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THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
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Iso by GEORGE RYLEY SCOTT
F.Ph.S.(Eng.), F.Z.S., F.R.A.I.
THE HISTORY OF CORPORAL PUNISHMENT
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THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
by
GEORGE RYLEY SCOTT
F.Z.S., F.R.A.I., F.Ph.S.(Eng.)
ILLUSTRATED
LUXOR PRESS
LONDON
WEHMAN BROS.
PUBUSHERS
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Seventh Impression 1959
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3 1223 04688 2768
PREFACE
" It Can't Happen Now "
The sophistry and superficiality which are such outstanding characteristics of the product of twentieth-century civiUza- tion; the elaborate and rococo environment in which the human animal of to-day works and plays; suffice to suggest an atmosphere of weakness and appeasement. The rapid extension of State control and coincident interference with the freedom of the individual suggest the development of an improved social organization.
The collective result is merely a veneer on the surface of a human nature that, in its elementals, changes little. Such apparent surface changes as do occur, are largely imperman- ent, being environmental in character, and due to those moral, ethical and social reactions which are mutable and sporadic rather than stable and eternal.
The larger humanity displayed by the individual and by the State, while praiseworthy enough in its way, is deceptive. Its illusory expression is due to the growmg factitious character of modern life, which more and more results in man being out of tune with nature. The increasing intricacy of the machine, and the ever-increasing production of rubber- stamped mentality, are bringing man and machine nearer togedier. If twentieth-century man were to formulate a deity, he would not create an anthropomorphic godhead but a glorified robot — a robot god who would be conceived to possess even greater power than the old-time fire-and- brimstone Yahveh.
The machine may be excellent so long as it serves man in a truly utilitarian sense: it may be catastrophic the moment it concerns itself solely with the work of destruction — a comparison of the aeroplane in peace and war presents a pertinent example.
In examining mankind to-day one cannot altogether ignore these somewhat alarming repercussions. The decrease
VI PREFACE
in brutality which has been so marked a feature of the past half century must not blind one to the potentialities for evil which are ever present and which may conceivably exhibit, should the occasion arise, a new ruthlessness in keeping with the competent mechanistic age in which we live. This, in itself, would appear to present possibly the most sinister aspect of modern civilization.
Something of the remorselessness and something of the lack of emotion, so intimately associated with the machine, are featured in the human product which has evolved con- temporaneously with the development of the modern Jugger- naut. The surrealists, in their artistic manoeuvres, have, I think, managed to convey this automatistic remorselessness into the expressions of the humans they have depicted. The realistic American novelist similarly has succeeded in depict- ing the modern reactions and thought-motivations, which, when they become unmoral, are perhaps more cold-bloodedly inhumanistic than anything which we have ever been able to envisage from the literature of the past. The cruelty of the criminal of to-day seems all the more pitiless and corres- pondingly capable because of the mechanistic forces behind him and the mechanized soul within.
These points seem to me of vast significance. They seem to indicate that whenever and wherever a wave of cruelty or persecution does occur, it is likely to be all the more terrifying, not alone because of the capacities for cruelty inherent in this soulless mechanistic group-mind but because an outburst of persecution is always more frightful when it occurs in a State where cruelty, in its grosser or more sensa- tional aspects, has for long been inexistent.
Recent happenings in other countries have suggested that the outbreak of mass cruelty is never an impossibility; that, on the contrary, as the Very Rev. W. R. Inge pointed out recently, " torture has been reintroduced into Europe."^ The history of the past decade has smashed the contention that the horrible cruelties of the past are of no interest or signi- ficance to the present generation because " they can't happen here " or " they can't happen now."
* In an article in the Evening Standard, January 19, 1939.
PREFACE VU
A Dangerous Viewpoint
At a recently held meeting in the Queen's Hall, Lady Astor, because she supported the abolition of flogging, was booed and jeered at by 2,500 women. Here we have an example of women, in the mass, acclaiming themselves to be supporters of torture. That such support may be restricted, in its application, to certain crimes, does not affect the basic significance of the demand for the continuance of torture in the guise of punishment. The moment an attempt is made to justify any form of torture, whatever the circumstances may be, there arises the possibility of creating a dangerous precedent.
Justification on fhe_^Tnund of its efficiency, which_was_ so"Trftcn" att"emj^te3Iin_xelation-4o -torti^ securing confessions of guilt from those charged yyithhergsy -'^^"sorcery, is actually conditioned by the need for finding avictim upon which to wr^rk <"^^ y^ng^qnce of society, and, vicariously, the vengeance of God. Such justification acts also as a means of suppressing or obviating any sense of injustice in society as a whole, and in those individuals immediately and specifically concerned with the infliction of the torture or persecution, either as executioner or onlookers. On these lines it is easy to justify any form of barbarity, and it is in this way that, through the ages, the most monstrous inquisitions and persecutions have been vindicated. Thus the justification, in our own time, of negro lynchings, of Bolshevist atrocities, of " Black-and-Tan " outrages, of brutal floggings, of " third degree " methods.
If there is one lesson that history teaches it is that any possibility of abolishing torture is endangered by the exist- ence of cruelty in any form and for any purpose. In all circumstances and at all times cruelty may easily develop into torture, and the toleration or sanction of one form of torture may easily lead to the introduction of other forms. For this reason alone, any openly expressed approval of cruelty is as dangerous as it is alarming. The spectacle of 2,500 womeik crying aloud for the retention of torture is disturbing, and presents a significant footnote to any examination of modern sociological trends.
Vlll PREFACE
The Ostrich Attitude
There arc peoplej^ojgersistentl)^fuse to discuss or to witness anything thatjs jinpalatable^ They contend that it is~much better to look upon the bright, the pleasant, the agreeable and the soporific things of life than to concern oneself with the sordid, the revolting and the unpleasant aspects. The world is full of people who persistently sub- scribe to this doctrine.
Now I am unaware whether or not these persons think that in adopting such an attitude they are exhibiting some form or other of mental superiority. But what J_ doj^now is tlmt m^is^ way-4hey_(fj5to«r^^<? the e^^ are all top
prevalent in modern society. Smugly and complacently, meyiOiufTheijrcyesTo ah)^^^^^ that is disturbing, repellent or offensive, affecting to believe it does not exist. They hold the view, or at any rate they act upon the concept, that ignorance of cruelty excuses the support of cruelty. Thus the well-to-do woman displays her astrakhan coat in ignor- ance of the fact that she is contributing towards a detestable and revolting form of animal torture; the masses cheer the antics of performing animals and thus encourage the con- tinuance of a form of cruelty that is a disgrace to civilization.
This attitude of the public is one of the greatest enemies to reform. It may be that the majority of people view with disfavour cruelty to animals, to individuals, and to races; but this reaction is conditioned by individual desire and ambition. Wherever the result of prevention of cruelty is in opposition to personal interests I find there is no real enthusiasm for abolition. And so it goes on: the cruelty connected w^ith the fur trade; the butchery trade; the per- fumery trade; the cruelty associated with sport; with amuse- ments; et al.
I make no apology for the presentation, in the following pages, of a gruesome picture of man's inhumanity. The record, stark and terrible though it be, should drive home to all thinking persons the need for every effort being made to eliminate cruelty in all its forms : the grim account of torture in our own time should make clear to every reader the danger, as well as the possibility, of an outbreak at any time and in any place.
PREFACE IX
It has been essential to my project that nothing should be shirked, evaded or suppressed. In any full consideration of the subject with which this book elects to deal, a thorough knowledge of the historical background is necessary. If the problems connected with this particular branch of sociology, in so far as they affect and apply to civilization to-day, are to be grasped properly, and the means of dealing with them, in any adequate sense, are to be comprehended, one must lay bare the root causes of torture, and examine its march through the thousands of years which have separated the appearance of the first crude specimen of homo sapiens and the elaboration of the 1939 niod^l*
Acknowledgments
In the bibliography are included particulars of the many historical, criminological, anthropological, legal, and other works, which have been consulted. To the authors of these publications I am indebted for much information and help in the study of a sociological problem which, admittedly, bristles with difficulties. Incidentally, I may say that I have made every effort to provide as complete and comprehensive a bibliography as possible (even to the extent of including certain works from which I have drawn no data) with the view and hope that it may prove of value to future re- searchers and historians. There seems to be a strange lack of bibliographical matter relative to this particular subject.
For much information respecting present-day aspects of cruelty to animals and children, I would express my thanks to the Secretary of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; to the President of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; and the Director of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
The illustrations are the result of a diligent search through the artistic productions of many centuries and several nationalities. I am indebted to the Syndics of the University Library, Cambridge, for permission to reproduce a number of these pictures from their collections.
George Ryley Scott. Cambridge.
CONTENTS
I>AOE
Preface ...... v
" It can't happen now " — A dangerous viewpoint — The ostrich attitude — Acknowledgments.
PART I
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF TORTURE
CHAP.
L The Meaning and Limitations of Torture . i
A question of terminology — The reality of psycho- logical torture — Illegitimate, surreptitious and camou- flaged torture.
