The Big Book of Pain: Torture & Punishment Through History

by Mark P. Donnelly

  * * *

  Designed to punish those who insisted on disrupting church services, the finger pillory consisted of two boards, hinged together and attached to the wall of a church. One of the boards had four holes drilled through it, spaced to accept a person’s fingers. In the opposite board were four corresponding grooves, or troughs, which closed over the fingers. It was hoped that once the hand of the offender was locked in place they would be a bit more attentive to the Word of God.

  Finger pillory.

  Pillory.

  * * *

  PILLORY

  * * *

  The pillory is a device wherein the condemned had their head and wrists locked into a wooden frame mounted on a shoulder-height post set up in a public place such as the local market square. Apparently it derived its name from a Greek phrase meaning ‘to look through a door’ – an appropriate description of someone with their head and hands poking through the front of the pillory. The first recorded use of the pillory took place in Classical Greece; the Anglo-Saxons called it the healfang (or half-hang) and it was in constant use throughout the Middle Ages – being codified as a legal form of punishment in England in 1269 by King Henry III – and continuing in use through the early nineteenth century all across Great Britain, Europe and the Americas. The pillory served as a method of punishing those convicted of minor crimes of all manners, be it public drunkenness, brawling, homosexuality, or disorderly conduct. Included in the myriad of petty offences for which a man or woman could be pilloried were, according to an eighteenth-century English statute: ‘those who sell putrid meat, stinking fish, rotting birds, and bread with pieces of iron in it to increase its weight’. In the old Dutch colony of New York a man convicted of stealing cabbages was sent to the pillory with a cabbage tied to his head. While the victim was on public display – a period that could last from a single hour to more than a week – they were subjected to the taunts of their neighbours and, depending upon how offensive their crime was, frequently pelted with rotten vegetables, mud and stones. In some instances, the abuse to which a pilloried individual was subjected was so severe that they were knocked unconscious and ran the risk of strangling to death when the full weight of their bodies came down on their imprisoned neck. One such incident took place at London’s Smithfield Horse Market in the eighteenth century, when two men, James Eagan and James Salmon, were pelted with stones, potatoes, bricks and dead animals.

  Double fiddle.

  According to an eyewitness account: ‘The blows they received occasioned their heads to swell to an enormous size; and by people hanging to the skirts of their clothes they were nearly strangled’. Eagan died on the spot and Salmon died in prison a short time later. Only a few years after the Eagan/Salmon incident, a homosexual man was pilloried and was pummelled so badly that he: ‘soon grew black in the face and blood issued from his nostrils, his eyes and his ears; the mob nevertheless attacked him with great fury’. When the pillory was unlocked he: ‘Fell down dead on the stand of the instrument’. The pillory could also serve as one part of a larger series of punishments. Some who were pilloried were also whipped and others had their ears nailed to the back-board of the pillory, only to be torn free or cut off when the sentence was concluded.

  Donkey – stang.

  * * *

  RIDING THE STANG

  * * *

  With so many punishments specifically levied against uncouth women it seems only fair that wife-beating men and tavern brawlers should also be subjected to an equivalent humiliation – hence Riding the Stang. The stang was nothing but a length of log, or a stout pole, which the victim was forced to straddle while he was carried through the streets of his town, accompanied by merrymakers shouting, cat-calling, blowing horns and whistles to call attention to their thoroughly embarrassed captive.

  Rocking horse – stang.

  Other variations on this form of torture and humiliation were put into play for military punishments, the most extreme of which is sometimes referred to as the Spanish donkey. In this case the ‘stang’ took the form of a wooden horse (sometimes with wheels and sometimes with rockers) and it would either have a spiked seat or perhaps even have been a simple V-shaped wedge. The malefactor would be forced to straddle the ‘horse’ with their arms bound behind their back and they would ride the devilish contraption while others rocked or wheeled them about. Additional torment was frequently obtained though the addition of heavy weights on the ‘rider’s’ feet.

  Scold’s bridle.

  * * *

  SCOLD’S BRIDLE

  * * *

  (See also Branks.) The scold’s bridle, like the ducking stool and the chucking stool, was a device intended specifically to punish sharp-tongued women, and was used throughout Britain and Europe during the Middle Ages. A helmet-like cage made of iron straps, the scold’s bridle was locked over a woman’s head, after which she might be led through the streets of the town and exposed to cat-calls and hoots of derision. To increase the pain, a metal tongue or ball might be forced into the woman’s mouth to gag her screams or curses during the punishment. From the records of Newcastle-upon-Tyne comes this account from 1665:

  There he saw one Anne Bridlestone drove through the streets by an officer of the corporation, holding a rope in one hand, the other fastened to an engine called the branks … which was muscled over [her] head and face, with a great gag or tongue of iron forced into her mouth, which forced blood out …

  Similar devices were used during seventeenth-century witch trials to keep the accused quiet while their fate was being decided by the court.

