![]() The victims must have been jolly grateful. They only executed people to ensure that they had a spell of penance in the hope of improving their lot in the next life. After all, they were merely weeding out evil for the good of both the wrongdoers and the general public. ![]() The Spanish Inquisition, lest we forget, though they were the good guys. The Heretic’s Fork ensured an ironically devotional pose Heretic’s Fork, Europe, Early Modern Period. Moreover, his belly, distended as it is with milk and honey, throws off liquid excrements swarms of worms… Thus the victim lying in the boats, his flesh rotting away in his own filth and devoured by worms, dies a lingering and horrible death’. ‘Next, they pour a mixture of milk and honey into the wretched man’s mouth, till he is filled to the point of nausea, smearing his face, feet, and arms with the same mixture, and so leave him exposed to the sun… flies, wasps, and bees, attracted by the sweetness… miserably torment and sting the wretched man. ![]() Within these boats the man to be punished is placed lying on his back, and the boats then nailed together with bolts. ‘Two boats are joined together one on top of the other, with holes cut in them in such a way that the victim’s head, hands, and feet only are left outside. The 12 th-century Byzantine Chronicler, Joannes Zonaras, describes the execution doled out to the soldier Mithridates for murdering King Cyrus by the latter’s mother in 401 BC. Scaphismus, also known as The Boats, was an ancient Persian technique of execution that involved a slow, painful, and humiliating death. Scaphismus would see you marinade in your own dung and be eaten alive by vermin Then, criminals were tied to the spokes of a wheel, which was raised on a scaffold to allow spectators the best possible view as an executioner methodically broke every limb with an iron bar, the coup de grâce coming with a blow to the head or heart, leaving a vile, pulpy mess. The chief modification of the torture in the medieval period was to increase the public spectacle of the event. Though the Europeans eventually stopped killing Christians, they were unwilling to give up such a fun pastime, and started to execute or torture others on the wheel. The other chief method of tying someone to the rim of a heavy wheel and rolling it along to break the bones and rupture the internal organs was most famously used to torture Saint Catherine, after whom the spinning firework was named. Its use in torture is credited to the Roman Emperor, Commodus (161-192AD), who would bind a wheel (horizontally or vertically) to a victim’s body, then have someone hammer it with a heavy mallet, breaking their bones. The wheel was one of the key inventions in human history, but it proved equally effective for torturing people as for locomotion. Being Broken on the Wheel would break your bones and rupture your vital organs Few lasted that long before confessing something.ġ6th-century German depiction of Peter Stump being broken on the Wheel in Cologne, 1589. ![]() Locked in this position for up to 90 minutes, blood would fill the lungs, and eventually spurt violently from the ears, nostrils, and anus. One of the rings was passed around the feet, then the torturer would kneel on the victim’s back until the other ring could pass around the small of their back and, eventually, neck. The suspect was first forced into a kneeling position, as if praying, then told to compress themselves as tightly as possible. Though rarely used, the device was truly the stuff of nightmares.Įssentially, the Scavenger’s Daughter was a series of iron rings hinged together in two parts. Its rather confusing name comes from its vicious creator, Sir Leonard Skevington, the Lieutenant of the Tower of London, and is a bastardization of its original name, ‘Skevington’s Daughter’. The Scavenger’s Daughter, a demonic squashing device, was intended to be used to extract confessions, and was especially effective when used alternately with the Torture Rack (see below), which did the very opposite by stretching people horribly. ![]() The Scavenger’s Daughter would squeeze blood from your anus, ears, and nostrilsĪs well as instituting the punishment of being boiled alive, Henry VIII’s reign also oversaw the invention of the Scavenger’s Daughter. 16th-century Scavenger’s Daughter on display at the Tower of London, England. ![]()
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