IL The Fundamental Principles of Torture . 6
A primary means of exacting vengeance — An expres- sion of power — The physiology of hate — The toleration of torture by society — Mob psychology in relation to the development of torture.
in. Sadism as a Basic Cause of Torture by the
Individual . . . . • H
The sadistic concept of torture — Sadism developed by public exhibitions of torture — The indulgence of private sadism.
IV. The Pleasure Principle in Masochism . . 21
The submission to torture — Martyrdom and masochism.
V. The Causes of Wholesale or Mass Torture
Sacrifice in relation to torture — The weak and the des- pised— State domination and power.
24
VI. The Effects of Torture . . . • 29
Paralysing influence upon the individual — Futility of torture in the securing of confession or evidence — Psycho- logical effects on society.
xi
Xll CONTENTS
PART II
THE HISTORY OF TORTURE
CHAP. PAGE
VII. Torture Among Savage and Primitive Races . 35
The transition from torture as a religious rite to penal torture — The place of torture in initiatory rites — Punish- ment by torture.
VIII. Torture in Ancient Greece and Rome . . 44
Torture of free citizens — The torture of slaves — ^The Roman gladiators.
IX. The Progress of Torture . . . -5^
The attitude of the Church — The Christian approach — The persecutions suffered by the Waldenses — The persecutions suffered by the Quakers — The growth of judicial and penal torture in Europe.
X. The Holy Inquisition . . . .64
The birth and development of the Holy Office — The examination of the accused — Inside the torture chamber — The auto da fe — Influence of the Inquisition — Victims of the Inquisition.
XI. Torture in Great Britain and Ireland . . 86
The rise of judicial torture in England — Judicial torture in Scotland and Ireland — Torture in the guise of punish- ment.
XII. The Persecution of the Witches . '95
The war upon demonology — The mark of Satan — Witch-hunting in Britain.
XIII. Torture in China, Japan and India . . 102
Judicial torture in China — Methods of punishment — Capital punishment in China — Torture in Japan — A terrible campaign of religious persecution — Japanese methods of punishment — Torture in India — The terrible l^iUee and other Indian tortures — Torture of school chil- dren— Some bizarre forms of torment.
XIV. The Torture of Slaves in the West Indies,
Mauritius and the United States of America i 19
The traffic in human beings — Methods of torture em- ployed— ^Torture will who torture can — The horrors of Mauritius— -Torture of American slaves.
CONTENTS Xlll
CHAP. PAGE
XV. The War upon Torture . . , ' 134
The growth of opposition — The decHne of torture — The war upon animal torture.
XVI. Some Notorious Torturers
The ancient tyrants — Torturers of the Middle Ages — Some eighteenth and nineteenth century torturers.
141
PART III THE TECHNIQUE OF TORTURE
XVII. Impaling Methods . . . . •153
Crucifixion — The " Dice " — Peine forte et dure or pressing to death.
XVIII. Burning at the Stake, Branding, Boiling to
Death, the Fire-pan and the Brazen Bull 157
Burning alive — Branding — Boiling and frying — The brazen bull.
XIX. Squassation, the Rack, the Wheel, the Boot
and the Scavenger's Daughter . . 168
Squassation or the torture of the pulley — Torture of the rack or wooden horse — The torture of water — Torture of the wheel — Stoning to death — Torture of the boot — The Scavenger's Daughter — Hurling from a tower or height.
XX. Whipping and Beating . . . .188
Flogging implements and methods of the Middle Ages — The Jamaica cart-whip — The technique in Mauritius — England's cat-o'-nine-tails — Cart's tail and other penal floggings — Private and sadistic floggings.
XXI. Mutilation, Drawing and Quartering, Decapi- tation, etc. ..... 208
Mutilation — Scalping — Drawing and quartering — De- capitation— Flaying alive.
XXII. Burying Alive, Hanging Alive in Chains,
Starvation, the " Virgin Mary," etc. . 217
Burying alive — Hanging alive in chains — The Black Hole of Calcutta — Torture by starvation — Drowning — Torture of the boats — ^The kiss of the " Virgin Mary."
XXIII. Torture by Ordeal .... 227
The red-hot iron ordeal — Ordeal of boiling water — The cold-water ordeal.
XIV
CONTENTS
CHAP.
XXIV. Miscellaneous Forms of Torture . .
The pillory and the stocks — The thumbscrews — Torture of the " iron gauntlets " — Torture of the glove — The ducking-stool — The scold's bridle — Torture of the pen- dulum— Torture of the bath — Military tortures — Some bizarre tortures — " Little ease " and " torture of the rats " — Various prison tortures.
XXV. Methods of Self-inflicted Torture
The Flagellants — Self-tortures of saints and penitents — The Indian suttee.
XXVI. Modern Methods of Torture
Torture in Russia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries — The Bolshevist atrocities — Torture in Abyssinia — Torture in South-West Africa — The Chinese communist atrocities — Torture in modern warfare — Terrorism in Ire- land— The American lynchings — The " third degree."
XXVII. Forms of Torture of Animals
The criminal prosecution of animals — Bull-baiting and bear-baiting — The Spanish bull-fight — Miscellaneous forms of modern animal cruelty.
234
256
264
278
PART IV
THE CASE AGAINST TORTURE
XXVIII. The Futility of Torture in the Fight Against Criminality .....
The aims of punishment — The limitations of fear as a deterrent — The nullity of punishment in a reformatory sense — Experience confounds the arguments of the floggers.
XXIX. The Evils of Torture as a Form of Punishment
Dangers incidental to excessive pain — The brutalizing effect of punishment — The suppression of humanity.
XXX. The Psychopathological Element in Torture, and its Treatment ....
The limitations of punishment — Treatment of sadism and masochism.
XXXI. The Abolition of Torture
Preventing the torture of children and animals — Diffi- culties in the way of abolition — The real solution.
Bibliography ..... Index .....
287
298
302 306
315 321
LIST OF PLATES
CHINESE TORTURE OF THE RACK
VARIOUS ANCIENT TORTURES ....
TORTURE AND SACRIFICE OF PRISONERS BY THE AZTECS
" SLICING TO DEATH " ,
CLUBBING A CRIMINAL TO DEATH IN THE SANDWICH ISLANDS
INITIATORY TORTURE RITES OF THE MANDANS
TORTURE OF ROASTING ALIVE ....
TORTURES OF THE PROTESTANTS IN THE PIEDMONT VALLEY DURING
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF THE INQUISITION SHOWING THE METHODS
USED ......
TORTURE OF A NATIVE GIRL IN TRINIDAD .
AN AUTO DA FE
ROCHUS BURNT AT THE STAKE BY ORDER OF THE INQUISITION
TORTURES INFLICTED ON THE PROTESTANTS, BY THE IRISH PAPISTS,
IN 1642 .... TORTURE OF THE CHAIN , CHINESE PUNISHMENT OF THE TCHA TORTURE OF DEATH BY THE THOUSAND CUTS PEINE FORTE ET DURE OR PRESSING TO DEATH CHINESE TORTURE : TEARING THE LIMBS . CHINESE TORTURE : SAWING A WOMAN IN TWO DRAGGING AT THE HORSe's TAIL AND CRUCIFIXION VARIOUS FORMS OF CRUCIFIXION .
Frontispiece
Facing page 16
17 17 32 32
33
VARIOUS FORMS OF TORTURE : BRANDING, FLAYING, BREAKING THE LIMBS
AMPUTATION AND
TORTURES OF THE MACCABEES TORTURE OF THE BRAZEN BULL, THE FRYING-PAN AND THE GRIDIRON TORTURE OF THE WHEEL ..... CUTHBERT SIMSON RACKED IN THE TOWER OF LONDON, I557 THE TORTURING OF JOHN COUSTOS BY THE INQUISITION OF LISBON WILLIAM LITHGOW TORTURED ON THE RACK WHIPPING AT THE CART's TAIL AND OTHER TORTURES TORTURE BY FLAGELLATION
TORTURE OF THE ENGLISH PRISONERS AT AMBOYNA, IN l622 TORTURE BY CASTRATION . . .
XV
48
49 64
64
65
80
81 81 96 96 97 97 112
113
113 144
145 145 160 160 161 161 176 176 177
XVI LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Facing BURYING ALIVE, DISEMBOWELLING, ETC. . . ,
BREAKING ON THE " WHEEL " OR CROSS .
IRON CAGE USED IN JAMAICA FOR HANGING CRIMINALS ALIVE THE "virgin MARY " .....
view of the cutting apparatus in the chamber beneath the
"virgin" egan and salmon on the smithfield pillory torture of the trees and of driving spikes under the finger
and toe nails
THE scold's BRIDLE
TORTURE OF THE ROPE .
TORTURE OF THE RATS .
THE TREADMILL AT BRIXTON PRISON
PROCESSION OF THE FLAGELLANTS
THE PENANCE OF KING HENRY II
PENITENCE OF THE GERMAN JEWS IN THEIR SYNAGOGUE
EXECUTION OF PIRATES AT KOWLOON, CHINA, 189I .
EXECUTED COMMUNISTS, CANTON, DECEMBER I927 .
