement in the New World – and explained the practice to their American Indian mercenary forces as a means of proving how many English men and women they had killed. The Indians were paid on a per-head basis and scalps were much easier to transport than complete heads. It should be noted that scalping, itself, is not necessarily fatal. A scalping victim may live, but the exposed top of their skull will forever be exposed to the air and will need constant applications of oil to keep the skull bone from drying out.

  TORTURE BY RESTRAINT

  * * *

  ANCHOR

  * * *

  This cruel instrument of restraint forced the prisoner into a humiliating posture of submission. The use of this device for prolonged periods in damp dungeons would sometimes result in permanent deformity of the spine. Different models of this device can be found in the chamber of torture at the Castle of Kwidzin in eastern Poland.

  * * *

  BILBOES

  * * *

  Much like the hobbles used to keep horses from wandering, the bilboes were nothing more than two ankle shackles set at opposite ends of an 18in-long iron bar. Apparently deriving their name from Bilbao, Spain, where they were reputedly invented, the bilboes could either be used to keep prisoners from running away or, by the addition of a chain, secure the victim to a post, a wall, or any other permanent fixture.

  Bilboes.

  * * *

  BINDING

  * * *

  One of the surest, quickest and cheapest methods of making a person suffer is to immobilise them with rope restraints. The tighter the victim is bound, the greater their suffering. This rather obvious fact has undoubtedly been recognised throughout history and in every geographic location on the globe, but some people seemed to excel at the art of binding with the express purpose of inflicting the greatest possible amount of pain. In India prisoners were bound in impossibly unnatural positions, such as having one leg tied to their opposite shoulder and pulled as tightly as possible or by placing a noose around their throat, the other end of which was pulled down his back and tied to his ankles; any attempt to move would nearly strangle him.

  From Henry VIII’s England comes the case of Mark Smeaton, the court minstrel who was accused of dallying with Queen Anne Boleyn. To induce a confession, Smeaton’s head was encircled with a knotted rope, the knots being arranged so they rested over his eyes. When the rope was twisted tight the pressure compressed Smeaton’s eyes until they exploded. On a smaller scale, the Spanish Inquisition often bound a victim’s thumbs together with a small cord which was wrapped so tightly that blood spurted from beneath the thumbnails. The Inquisition were masters of the rope and more of their inventive rope-based tortures are described below.

  The anchor.

  * * *

  GARROTTE

  * * *

  Death by strangulation has always been around but in medieval Spain the practice became a standard means of execution for criminals of all sorts. The Garrotte, the official mechanism employed in Spanish judicial strangulation, took the form of a small stool attached to a short post. The victim was bound hand and foot and seated on the stool before a metal collar, which was attached to the post, was fixed around their neck. At the back of the collar was a crank, or screw which, when turned, drew the collar tighter and tighter until the victim’s neck was slowly pulled onto a metal spike which protruded from the post. In theory, the spike punctured the cervical vertebrae, killing the victim in seconds; in practice the victim was usually strangled to death.

  * * *

  IRON COLLAR

  * * *

  Iron collars, attached to the end of a length of chain which was, in turn, attached to a ring mounted into the wall of a dungeon or prison cell, have been a favourite form of restraint since the invention of iron. They kept prisoners firmly in their place and could be used to haul them around as the need arose. Occasionally the victim was kept a bit too firmly in place. In Carlisle Castle, in the north of England, the chain from collar to wall was so short that if the prisoner happened to roll out of bed they were almost sure to strangle themselves. A popular variation on the collar was the ‘jaggs’, known in Holland as ‘joungs’ and in France as the ‘Carcan’. The collar was the same as always, but rather than being mounted in a cell it was attached to a church wall or the local market cross, thus allowing religious transgressors to be exposed to public humiliation while they contemplated their sinful life.

  * * *

  LITTLE EASE

  * * *

  Although not technically a restraint, Little Ease was a notoriously small cell in the Tower of London. So tiny was Little Ease that a prisoner shoved inside had no room to either stand up or lie down, being forced into a perpetual crouching position. Although Little Ease is the best documented place of tight confinement, one can assume that many such hell-holes existed in the Middle Ages and well into the eighteenth or nineteenth century.