  Postcard using scold’s bridle for humorous effect.

  * * *

  SIGNS OF SHAME

  * * *

  A more humane variation of branding practiced in the American Colonies was the custom of having transgressors wear a sign, or placard, that made their shameful behaviour evident to anyone they passed on the street. The most famous such sign is undoubtedly the red letter ‘A’, sewn to Hester Prynne’s dress in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter. Unlike Hawthorne’s tragic heroine, the real Hester Prynne (who was tried and convicted in New Plymouth Colony in 1671) was not only convicted as an adulteress, but also as a drunkard. Her punishment was to wear both the letters A and D, denoting her double crime. In other instances, the punishment was more fully descriptive. In Boston in 1633, Robert Coles was fined 10s and sentenced to wear a sign with the single word ‘Drunkard’ and in 1650 a Connecticut man found guilty of insulting ministers and disrupting church services was forced to wear a sign reading ‘Open and Obstinate Condemner of God’s Holy Ordinances’. Similarly, Ann Boulder had to wear a sign stating that she was a ‘Public Destroyer of the Peace’. Presumably, if the condemned failed to wear the sign as instructed they would be charged with more serious offences or, at the very least, given a harsher punishment for the original. This idea of ‘naming and shaming’ is one which is finding favour among modern contemporary exponents for crimes ranging from shoplifting to child sex offences.

  A brank in Lancaster Castle.

  A postcard using punishment of stocks for humorous effect.

  * * *

  STOCKS

  * * *

  Roughly similar in structure and purpose to the pillory, the stocks were a hinged, wooden restraint into which a person’s ankles were locked. Also like the pillory, the stocks were of ancient origin (at least dating back to the Anglo-Saxon period) and located in public so the condemned was exposed to constant humiliation and abuse – an indication that they were not used to punish violent criminals, but to teach people a lesson in good manners and honesty. In an English law of 1426, it states that vagrants were to be locked in the stocks for a period of three days and nights and given only bread and water. A record dating from the mid-1500s tells us that in London ‘four women were set in the stocks all night till their husbands did come to fetch them’ and in eighteenth-century Boston, Massachusetts, Edward Palmer was fined and sentenced to spend one hour
in the stocks for stealing a plank of wood. The stocks were less physically damaging than the pillory, but to make sure the victim was not too comfortable, they were often forced to sit on the edge of a narrow board while they endured their sentence. The early medieval French added another distressing dimension to the time spent in the stocks; the bottoms of the victim’s feet were doused with saltwater and a goat was allowed to lick them. It may have been hysterical for those watching but a goat’s tongue is as rough as sandpaper and after a very few minutes the pain became excruciating. The humiliation associated with being put in the stocks remains with us in the phrase, ‘being made a laughing stock’.

  Stocks.

  TORTURE BY STRETCHING AND SUSPENSION

  * * *

  CRUCIFIXION

  * * *

  Many early cultures, including the ancient Hebrews, used crucifixion as a means of executing their criminals, but it was the Romans who made this particularly slow death their specialty. How a man being crucified looks when he is hung on a cross needs no explanation; anyone who has ever been inside a Christian church is familiar with the image of Jesus suffering on the cross, but a few explanatory words of just what it was that killed the victim may be in order. Contrary to popular belief victims of Roman crucifixion were not always nailed to the cross – the weight of their suspended body would have ripped the nails through their flesh. The nails only increased the amount of pain they were forced to endure. Those condemned to crucifixion were tied to the cross while it lay on the ground and the entire affair was then hoisted upright and dropped into a hole deep enough to ensure that the cross did not topple over. In most cases there was a small platform beneath the victim’s feet which allowed them to take the weight off their arms, at least temporarily. Because the entire weight of the body hung from the victim’s wrists, the strain would eventually tear the muscles in their diaphragm, making it impossible to breathe. Anyone who refused to cooperate in their own death, insisting on standing on the small platform, would eventually have their knees broken with a long-handled sledgehammer. One way or another, sooner or later, breathing became impossible and the victim died of slow suffocation and exposure.

  The pulley.

  Gibbet.

  * * *

  GARRUCHA

  * * *

  The garrucha, also known as the strappado (estrapade in Spanish) and as the act of ‘Squassation’ was one of the Spanish Inquisition’s most popular forms of torture, but the same torture was used elsewhere, most notably in India and among the Japanese, where it was known as Yet Gomon. Although there were small variations, the basic principal of the garrucha involved the prisoner’s hands being bound behind their back and a rope running from the wrists was threaded through a pulley attached to the ceiling or a crossbeam. When the rope was hauled in the prisoner was lifted into the air while their arms were slowly pulled from the shoulder sockets. In some cases heavy stones, weighing anywhere from 100 to 250lbs, were tied to the victim’s feet as a means of increasing the pain, and in other instances the victim was repeatedly lifted and dropped to the floor, sometimes onto a mound of sharp rocks. Yet again, he might only be dropped a few feet, causing the body to jerk violently against the arm sockets. The practice seems to have been picked up by the Italians, who called it strappare, and the Germans who knew it as Aufzehen. This study in cruelty was recorded as still being in use in Italy as late as 1778.