VICTIM OF THE CHINESE COMMUNIST ATROCITIES IN CANTON,
DECEMBER I927 CLEARING UP AFTER THE COMMUNIST INSURRECTION IN CANTON,
DECEMBER I927 A SCENE AT A SPANISH BULL-FIGHT
p»ge 177 192 192
224
224 225 225 240 240 241 256 256
257
272
272
273 273
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT
ROMAN FLAGELLUM TORTURES OF THE MIDDLE AGES . ANN WILLIAMS BURNT AT THE STAKE RICHARD TURPIN TORTURING A WOMAN BV FIRE JANE BUTTERSWORTH BEATEN TO DEATH . TORTURE OF RUTH OSBORNE AND HER HUSBAND BY THE " COLD WATER " ORDEAL ......
JOHN WALLER PELTED TO DEATH WHILE ON THE PILLORY .
161 162
206
233 235
For kindly pennitting the reproduction of illustrations, acknowledgments are grate- fully given by the author and publisher to the Department of Oriental Antiquities, British Museum (frontispiece) ; to the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum (Torture of Death by the Thousand Cuts) ; and to the University Library, Cambridge (illus- trations facing pages 16, 17, 32, 64, 81, 97, 113, 144, 145, 160, 161, 176, 177, 192, 193, 324, 225. 240, 241, 256, and, in the text, on pages 48 and 54).
PART ONE
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF TORTURE
CHAPTER I
THE MEANING AND LIMITATIONS OF TORTURE
A Question of Terminology
It must be admitted that the meaning of torture is not easy to define. Invariably is one likely to formulate a definition which is either too wide or too narrow in its scope. Realizing to the full that a serious error in either direction is bound to detract from the value of any study of torture, I feel it to be essential that I should, at the outset, define with some exacti- tude what, so far as this book is concerned, the word torture implies. It is important, for instance, to realize clearly that there is no rigid line of demarcation between torture and punishment. Any distinction is dependent largely upon the reaction of the individual victim to physical and mental suffering. It is necessary to consider in what circumstances the one implies the other. It has always been customary for society and the State, from the beginning of civilization to the present day, to attempt the justification of torture by placing it within the category of punishments, and, further, in this way to deny that any form of torture is used at all. Largely because of this almost universal practice, in which the term punishment is employed as a euphemism for torture, it has never been thoroughly and adequately realized to what extent torture has been employed in past ages, and, addition- ally, to what extent it is employed to-day.
Much of this lack of knowledge concerning its extent and
2 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
universality has arisen through the wide acceptance of the legal definition in contradistinction to any comprehensive elucidation of torture; which acceptance has in large part been due to the fact that no other more exponential and truer definition has been presented. According to the legal defini- tion, torture was a form of cruelty or method of tormenting sanctioned by the State, and executed by duly accredited or appointed officials, through its judicial authorities. It was held to be justifiable, and was authorized and executed for the purpose of inducing a person accused of a crime to con- fess his guilt or a witness to present evidence. In those countries, of which England was the most notable, which at no time allowed accused persons or witnesses to be sub- jected to the qucEstion in order to secure a confession or to extract information, it was contended that torture was in- existent. By observing a sharp line of demarcation between those forms of cruelty authorized and practised for a specific purpose, as in the case of judicial torture, and cruelty imposed as punishment, it was easy to deny an allegation of torture even where criminals, under the name of retribution or prison discipline, were subjected to the most fiendish, barbar- ous and terrible forms of persecution.
At the same time, the error must not be made, as it so often is made by those whose humanitarianism has run to seed, of classifying every form of punishment and every form of cruelty, in all circumstances, as torture. It is true that, under certain conditions, as we shall see when we come to consider psychological torture, a form of punishment con- sidered by one individual to be relatively mild, might, to another, constitute a most horrible form of torture; but, generally speaking, the majority of the punishments inflicted to-day in civilized countries and under the aegis of the law, cannot be placed within the category of physical torture.
Torture is not a mere matter of terminology, however. Death, in itself, deliberately induced, in many cases, docs not rank as a form of physical torture. But torture exists where death is preceded and caused by acts which involve unjus- tifiable suffering or pain. Where any procedure involving cruelty, suffering and pain is inflicted upon an individual, in any circumstances, and for any purpose, whether the punishment ends with such persecution or is followed by the
THE MEANING AND LIMITATIONS OF TORTURE 3
extinction of life, it does most assuredly constitute torture. The objects of persecution, whatever their nature and how- ever serious their import, neither justify the torturing of the individual nor the description of the torture by another name.
The acceptance of the legal definition means the accep- tance of the view that torture is applied only by the State, for the express objects defined. The act of cruelty used by the State as a form of torture, if committed by an individual or by a number of citizens, without the authority of the State, would not be legitimate and would not constitute torture : it would rank as an assault. Obviously such an interpreta- tion is most unsatisfactory and logically indefensible.
From the viewpoint of the unfortunate person who is being subjected to any act which entails suffering and pain analogous to that experienced by the victim of torture, it is a matter of indifference by what precise term this persecution is described, and whether it is being executed by a private individual or by a State official.
Clearly the sufferer, provided the degree of persecution or cruelty is sufficiently severe, is being subjected to what can be described as nothing less than torture. And equally clearly the sufferer is the one person who is in a position to provide the most fitting evidence as to the reality or other- wise of such torture. The judge responsible for the sentence, and the executioner responsible for the infliction of the punishment, apart from the fact that they are prejudiced witnesses, cannot be so reliable in their decision as to whether or not the specific sentence ranks as torture, as is the actual victim.
The Reality of Psychological Torture
Here we come up against the fact, all too imperfectly and all too rarely realized, that there is in existence a form of torture distinct from physical injury or torment : a form of torture which is psychological in its trend. It may exist in addition to physical torture. It may exist where there is no physical torture at all.
The substitution of psychological methods of dealing with crime in the place of many antiquated physical
4 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
methods does not necessarily mean, as is generally thought, that torture has been removed in toto from the prison system. It merely means that physical torture, in the shape of corporal punishment, the treadmill, the crank, et ah, has been to a big extent replaced by other and more subtle methods.
The reformation in prison methods has been coincident with the evolution of a new type of prisoner. Man to-day is, generally spea\ing, and in normal circumstances, more humane and less brutal than was his prototype of fifty and a hundred years ago. He is, to use another form of termin- ology, " softer." This applies to the criminal element in society exacdy as it does to the respectable element. The popular notion that the criminals of the world are *' tougher " specimens than are the law-abiding members of the public is a fallacy. It arises through the error of accepting those exceptional cases of " toughness " which figure in sensa- tional newspaper accounts and in crime fiction as representa- tive of the criminal world. The majority of criminals, as Dr. Amos Squire, one-time chief physician of Sing Sing, has pointed out, are indistinguishable in physical or mental attainments from the average respectable golf-playing, cinema-going, radio-listening citizen.
The mental torture induced by imprisonment, with its destructive effects upon initiative, will-power, originality and ambition, can be incalculable. Upon some natures the segregation of mind is even more paralysing and cumulative in its effects than is any form of physical segregation. The contention that the modern prison is a convalescent home or a rest-camp, and errs on the side of leniency or benefi- cence, is as erroneous in its implications as are the ideas secured by visitors who are conveyed around a ** model " prison upon a tour of inspection. A prison is a prison what- ever amenities form part of the curriculum. Moreover it is possible for a governor or a warder, even in a modern " humane " prison, to render the life of the prisoner a verit- able hell. Ninety years ago, in Birmingham borough prison, the governor subjected the prisoners to various illegal tortures unknown to the visiting justices. It is not impossible, in relation to psychological torture at any rate, for an analo- gous state of affairs to exist to-day.
THE MEANING AND LIMITATIONS OF TORTURE
Illegitimate, Surreptitious and Camouflaged Torture
The prohibition of torture and persecution during criminal investigations and in prison management, by the State, is no guarantee of their non-existence in the com- munity. Any such prohibition does not even mean that the State itself never employs such methods. For instance, although torture, either by the State or by private indivi- duals, is prohibited in Great Britain, flogging is still included among the punishments prescribed in the penal code. The use of corporal punishment is justified as a legitimate means of correction; it does not rank as (what it actually is) a form of torture. In the United States of America, for many decades, torture has been prohibited both in the penal code and in private life, yet flogging has been employed in several States and on many occasions since 1868; and the *' third degree," which incorporates many forms of torture, is sur- reptitiously but widely resorted to by the police in the secur- ing of confessions. The American public, the American judges, and the American Government I{now that this " third degree " is in constant employment : they make no real or sincere attempt to suppress a practice which is as much a crime as are any of the offences of the individuals upon whom it is used.
To what extent torture is employed privately it is quite impossible to do more than guess at. Although it is true that the individual has the right of appeal to the law in any case of assault, there are lots of instances where no such appeal is made. There are wives and there are children who suffer severe physical punishment and take no action against those who have inflicted such punishment. There are hundreds of cases where terrible mental suffering is borne in silence, often, too, in circumstances where it would be difficult, if not impossible, to prove anything which would secure a conviction in a court of law. There are other cases where, for many reasons, the suffering and persecuted party cannot face the publicity and exposure which a court action ensures. There are prostitutes in the power of bullies and pimps, and there are criminals tied up with gangs, who cannot seek the protection of the law.