  * * *

  PORTO

  * * *

  Yet another of the Spanish Inquisition’s notorious rope tortures, the porto consisted of a rack-like wooden bed in which a series of holes had been drilled at strategic locations. When the victim was laid out on the bed, ropes were threaded through holes located on either side of both arms and either side of his thighs. With the help of a windlass, the ropes were pulled so tight that they dug through flesh and muscle tissue, often tearing their way to the bone. One variation on the porto was to have the ropes attached to the wall rather than to a wooden bed. The prisoner was seated on a small stool, the ropes threaded through wall-mounted iron rings, conveniently located at the hands, arms and waist. When the ropes were pulled tight enough the stool was kicked away and the prisoner dangled from the wall until he was ready to cooperate.

  Chinese garrotte.

  Partial drowning.

  * * *

  WOODEN HORSE

  * * *

  This torture, predominantly employed by the Spanish Inquisition, could be used alone or as a part of the Tormento de Toca, described under the section ‘Torture by Water’.
The ‘wooden horse’ in question was a shallow box, much like a trough, large enough for a man to lie down in, that was either fitted with legs or placed on a table. At the point inside the trough where a victim’s waist would be, an iron bar extended from one side to the other. When a man was placed in the trough this bar would rest in the small of the back, preventing him from lying flat on the bottom of the box. Once in position, the victim was securely bound with small ropes threaded through holes in the bottom of the box. Ropes were usually placed around his arms, thighs and shins and then pulled so tight – sometimes with the help of cranks – that they would cut through the flesh and cut nearly to the bone. At this point, if the torture master chose to administer even further agony, any one of several forms of water torture, described elsewhere in this section, was begun.

  TORTURE BY PUBLIC DISPLAY, SHAME AND HUMILIATION

  * * *

  AUTO-DE-FE

  * * *

  Used as an adjunct to the Spanish Inquisition’s memorably cruel punishments of torture and burning at the stake, the auto-de-fe (literally ‘act of faith’ in Spanish) was a public ceremony where both the condemned and those who had repented their ‘heresies’ were forced to parade through the streets of town in vast processions while displaying physical signs of their particular transgressions. Some wore signs around their neck with their crime written for all to read while others, who had recanted and were to be spared the burning post, wore inverted flames sewn to the back of their gowns. Those who were to be burnt wore upright flames. When the parade reached the appointed place, the entire assembly took part in a religious service before the condemned were handed over to secular authorities to be run through a nearly instantaneous justice mill before being tied to a burning post and set on fire.

  Auto-de-fe.

  * * *

  BRANKS – MASKS OF SHAME OR INFAMY

  * * *

  (See also Scold’s Bridle.) These devices (which are closely related to the scold’s bridle described below in this section) existed in a wide variety of fantastical and sometimes downright artistic styles from about 1500 to 1800. They were used to punish those who, by their words, had transgressed against the prevailing conventions. In the course of four centuries, countless women decried as ‘scolds’ and ‘shrews’ because domestic slavery and incessant pregnancy reduced them to neurasthenia and frenzy were thus humiliated and tortured; political power thus held up to public ridicule the petty disobedient and the nonconformists; ecclesiastical power thus punished a long list of lesser infractions. The overwhelming majority of victims were always women, and the operative principle was mulier taceat in ecclesia, ‘Let the woman be silent in church’ – ‘church’ here meaning the ruling ecclesiastical and secular hierarchies, both constitutionally gynaecophobic. The sense was thus: ‘Let the woman be silent in the presence of the male’. The victims, locked into the masks and staked out in the town square, were also treated roughly by the crowd. Painful beatings, besmearing with faeces and urine, and serious, sometimes fatal wounding (especially in the breasts, anus and vagina) was their lot.

  Brank.

  Chinese double cangue.