  Gibbet

  * * *

  GIBBET

  * * *

  The gibbet was a cage made of iron straps, invented in the sixteenth century and intended for the display of corpses after the victim had been hanged, thus providing a long-term warning to other would-be miscreants. When no proper gibbet was available, the corpse might be wrapped in chains and hung from any convenient tree. Naturally, at some point, an inventively cruel person – quite possibly Henry VIII – wondered what would happen if a condemned man were simply locked in a gibbet and left to twist in the wind until he died of exposure or starvation. Living or dead, victims of the gibbet became so numerous that they littered Europe’s landscape like signposts, often being used as directional guideposts for travellers: ‘Over the stone bridge, past the gibbet and on into the village’. For those unfortunate enough to be gibbeted alive there were occasional grotesque embellishments such as that recorded by an English traveller visiting Germany in the early 1600s: ‘Near Lindau I did see a malefactor hanging in iron chains in the gallows with a massive dog hanging on each side by the heels, as being nearly starved, they might eat the flesh of the malefactor before he himself died of famine …’ To add variety to what could easily have become stale sport, some criminals were placed in gibbets, or wrapped in chains, and suspended over the shoreline at low tide. As the tide came in they would be engulfed by the sea.

  Suspension.

  Gibbet.

  * * *

  HANGING

  * * *

  Hanging is not technically a torture but a method of execution. However, until the mid-nineteenth-century invention of the ‘drop method’ – wherein a trap door in the floor of the gallows is sprung open, allowing the victim to fall approximately 6ft, breaking their neck – hanging was anything but the relatively swift death we often assume it to be. Those condemned to be hanged simply had a noose slipped over their head and were then hauled into the air and left to kick and dangle until they choked to death. Depending upon the weight and physical condition of the victim this could take anywhere from five to twenty minutes. In many instances, friends of the condemned helped things along by grabbing on to the victim’s legs and pulling downward as hard as they could. History’s most notorious place of hanging is undoubtedly London’s Tyburn (located where Marble Arch now stands and commemorated with a bronze plaque set in the pavement). Having been used as a place of punishment and execution since 1196, throughout the Middle Ages and well into the eighteenth century Tyburn rivalled, and later overcame, Smithfield Horse Market as the place where the greatest number of English executions took place. In 1571, a permanent gallows, popularly known as the Tyburn Tree, was erected at a crossroads in the village of Tyburn. The ‘tree’ in question consisted of three stout posts, set into the ground in a triangular pattern, and rising nearly 20ft into the air. The top of these posts were then connected by three cross braces, which formed a large triangle. Over the next 212 years uncounted thousands of convicts would meet their end amid the jeers, cheers and cat-calls of heaving crowds of onlookers. Because of the triangular structure of the gallows, numerous victims could be accommodated at one time. The greatest number of simultaneous executions took place on 23 June 1649 when twenty-three men and one woman did what was popularly known as ‘dance the Tyburn jig’. Tyburn Tree was demolished in 1783 but hanging remained universally popular well into the twentieth century.

  Racking and rending.

  * * *

  RACK

  * * *

  The rack is such a ubiquitous instrument of torture that it hardly needs any introduction. Consisting of nothing more than a flat, wooden bed on which a prisoner was laid out, the pain was inflicted by tying the victim’s feet to one end of the device and their hands to ropes wound around a large windlass located at the other end. As the windlass was turned, the rope was cranked in, stretching the victim’s limbs to the point where the arms could be dislocated from their sockets and/or the spine disjointed. If torture on the rack was administered carefully, in small sessions of only ten or fifteen minutes at a time and not more than twice a day, the punishment could continue almost indefinitely.

  The ladder.

  Supposedly, the rack was introduced into England around 1420 by the then Constable of the Tower of London, the Duke of Exeter, and for centuries it was commonly known as the Duke of Exeter’s Daughter. Where the Duke picked up the idea is unknown, but use of the rack throughout the late Middle Ages was as ubiquitous as drinking beer. In France it was known as either le chevalet or le Bane de Torture; in Spain it was the escalero and in Germany the Lad
der.

  The ladder.

  Similar to the rack was the German torture popularly known as ‘Schlimme Liesl’ (Fearful Eliza). In this instance there was no wooden bed; rather the prisoner’s feet were chained, or tied, to iron rings embedded in the floor while his hands were bound and pulled upward by means of a rope and pulley. In order not to waste a conveniently exposed back, punishment on this vertical rack was frequently accompanied by a severe whipping.

  Tearing apart by horses.