CHAPTER 11
THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF TORTURE
A Primary Means of Exacting Vengeance
Once it is conceded and accepted that there are forms of torture in addition to the type acknowledged and defined by law, we have gone a long way towards realizing that torture is something which has existed from the beginning of time. In relation to its true and wide significance it is as erroneous to assert that torture was inexistent before the time of the Romans as it is to assert that it disappeared from most European countries in the eighteenth century. Both these assertions have been made. Each assertion represents a perversion of the truth.
It is no exaggeration to say that every man and woman is a potential torturer. The scope of this potentiality, and Hkewise its expression, are extended by the fact that what, by the persecuted party, is recognized as torture, may not, and probably in many circumstances will not, be so recognized or admitted by the individual responsible for putting the torture into operation. This non-recognition or non-acceptance of torture by the individual, by the mob, and, in certain circum- stances, by the State, is responsible for the wide extension of persecution in any one period of history, for its continu- ance through the ages, and for its existence to-day. It is further the cause of the abolition of torture being a much more difficult affair than the average person realizes, involv- ing matters which are outside the scope of ordinary vision and which have implications that are seldom fully recog- nized.
In its simplest and most ecumenic form torture represents a ready, an efficacious, a satisfactory, and a crude means of exacting vengeance; especially of exacting that type of ven- geance which is more concerned with the individual than with the State. That is to say, torture in any ordinary circumstances, appeals more to the sense of retribution
6
THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF TORTURE 7
developed in the injured individual for a crime or an offence concerning himself or his immediate family, than it appeals to the State as a means of securing satisfaction for a crime committed against the community, or an offence concerned vt^ith abstract principles. It is this attitude v^hich is respon- sible for the view expressed so often by those individuals intimately concerned with a horrible crime that the penalty of death, in itself, is not enough to satisfy the call for justice. The personal cry for vengeance demands that before death the criminal must suffer long and severely; in other words, that torture must precede death. This primitive cry for vengeance is as common and as urgent in the civilized countries of to-day as it was among the North American savages careering around the captives whom they were burn- ing at the stake. It is merely that society, in virtue of laws passed by citizens, who, at the time of making those laws, were not imbued with this passion for private vengeance, has diverted or submerged the urge. It is not that, funda- mentally and individually speaking, the urge does not exist.
An Expression of Power
In this vengeance inherent in all forms of torture lies the key to its use as an expression, by the individual, of the will to power, and, by the State, of authority and autocratic domination. The expression or satisfaction of this demand for vengeance on the part of a group of individuals or of society as a whole, which is an extension of the individual's private urge for revenge, has formed a part of the policy adopted by every leader of mankind, starting with the chief, the king, or the emperor, and descending, through various stages, to the mob leader, whether he be the incendiary calling to arms a rabble of political rebels, or the gangster chief directing the criminal activities of a mob of social out- laws. Nothing was, and nothing is, better calculated to enhance the prestige and authority of the leader than the handing over to his followers, for punishment, of their enemy. ^ It was due to a realization of this primeval fact
* A modern example of this appeal to the mob's desire for vengeance was the promise made, either direcdy or by implication, during the war of 1914-18, by some of England's leading statesmen, that the Kaiser would be tried and executed at the termination of hostilities.
8 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGE)=^
that torture was first adopted and authorized as part of the penal code of a race, a government, or a branch of society. The more the leader showed himself as an advocate and a devotee of vengeance against the avowed and suspected enemies of the branch of society he headed, the more did he find himself respected by his immediate followers. Coinci- dentally the tyrant fed, in true anthropophagous style, upon his own tyranny. The more tyrannous he became the more powerful. Torture proved itself to be a footstool to greater power just as it was a means of developing personal vanity in one's own power.
As society developed out of savagery into civilization, and as codes of laws and regulations were enacted, the torture which was inflicted by primitive man to satisfy his vengeance against enemies without and within his race, crystallized itself into a definite method of torture justified as a system of punishment; as a means, adopted by the ruler in an auto- cratic country and by the State in an oligarchy, of compel- ling subservience to authority; and, in the case of smaller mobs or gangs, as a method of maintaining discipline.
Torture, more perhaps than any other factor known, justified itself, in the opinion of those in positions of author- ity, irrespective of the nature, degree and circumstances of such authority, as the best available means of limiting the freedom of the individual to think or to act for himself. Torture justified itself as the most satisfying method of com- pelling acceptance of dictatorial jurisdiction, by repressing and preventing all attempts to rebel against that authority or the tenets of its creed. In the State, as in the Church, in waging war upon treason on the one hand and heresy on the other, torture was admitted to be the most powerful instrument available. It is, although any practical expres- sions are hidden and camouflaged in a thousand ways, the most powerful instrument available to-day. Because of this basic fact, torture has always been existent in some form or other, and, in the course of the world's history, has made spectacular and sporadic emergencies, which, in themselves, have been partly instrumental in distracting attention from those forms of persecution which have been continually present since the beginning of man's urge to power, and which are existent in our own time.
THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF TORTURE 9
The Physiology of Hate
Interlinked with all this is the virtue of cruelty, which represents a physical expression of hate, in the fight for self- preservation. The rival or the competitor, even within one's own race, is a potential enemy. The primeval law of self- preservation demands that everyone should think and act on the supposition and in accordance with the selfish realization that, in the ultimate struggle for existence, it is, in popular parlance, every man for himself. In mass formation this transcends itself into the assumption that every powerful neighbouring tribe or nation is similarly a potential if not an actual enemy.
Whether the question is one concerning the individual or the family, or the tribe, or the nation, the possibility of hatred towards someone implied or expressed is always existent. Everything or everybody that possesses dangerous possibilities is a potential subject for hate.
Now just as cruelty or tyranny is an expression of power over the inferior or the despised; so, too, is it an expression of hatred for the powerful rival or competitor. The more that rival or competitor is feared the greater will be the degree of hate, and when the opportunity for overt activity arises, the greater the expression of cruelty.
It is the existence of this fundamental potentiality for hate, which may be, and probably is, in many cases, function- ing unconsciously or semi-consciously, that, in the interests of self-preservation, leads to the formation of gangs, societies, associations, groups; and, in relation to nations, pacts, alliances or treaties. These organizations may be open or they may be secret.
In modern civilization this tendency is apparently a growing one. It is not a tendency which can be viewed without disquiet, though one may perhaps secure some degree of consolation from the fact that the multiplicity ot such groups has a weakening effect upon any individual organization.
The Toleration of Torture by Society
It is an ironical commentary upon society that the masses have always contributed towards their own enslavement by
TO THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
encouraging the lust for power in their leaders, whether those leaders have been chiefs of gangs and mobs function- ing locally; or kings, dictators and oligarchies functioning nationally. If it is too much to say that society itself actually initiated the putting into operation of torture in any organ- ized and universal sense, it is certainly not too much to say that sections of society, by their actions, first suggested to ruling individuals or governing bodies the virtues of torture as an indication of power and a means of compelling obedi- ence. "It is," says Sumner, "of the first importance to notice that it was the masses which first applied death by burning to heretics. The mob lynched heretics long before the Church began to prosecute."^
The root cause of this reaction of society, as we have already seen, is in the primeval thirst for revenge which is inherent in the individual, and which has existed all through the ages until our own time. Inevitably, in the end, argu- ment gives place to brute force. Inevitably, society accepts the primitive law that punishment and torture are, in the ultimate analysis, the most powerful instruments, not alone for forcing the individual to act contrary to his wishes, but also for preventing him rebelling against the existent rules of the governing body. It was familiarity with the truth of this concept which led the Inquisition to adopt torture as a means of securing confession; it was a realization of the force of this same concept which led the English government, in the Middle Ages, to practise torture in defiance of common law; it is the appreciation of this self-same concept which leads, in these ultra-civilized days, to war still remaining the final arbiter when the possibilities of every other conceivable type of negotiation have been exhausted.
The incorporation of any form of torture in a penological system, whether as a means of extracting confession, as in the Middle Ages, or as a form of punishment, as in most countries to-day, inevitably leads to its acceptance as a justi- fiable procedure by society generally, and involves a danger of its extension under suitable conditions. Just as familiarity with torture leads to approval of torture, so does the acceptance or ratification of torture lead to its justifica- tion.
' W. G. Sumner, Folkways, Boston, 1907, p. 238.
THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF TORTURE II
Wc see examples of this in the attempts, which modern society increasingly makes, to justify the torture of animals. The animal to-day is in the position of the negro in the West Indies a century ago. The negro in those days had no rights: he was weak, he was despised. The animal to-day has no rights : similarly it is weak, similarly it is despised. The negro was tortured a hundred years ago. The animal is tortured to-day. These facts are not admitted by society as reasons for persecution, nor is any justification of persecution essayed along these lines; but none the less precisely here lie tiie fundamental reasons for persecution and the possibility of justification being attempted. Thus it is contended — and the contention is supported by Biblical exegesis — that cattle were created by God to provide food for man; that butchers must live; that wild animals must be destroyed or they would overrun the earth and destroy man; that rabbits are pests which must be exterminated; that fox-hunting provides work for himdreds of horse- breeders, et at. All these excuses for the propagation of cruelty are possible only because society is in a position to persecute animals.