  * * *

  CANGUE

  * * *

  This Chinese device, alternately known as the fcan hao, tcha and ea, was a massive wooden collar worn by those condemned to display their crime in public for a prescribed period of time. The donut-like cangue was made in two sections, held together by a hinge, which could be opened up to allow the victim to place their head into a hole in the centre. The collar was then closed and locked into place. The cangue made it impossible for the wearer to lie down or, in the most extreme and unusual instances of size, even to walk or stand up without risking breaking his neck. Not to mention the complete impossibility of reaching one’s own mouth to eat or drink, thereby having to rely on the charitable compassion of others.

  Chucking stool.

  * * *

  CHUCKING STOOL

  * * *

  Devised some time prior to the Norman Conquest of 1066 (when it was known by its Latin name cathedra stercoris), this uniquely English form of humiliation was reserved for women who simply could not, or would not, learn how to control their sharp tongues. In the words of the day, it was: ‘a seat of infamy where strumpets and scolds, with bared feet and head, are condemned to abide the jibes of those who pass by’. The chucking stool itself was no more than a wooden arm-chair mounted on two poles, much like an open sedan chair of the eighteenth century. A hole was cut in the bottom of the chair and the victim’s skirts were hoisted up, leaving her exposed rump visible for all to see while she was paraded through the streets of town.

  Chucking stool.

  * * *

  DRUNKARD’S CLOAK

  * * *

  Devised by King James I of England (and quite possibly having been brought into use while James was still reigning in Scotland as James VI) the drunkard’s cloak (occasionally referred to as the ‘barrel pillory’) was a perfect example of letting the punishment fit the crime. Nothing more than a large beer keg with the bottom knocked out and a hole cut into the top large enough for a man’s head to fit through, those convicted of habitual public inebriation were forced to wear the ‘cloak’ whenever they went out in public for a specified period of time. Sometimes additional holes were cut into the sides so the victim could use their hands to help support the barrel’s weight. To prevent the victim from simply stepping out of the thing a locking collar of wood or metal was placed around their neck. While this may seem laughable, anyone who has ever tried to lift a full-sized, 36-gallon wooden cask knows how heavy they are. The drunkard’s cloak was not only a horribly chaffing thing, but its weight could easily tear the muscles connecting the neck to the shoulders. There are records of the cloak remaining in use as late as 1690 when Samuel Pepys, then Secretary of the Royal Navy, mentioned it in his diaries.

  Drunkard’s cloak.

  Drunkard’s cloak

  * * *

  DUCKING STOOL

  * * *

  See ‘Ducking’ in the section ‘Torture by Water’.

  * * *

  FIDDLE AND FLUTE

  * * *

  These contraptions served as a sort of portable or mobile pillory (see overleaf). Once the victim was locked into them they could be paraded through the streets whilst being led by a chain and collar around their necks, etc. Sometimes they might even be trapped within these devices before being exiled from a particular city. Similar in that way to the Chinese Cangue discussed above, the victim (or victims) forced to wear one of these contraptions would be completely at the mercy of any passers-by. Furthermore, they would be incapable of feeding themselves and would, therefore, have to rely on the charity and generosity of those same passers-by for food and drink. It seems that this too was a punishment largely reserved for women of a shrewish temperament.

  The fiddle.

  * * *

  JAGGS

  * * *

  See ‘Iron Collar’ in the section ‘Torture by Restraint’.

  * * *

  PENANCE

  * * *

  Defined in Webster’s Dictionary as ‘an act of self-abasement, mortification or devotion performed to show sorrow or repentance for sin’, penances were imposed on members of both the clergy and laity who were judged by the Church to be guilty of sins or criminal acts throughout the Middle Ages. Penances for small transgressions could be as mild as a short period of fasting and prayer or as great as taking a pilgrimage to some holy site. In worst case scenarios, such as one case where a Frenchman was found guilty of murdering his infant child, the condemned party had the body of the child chained to his back and was forced to walk all the way to Rome under the strict supervision of a priest and armed guards. Whether or not the man survived is unknown.

  Iron fiddle.

  * * *

  PILLORY, FINGER