Some reflection of this attitude is, too, observable in relation to the persecution of those individuals who, in the spheres of morality, religion, and even pure intellect, are alien to normality or orthodoxy. The same measure of brutal treatment or persecution which would arouse the deepest resentment or indignation when applied to a kindred spirit or a close associate, if directed against one whose actions or opinions were viewed with abhorrence or disgust, would evince no words of protest, and might con- ceivably, were the circumstances suflicientiy provocative, meet with active support. Thus the tolerance or approval of the most brutal persecutional measures accorded to criminals, to sexual perverts, to enemy aliens. The martyrdom of anyone who is associated with something out of tune with current thought or morality is not viewed with sympathy and is usually called by another and a harsher name. It is an inevitable result of mob psychology that the sympathy and tolerance of the masses is extended only to those near them in mentality as well as environ- ment.
12 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
Mob Psychology in Relation to the Development of Torture
Once society began to practise torture, its development was certain. It matters little that any such practice was, in the beginning, restricted in its application to those guilty of certain crimes which, viewed in relation to the ethical and religious reactions of the time, were considered to be as monstrous as they were dangerous. The very fact that torture had been put into operation at all suggested the possibility of its extension; and further suggested to the leaders of society a method of dealing with their re- calcitrant or rebellious members. Thus it not infrequently happened that the individuals who had been primarily responsible for the infliction of torture against certain members of society, found themselves, as a result of the development of persecution along unforeseen lines, and for unspecified purposes, among its next victims.
In the beginning torture was probably restricted to animals and to members of enemy tribes or races. A start having been made, the next steps were the extension in the quantity of subjects persecuted and developments in the technique of torture itself. The rule that the tolerated of to-day becomes the approved of to-morrow, applies to tor- ture as well as to most things. And with toleration and approval of any specific form of persecution, in many cases, it ceases to rank as torture at all, but is accepted as a form of punishment or of penal procedure. This hap- pened all through the ages. It happens to-day. It is for this reason that the justification of persecution has always been one of the major forces working against its abolition. The result of all this is that torture, in whatever country it is practised and wherever it is regarded as essential to the form of authority or government in vogue, must of neces- sity, if it is not to decline in its efficacy, be either continually increasing in its severity or extending in its scope. One of the greatest evils connected with torture is that whenever and wherever it is practised, and whatever be its objects, it must inevitably develop. The judges and executioners of the Middle Ages were compelled to be continually invent- ing new and more severe forms of torture. Thus by sheer
THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF TORTURE I3
tolerance, the brutal form of punishment practised in one decade became a commonplace method in the next.
The tortured individual is himself a potential torturer. The ill-treatment of animals by man is often to be found in conjunction with the ill-treatment of man by his fellow- men. A little over a century ago, in the British West Indies, the scavenging work was done by negro slaves guilty of some criminal offence or other. They worked in fetters and they were treated just about as inhumanly as one human being can be treated by another, and live. They were permitted to destroy every pig they found in the streets. This they looked upon as " great sport"; in- deed they revelled in it, according to Mr. F. W. N. Bayley, who describes the following incident. It occurred in St. Vincent.
" I was one day standing at my wandow, gazing on these unfortunate beings at their work, when a pig passed the gang; before the poor animal had proceeded ten yards, a long pole, which they carry for the pur- pose, was immediately thrust into its side, and passed out beneath its belly; at that moment a woman, to whom the pig belonged, came out of her house, which was close by, and, seizing the animal's two legs, endeavoured to take it from the man. The enraged and savage brute immediately left his hold of the pike, and taking the other two legs of the pig, commenced pulling it in a contrary direction. The struggle lasted about five minutes, during which time the bowels and intestines of the animal were protruding in a most dis- gusting manner; and the females of the gang, instead of turning away from the revolting scene before them, appeared to enjoy it li\e a delicious meal, and stood laughing at the despoiled owner. At length the man gained the mastery, and having severed the head from file body, he stuck it on his pike, as if in triumph, and afterwards repaired to the market to make his bargain with the butcher."* (The italics are mine. — G. R. S.)
* F. W. N. Baylcv. Four Years' Residence in the West Indies, 1830, p. 197.
CHAPTER III
SADISM AS A BASIC CAUSE OF TORTURE BY THE INDIVIDUAL
The Sadistic Concept of Torture
It is futile to deny the existence of individuals who take a delight in the sight of suffering, or in the infliction of pain. Persons of this nature are often the leaders in scenes of mob violence. They are not necessarily sadists, but often they are.
It is important to distinguish between cruelty per se and sadism. The popular assumption, due largely to the loose way in which the term is now used in popular fiction and in newspapers, that sadism is a synonym for cruelty in any form, is a fallacy. Sadism is a sexological term, and, strictly speaking, it should never be employed apart from its sexual connotations. This widespread misuse detracts from the term's significance, and gives rise to a good deal of mis- apprehension.
The sadist, in most cases, either practises or delights in the witnessing of cruelty, but his pleasure is concerned exclusively with and is limited entirely to sexual excitation or relief. Cruelty, in any other circumstances, does not appeal to him. Moreover, the moment the sexual repercussion has spent itself he takes no further interest in the practice or expression of cruelty. In addition, the sadist usually expresses his cruelty along well-defined and restricted lines.
Now the individual who practises cruelty for any other purpose than sexual excitation is seldom motivated by such limitations. And for this reason he usually becomes consist- ently more and more cruel. Moreover he is cruel in a general and comprehensive rather than a limited and specialized sense. Whether his fundamental motive is primeval venge- ance, or the lust for power, matters little. His appetite for cruelty has been created, and it may well prove to be an insatiable one. It is in this respect more perhaps than any other that the ordinary cruel person differs from the sadist.
14
SADISM AS A BASIC CAUSE OF TORTURE I5
For whereas the one is ever on the look-out for opportunities to practise his itch for cruelty, the sadist, after the satisfying of a biological need motivated in a peculiar form of psycho- pathological expression, becomes to all intents and purposes a normal individual, and may conceivably, apart from these sporadic indulgences in cruelty, be an ardent advocate of humanitarianism.
Sadism is not so abnormal a characteristic as one might well think. It is actually merely an extension or a develop- ment, along unilateral and obsessional lines, of a natural characteristic. There is a consistent and universal relation- ship between the sex act and pain in its purely objective sense. In the throes of erotic passion, however, the sensation which in any other circumstances would be characterized as pain, is not recognized as such. Any element of suffering is obliterated and subordinated by the pleasure associated with coitus. This is apparent in the sexual act as practised by many animals. It is evidenced in the fact that in numerous cases, and especially among races where sexual relations arc of a more passionate nature than is customary in ultra- civilized society, the kiss becomes a love-bite. At the hands of her lover the female suffers treatment which, in other circumstances, would constitute rape of the most brutal kind.
This perfecdy normal correlation between pleasure and pain, between cruelty and sexual expression, is the funda- ment of what in modern life is termed sadism, and which, through its association with the vicarious sexual aberrations of the psychopathologically motivated Marquis de Sade, has come to be looked upon as something monstrous beyond description. Sadism then, as we understand it to-day, is an extension of this basic sexual cruelty, which, partly through repression and partly as a result of environmental and socio- logical conditions, so often reaches an obsessional stage. In individuals who have not the faintest knowledge of the meaning of sadism, the sight of some cruel act occasionally arouses sexual excitation.
Sadism Developed by Public Exhibitions of Torture
Although it would be a gross exaggeration to say that the thousands of spectators who cheered the gladiatorial contests
1 6 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
in the Roman amphitheatres were all sadists, there is little doubt that a considerable number of them were. In many Other cases, too, the very fact of witnessing these exhibitions revived or developed sadistic tendencies.
The gratification of the mob, exemplified in the cheering of every act of cruelty, is in many cases but an expression of the lust for power, or of the pleasure derivable from vengeance exercised upon those who differ in biological, physiological or psychological fundamentals from existent society. It may or may not in the first instance be associated with sadism, but inevitably is there danger that an incipient tendency in that direction may be awakened or developed.
Coincidentally the sadist is inevitably attracted by all such scenes of persecution. Although there are sadists who, after taking part in or witnessing acts of cruelty, experience erotic excitation which must find relief in sexual intercourse, there are others, and I believe they are in the majority, who find they are able to secure sexual relief independent of actual coitus. They may find the act or the exhibition of cruelty itself provides all the sexual excitation expected or desired, thus forming a complete substitute for coition. Kiirten, the Dusseldorf monster, belonged to this class of sadist. In his confessions to Dr. Berg he admitted " It was not my inten- tion to get satisfaction by normal sexual intercourse, but by killing."^ The actual torture or the wimessing of the torture may in itself induce ejaculation, or it may be followed by or associated with masturbation.
The position of woman is by no means so clear. Actually the popular idea that woman is less attracted by scenes of cruelty, and less inclined to practise cruelty, are both fallacies. The sadism of man is paralleled and often eclipsed by the sadism of woman. The difference, however, is that for the most part the sexual stimulation does not so much act as a substitute for coitus, or a causative factor in masturbation : it more usually induces a great development of eroticism manifesting itself in a desire to be subjugated by man. In this way it is almost always associated with masochism. It was Ovid who first pointed out that the spectacle of blood, as in the gladiatorial exhibitions of his time, led to the female
* Karl Berg, The Sadist, authorized translation by Olga Illncr and George Godwin, Acorn Press, 1938, p. 11 1.
From Clark's Martyrologia, 1611.
VARIOUS ANCIENT TORTURES
After Picart.
TORTURE AND SACRIFICE OF PRISONERS BY THE AZTECS
After Picart.
"SLICING TO DEATH"
A SACRIFICIAL RITE OF THE ANTIS TRIBE
(See Text, page 36.)
SADISM AS A BASIC CAUSE OF TORTURE V]
being in a state of mind in which she was extremely likely to respond to the male's sexual overtures. It was this very method which, according to Goncourt, was adopted by an Englishman who had failed to overcome his young lady friend's scruples — ^he induced her to witness a public execu- tion in Paris.
At the same time, the effect of public exhibitions of torture as a means of counteracting the evil potentialities inherent in any form of sadism that has no opportunities for securing relief, is manifest. It is an ironic commentary upon civilization that just as prostitution may be looked upon as a means of protecting respectable women; so may all public exhibitions involving torture and cruelty be looked upon as being the means of lessening the incidence of lust murders, of lynchings, of animal torture, et at.
The autos da fe engineered by the Inquisition were popular for the very same reason that, a thousand years before, were the Roman gladitorial contests. The populace, instead of rearing up in hot indignation at the cruelty, the barbarity, and the inhumanity of burning alive the victims of the Inquisition, cheered with gusto as the flames con- sumed the bodies of the martyrs.
Similarly with the public hangings at one time to be seen in England, and which drew vast crowds; similarly with breaking on the wheel, drawing and quartering,^ whipping at the cart's tail, and other methods of punishment inflicted publicly.
What of sadism in these modern days when all such public tortures are things of the past? Has sadism decayed with the growth of humanitarianism ?
I do not think so. In conformation with the change in the life of the people has there been a change in the form of sadism that manifests itself. More and more is vicarious or subjective sadism subduing or replacing purely physical
^ When Damien was executed in 1757 every available spot within eye- reach of the scaffold was crowded with Parisian sightseers, who gloated over the doomed man's sufferings. After having his hand burned off and being subjected to the horrible torture of boiling oil and melted lead, for hours, to the accompaniment of his piercing screams, the whip-goaded horses dragged his limbs and body apart. Casanova, himself an eye- witness, although compelled to turn his face away and stop his cars, observed that his female companions " did not budge an inch."
B
1 8 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
sadism. And coincidcntally with the dedinc in one form of mass cruelty, have there come into existence other forms of persecution : forms which perhaps are even more ecumenic than anything that was ever known in the past.
It may seem, at first glance, a far cry from the gladia- torial combats and gymnastic contests of ancient Rome to the circus performances and boxing matches of the present day, but fundamentally there is little if any essential difference. While the twentieth-century sadist is deprived of the sight of the murderer dying the death, he has every opportunity to revel in all the gory details of the crime which preceded the execution. And there still exists, in another sphere, the essentially emotional and surrogative cannibalistic orgy, celebrated regularly throughout Christendom, in which the drinking of blood and the eating of flesh solemnize a bloody sacrificial rite. Finally, there persists, in a hundred different ways, the torture of animals. In this one field, if in no other, the sadist is to-day enabled to gratify to the full extent of his desires, any form or degree of blood lust.
The Indulgence of Private Sadism
The contemplation, in connexion with sadism, of animal torture in modern life leads us inevitably to the consideration of private sadism. For even as regards animal torture, this is, in the tremendous main, exercised privately and under most effective forms of camouflage or euphemization.
Apart from and in addition to the presence of sadism which never actually functions in the shape of overt acts of torture or cruelty performed by the individual pervert, and which forms the bulk of existent sadism, there are in exis- tence numerous sadists who cannot receive satisfaction in any vicarious or subjective way; in other words, they must themselves inflict acts of violence upon some human or animal subject. Individuals of this type are undoubtedly responsible for a lot of the cruelty which exists to-day.
There are so many ways in which active sadists are encouraged, by the remarkable apathy of society in relation to certain forms of cruelty, to indulge in their perverted appetites. They may, for instance, secure employment as keepers of animals or as workers on breeding establishments;
SADISM AS A BASIC CAUSE OF TORTURE I9
they may choose butchery as their trade; they may become warders in prisons or assistants in lunatic asylums. But, above and beyond all, they may adopt the easiest of all methods available for the indulgence of an appetite for sadism : that of acquiring animals for the express purpose of subjecting them to surreptitious torture.
I do not think there can be any doubt or question that a good deal of private or secret torturing of animals takes place in every civilized country. It is, of course, impossible even to guess at the extent of this type of cruelty, or at the forms it takes; but the figures relative to the convictions in the courts tell their own terrible story. And for every one such con- viction I do not think I can be accused of the slightest exaggeration in assuming that there are a full hundred of which no one ever so much as hears.
The sadist may kill or maim as a complete substitute for coitus or he may kill or maim during sexual intercourse. Most cases of " pricking " are the work of sadists, and no doubt many of the " witch-prickers " of the Middle Ages were sexual perverts. It is noteworthy that there is a close connexion between the sight of the blood proceeding from the wounds and the sexual ecstasy of the sadist. Fere says " a large number of these perverts need effusion of blood. Some increase their pleasure by sucking the blood of the wounds they have caused."^ Kiirten, before his execution, admitted that in his case the sight of blood produced sexual excitement. " I saw blood come from her mouth and I had an orgasm."^ Krafft-Ebing was of opinion that the " acci- dental sight of blood " might, in certain circumstances, put *' into motion the performed psychical mechanism of the sadistic individual and awaken the instinct."^
Not all sadists kill or maim, however. Sadism being in part an expression of the will-to-power of the individual formulated specifically in sexual channels, may function in that form of persecution which takes shape in the imposition of disgusting tasks or moral humiliation. It is this form
^ Ch. Fcrc, The Sexual Instinct: Its Evolution and Dissolution, University Press, 1900, p. 227.
* Karl Berg, The Sadist.
* R. V. Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis, authorized English adapta- tion of the twelfth German edition, by F. }. Rebman, New York, 1935, p. 86.
20 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
in particular which so often occurs, according to Fere, in women/ Symbolical, vicarious or imaginary sadism occurs where the pervert secures sexual pleasure, often culminating in orgasm, through imagining sadistic scenes, witnessing executions and acts of cruelty, or even reading about such incidents.
Dr. Stekel has drawn attention to the cruelty inherent in modern therapeutics. He says : " Once in visiting a torture chamber I was struck with the similarity between instru- ments of torture and various medical apparatuses."^ Modern massage is merely a rococo form of flagellation; the vapour bath,^ as Dr. Stekel points out, gives rise to sensations some- what similar to those of being buried alive; while psycho- analysis may easily become a sort of mental " third degree." " During the war tortures were made use of by over-patriotic physicians to extort admission of health ! "* Finally, there is the possibility of operative treatment representing an expression of masochism on the part of the patient and of sadism on the part of the surgeon. " I know a case," says this same authority, " in which even the suturing of a wound was accompanied by ejaculation."^
^ Ch. Fere, The Sexual Instinct, p. 148.
' Wilhclm Stekel, Sadism and Masochism, The Bodley Head, 1935, Vol. I, p. 436.
* The ancient Romans used their sudatories both as torture and execu- tion chambers (cf. p. 242).
* Wilhehn Stekel, op. cit.
* Wilhelm Stekel, op. cit.
CHAPTER IV
THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE IN MASOCHISM
The Submission to Torture
Algolagnia, or the pleasure principle in pain, takes two forms: sadism, or the ecstasy associated with the inflic- tion or witnessing of pain; and masochism, or the eroticism induced by the suffering of pain or persecution. In masochism, as in sadism, tliis pleasure principle is limited to or intimately associated with sexual excitation. It may be accompanied by or it may form a substitute for coitus.
For the most part masochism is an individual afiair. In its true psychopathological sense it is obviously not a phenomenon that can be induced in any ordinary way in masses of people. It takes a movement like the flagella- tion cult of the Middle Ages to arouse any such feelings on a wholesale scale.
Because of the existence of masochism, any wilful sub- jection to pain on the part of the individual is inevitably suspect. That, in the olden days, when submission to tor- ture was common, the term masochism was unheard of does not alter the fact that in many instances such sub- mission had a sexual content or basis. The masochist, too, often secures the acme of erotic pleasure from the fact that this pleasurable reaction follows immediately after the experiencing of pain, and by the well-known and almost universally applicable law of contrast the greater the ante- cedent pain the more intense the sexual pleasure correlated to it.
The most usual form which masochism takes is flagella- tion, and this very fact leads one to suspect that much of the so-called discipline indulged in by the saints and others connected with the Church had a masochistic funda- ment. The scourging of penitents might well have ful- filled a twofold purpose, enabling the priest to indulge a
21
22 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
taste for sadism and the penitent a penchant for masochism.
Especially is it likely that this constituted the true ex- planation wiiere the victim was a female, for in most cases of masochism the pleasure in punishment is experienced only where that punishment is inflicted by an attractive member of the opposite sex. There have been many scandals in Church history connected with the chastise- ment of penitents by confessors, notably the case where Father Girard flagellated the pretty Cadiere girl; and the almost equally notorious instance in which the Franciscan monk, Cornelius Hadrien, was accused of having admin- istered the discipline to naked girl pupils.
Although the connexion between religion and masoch- ism has always been a marked one, largely because there are peculiar opportunities for its indulgence, the practice is by no means restricted to the Church. Most masochists seek sexual relief by paying prostitutes to " torture " them, just as many sadists employ prostitutes to suffer the inflic- tion of mmor forms of punishment. Thus Kraftt-Ebing gives the case of a man who regularly visited a brothel where he " had himself bound hand and foot, and then flogged by the girl on the soles of his feet, his calves and buttocks ";' and Hammond instances the case of a young man who often visited a house of prostitution where he instructed three of the girls to tread upon his face and chest with their high-heeled shoes. ^
Martyrdom and Masochism
In these days when religion has lost much of its power and appeal, when pain in its purely physical aspects is very much more dreaded than it was a few centuries ago, we cannot very well visualize the state of mind which enabled human beings to suffer severe punishment or per- secution in the name of faith and glory. Just as the appeal to a future life of heavenly bliss has lost much of its one-time puissance, so, too, the dread of the tortures of hell has lost most of its potency, and there seems to be
* Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis, p. 143.
* W. Hammond, Sexual Impotence in the Male, 1883, p. 32.
■
THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE IN MASOCHISM 23
nothing that religion has to offer modern man in a future hfe which would lead him to suffer avoidable persecution on earth.
It was largely die desire for atonement and the appease- ment of a sadistic god that induced the people to inflict torture upon themselves. Self-flagellation was a mode of placating an angry deity. More, in many cases of female self-flagellation, it was a means of signifying subjection to the omnipotence of God.
But if one form of martyrdom has deteriorated, another has developed. Political or racial martyrdom has taken the place of religious martyrdom. The man who would scoff at the idea of sacrificing himself in the cause of a religious faith, will gleefully immolate himself to the molocn of patriotism. Such martyrdom is, of course, conditioned by the lack of free choice in the matter. It might well be said that the religious victim of the Middle Ages was no more free to reject martyrdom than is the twentieth-cen- tury political or racial victim in a position to reject the martyrdom imposed upon him in the name of patriotism.
All of which, although true, does not alter the funda- mental fact that this patriotic martyrdom of to-day is, as was the religious martyrdom of the Middle Ages, condi- tioned and largely made possible by a form of symbolic masochism which is all the more potent in its influence and in its effects through the fact that it is not recognized as such by those members of society in whom it particularly functions
The tendency to-day is towards an extension of psyches logical masochism on the part of society as a whole and in all countries, whether that society is governed by a tyrannous and sadistic dictatorship or an equally tyran- nous and sadistic oligarchy; using the term sadistic here in its purely psychological and ideological significance and as a correlative of psychological masochism.
CHAPTER V
THE CAUSES OF WHOLESALE OR MASS TORTURE
Sacrifice in Relation to Torture
The birth of the gods signified an advance from the con- cept of hatred as a subject concerned with purely private vengeance to a v^^ider and more comprehensive system in which sacrifice was a potent factor. Sacrifice may be con- sidered to represent the first step towards the use of tor- ture not only as a religious but also as a patriotic embellish- ment. Into the mouths of the various deities were put demands for sacrifices. These sacrifices involved, in many cases, physical torture; and where the victim did not offer to immolate himself masochistically as a tribute to the omnipotence of the gods, they invariably involved psycho- logical torture.
Sacrifice, whatever precise form it took, was a propi- tiatory act, designed to appease the anger of God, or to induce the granting of favours or indulgences. In accord- ance with the anthropomorphic conception of the God- head, man interpreted the tastes of the deity on lines analogous to his own. It was perfectly natural that an anthropomorphic god should be conceded to possess carni- vorous tastes and, by virtue of his superiority, anthropo- phagous tastes as well.
Whether animal sacrifice preceded human sacrifice is open to doubt. The evidence, such of it as is available, is conflicting. Possibly races varied in this respect. Possibly, too, deficiencies in the supply of human victims might lead, on the ground of expediency alone, to the substitu- tion of animals.
So far as the evidence provided in the Bible is concerned, the sacrifice of the first-born seems to have represented the highest form which any propitiatory act could take. It was only in response to a command from Tehovah Himself
24
THE CAUSES OF WHOLESALE OR MASS TORTURE 25
that Abraham stayed the hand that was about to slay his son and instead offered up a ram.
In all contemporary cults, human or animal sacrifices, or both, formed part of the ritual, and the offering of the first-born seems to have been practised in many races. To Odin, the powerful god of the ancient Scandinavians, Aun, the Swedish king, in an attempt to secure the pro- longation of his own life, sacrificed his nine sons; and to the same god. Earl Hakon, the Norwegian king, to secure divine help in his war upon the Jomsburg pirates, sacri- ficed his son.^ Eusebius states that the Phoenicians sacri- ficed their children to Saturn. So, too, the Hindus and the Egyptians. The king of Mexico was continually waging war in order to secure captives for use as offerings to the gods : these sacrifices amounted to no fewer than fifty thousand human beings annually. Amurath, says Montaigne, sacrificed six hundred young Greeks to his father's soul.
Other races used as offerings enemies captured in war, but the supply in most cases was necessarily limited, and it was sporadic rather than regular, while the appetites of the gods apparently were omnivorous. To fill the gaps, criminals, slaves, aged persons of both sexes, the weak, the crippled, the abnormal, were sacrificed. In accordance with the ritual adopted by many races, the victim was tor- tured before death, or killed in a manner which entailed long and agonizing torment. Prescott says : *' The Aztecs did not, like our North American Indians, torture their enemies from mere cruelty, but in conformity to the pre- scribed regulations of their ritual. The captive was a reli- gious victim."*
With the development of civilization, the position did not change fundamentally, it merely crystallized into a more ecumenic and more powerful form of expression. The coming of Christianity, with its doctrine of charity and good- will, did not, strangely enough, abolish torture and persecu- tion. The Christians persecuted their opponents with all the rigour of the Romans. Indeed they borrowed the weapons
» T. W. Doane, Bible Myths, New York, 1882, p. 40. * William H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, 1843, Vol. Ill, p. 61.
26 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
and imitated the practices of their ancient enemies. Thus we read in Timothy, of Hymenaeus and Alexander, notorious heretics, being dehvered unto Satan, in order that the terrible discipline to which they would be subjected, would teach them " not to blaspheme." And again we read in Galatians : " But there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." Christianity, according to its promulgators, was the one true faith. All who professed any other doctrines were heretics and idolaters. They were condemned, they were hated, and whenever opportunity offered, they were tortured until they saw the true faith; failing conversion or confession they were exterminated.
There are indications that human sacrifice continued to be practised in ancient Greece and Rome, despite the efforts of Tiberius and other emperors to put an end to it. In Europe during the Middle Ages sacrifices were common;* there are surreptitious cases even to this day.
In an ideological sense there is little distinction between religion and patriotism. The patriot, in any extreme sense, and in time of war or conditions which threaten war, is in much the same position as the religious fanatic. His obsessional interest in the cause of his own country or race engenders blind hatred for a rival or an enemy country or race. It is at such times that the danger of torture or perse- cution is particularly likely. It is in such circumstances that the most Christian-like individuals will be transformed into fiends clamouring for the blood of their opponents.
The Wea\ and the Despised
One of the major lessons of history is that the ultimate choice of any race, and, in the majority of cases, of any individual member of that race, rests between accepting the role of persecutor or persecuted. The story is a consistent one. The strong nation has been the persecutor, and coinci-
* The burying alive of a human being or an aniiDal in the fouadations of an edifice is a form of sacrifice (cf. p. 217).
THE CAUSES OF WHOLESALE OR MASS TORTURE T]
dentally the respected, the admired and the successful. The weak nation, and likewise the weak individual in that nation, has been persecuted and despised. One might say with much truth that in the history of nations nothing succeeds like persecution. And further, one might just as truthfully say that the defeat of one form of persecution is only possible by the emergence of a stronger form. For this reason the world lives through a succession of persecutions, only the State, which, at any one time, is wielding tyraimous power, calls its persecutions by another and a far more melli- fluous name.
The Romans tortured the Christians as long as their power lasted. The fall of Rome and the rise of Christianity saw the Christians persecuting every weaker religious sect with fine impartiality. The Jews, through thousands of years of history, have been consistently persecuted.
Minorities, of whatever nature, are persecuted. Here again history tells a consistent story. And it matters not at all what precisely is the nature of the minority. It may be a minority in a physical, an ethical, or an intellectual sense. The persecution is always present in some form or other, though it may not express itself in purely physical action. Psychological persecution in these days is far more effective, if for nothing but its insidiousness, than physical persecution.
The masses hate anything which they do not understand and at the same time cannot ignore, or which is repugnant to their wishes or tastes. They even hate those who tell the truth, because they do not want to know the truth. The burning of a great national newspaper during the war of 19 14- 1 8, for telling an unpalatable truth, was a gesture as psychologically significant as the burning of the witches in the Middle Ages. The persecution of John William Gott, in 1921, for his criticism of the Bible, was analogous to the persecution of Galileo, three hundred years previously, for affirming that the earth circumnavigated the sun. The weakness of a minority which is out of tune with the cere- bration or psychology of the masses is a signal for the majority to turn and rend it. Because of this danger, all unpopular movements must work more or less surrepti- tiously, the degree of secrecy exercised being in direct ratic to the extent of their unpopularity.
28 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
State Domination and Power
The State has been quick to realize the virtues of perse- cution in the maintenance of power, and in the furtherance of economic, poHtical and social aims. The power of the State is not only conditioned by the persecution, in various cuphemized or psychological ways, of its own nationals, but in its exploitation of the persecuting powers of society against any dangerous rivalries, whether domestic or foreign. In its final analysis, the propaganda which every State utilizes to some extent all the time, and on certain occasions to a pheno- menal degree, is the resuscitation or development or man- kind's fundamental liking for persecution along definite lines and towards specific ends. The power of this incipient persecution is strikingly demonstrated in the way in which a mild-mannered man or woman can be transformed, almost overnight, into a human volcano spouting hate and savagery. We have had instances of this again and again. In the Euro- pean war of 1914-18, every country concerned concentrated upon arousing the people to a state in which they were likely to inflict any form of physical cruelty upon such enemies as fell into their power.
CHAPTER VI
THE EFFECTS OF TORTURE
Paralysing Influence Upon the Individual
There have been a few notable instances where all the efforts of the tormentors have failed to break the will of their victims. In most of these cases the persons concerned have been religious fanatics who were prepared to suffer martyr- dom in the service of their god rather than secure peace on earth, or they have been masochists who secured pleasure from experiencing physical persecution.
For every one such case, however, there must have been a full hundred instances where, whether through the fear of torture or during the actual experience of it, the prisoner confessed whatever he was expected to confess, even in circumstances where he knew such confession meant the virtual signing of his own death warrant.
This fear of torture was evidenced in the attempts that were made to escape the ordeal, even to the extent of com- mitting suicide. So common were these attempts that in the days of the Roman gladiatorial contests, the criminals who were selected for fighting what was virtually a struggle in which they would be torn to pieces by wild beasts or by equally brutal human antagonists, were guarded with the utmost thoroughness in order to prevent them taking their own Hves and cheating the public of its amusement.
During the time when the Spanish Inquisition was functioning at its mightiest, the horrors of the tortures to which its victims were subjected were sufficient to cause men to go to any lengths to prevent themselves falling alive into the clutches of the Holy Office. Similarly in the early days of America, when conflicts between Indians and whites were frequent, the settlers preferred to shoot their womenfolk ana often themselves or one another rather than furnish the savages with material for torture.
29
30 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
In this fear of torture there is nothing calHng for con- demnation. No one reaUzing its true import, unless forti- fied by a love of martyrdom transcending all ordinary standards and bordering upon the psychopathological, could be blamed for expressing fear in the face of such a threat. It is not a matter of bravery. Torture destroys the roots from which bravery, or its negation, springs. In its worst stages, it transforms a human soul into a mass of pulsating flesh devoid of conscious cerebration.
The effects of torture are conditioned by the individual, and the extent and nature of the technique employed. Thus the very threat of torture will have a powerful effect in some and indeed most cases, while in others only the actual application of some form of punishment will prove in any way effective. Generally speaking, in its initial stages, or in its milder forms, torture destroys the will. In all its forms it injures the nerve power long before the stage is reached when consciousness fails.
Futility of Torture in the Securing of Confession or Evidence
We have seen that torture has always been accepted as the certain means of securing confession or evidence. When every form of persuasion or entreaty fails, the threat or the actual infliction of torture constitutes a trump card. Torture was used by savage races in all parts of the world to these ends. It was used by the ancient Romans. It was used throughout continental Europe during the Middle Ages. It was used in England in defiance of com- mon law. It is used secredy in America to-day. Private individuals from the beginning of time have been accus- tomed to practise torture for these same express purposes. There is no doubt that, on occasion, they do so at the present time.
Now the evil in connexion with the use of torture for securing confession is that invariably it presupposes the guilt of the individual. The whole point of torture in- duced for this purpose is that the persecution continues until the individual confesses or succumbs under the ordeal, which in most cases merely means that the torture
J
THE EFFECTS OF TORTURE 3 1
is suspended. All who had anything to do with the prac- tice of torture must have been well aware that its effects in relation to the securing of evidence were unilateral, for the compelling reason that the purpose of torture was to extract a confession or an admission of guilt or to secure the information that was being asked for; that behind every act of torture was a gratuitous assumption of guilt or knowledge.
In the power of torture is existent its own negation. Its evil, from a penological and a psychopathological stand- point, lies in its power to elicit fiction in the name of truth; to compel the accused to condemn himself by false evidence of his own making.
It is impossible for the persecuted individual to be proved innocent as a result of the torture. So that for all practical purposes, and whichever way one looks at it, torture, for the purpose of securing confession, is an unnecessary procedure. Its sole object is to justify the persecution and punishment of the accused. It is not administered in any hope of securing justice. From the point of view of equity therefore the procedure is unjust; from the point of view of securing the truth it is ineffective. Confession when obtained need not be the truth. Two thousand years ago Cicero demonstrated its uncertainty.
All moral and ethical values are endangered under torture of any kind. It is for this reason that in so many cases the victim betrays friends, accomplices, and even close relatives under the pain of torture. He will confess anything that the inquisitors wish him to confess : he will sign any document that is put before him irrespective of its nature and content.
The truth of this was admitted by the inquisitors them- selves. Von Spee, who was one of those who opposed the witch persecutions of the seventeenth century, mentioned that an inquisitor had boasted that if he could place the Pope on the rack, he would guarantee to induce him to plead guilty of sorcery. According to Scherr, it was this same Von Spec who said : " Treat the heads of the Church, the judges, or me, as you treat these unhappy ones (accused of witch- craft), subject any of us to the same torture, and you will discover that we are all sorcerers."^ And Bernard Dclicieux,
* Quoted by W. G. Sumner, Folkways, p. 241,
32 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
who was himself twice tortured by the Inquisition, and indeed died as a result of the treatment to which he was subjected, stated that Peter and Paul could have been proved guilty of heresy by the methods of the Inquisition/ Heinec- cius relates the case of a German soldier, charged with theft, who was repeatedly put to the torture, and who alleged that his own friends were guilty of a number of murders and other crimes which had never been committed. In 1793, the Parliament of Paris suspended two judges from their offices for having " ordered the execution of a man for the alleged murder of a woman, proved only by his own confession under torture — the woman being discovered alive two years after the execution of the supposed murder."* In 1630, when the city of Milan was stricken with a plague, rumour had it that the pestilence was due to the activities of a body of persons called Untori, who secretly smeared the doors and walls of the houses with a deadly ointment. The judges and the senate, affirmed Manzoni, secured convictions against several of these suspected individuals, on their own confes- sions, extorted by incredibly barbarous acts of torture.^
The efficacy of torture as a means of securing convictions (and no one can deny this efficacy) rests therefore in the fact that it leads to the conviction of the guilty and the innocent alike. Its efficacy, and likewise its popularity, rest in the fact that it invariably provides the persecutors with a means of satisfying their call for vengeance. Whenever and wherever torture has been in vogue the method adopted has been to continue the process until the victim confessed. The few cases where no confession was secured are negligible and do not invalidate the general statement that, in spite of any regulations or limitations respecting the severity or dura- tion of the torments prescribed, the principle recognized, adopted and approved by judges and law officers was to continue the torture until its object was achieved.
These effects suggest that the Spanish Inquisitors and the French and English courts, in their adoption of torture, were far more concerned in finding victims to persecute or in
^ H, C. Lea, A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, Vol. II p. 87.
* David Jardine, On the Use of Torture in the Criminal Lau oj England, 1837, p. 6.
* George Grotc, History of Greece, 1850, Vol. VII, p. 274.
CLUBBING A CRIMINAL TO DEATH IN THE SANDWICH ISLANDS
From an old engraving.
r
//^
/ n-^-^^7rrMr'~\rT
[ - -■'•-l^tv'-
After Catlin.
INITIATORY TORTURE RITES OF THE MANDANS (See Text, page 38.)
Prom Moore's Marty rology, 1809.
TORTURE OF ROASTING ALIVE
THE EFFECTS OF TORTURE 33
justifying their persecutions than in arriving at the truth; just as, in modern civilization, the law and the State arc sometimes more concerned in securing convictions than in administering justice.
Psychological E'ffects on Society
Society from its very toleration or approval of torture stands in mortal aw^e of it. There is no surer way of develop- ing the enmity of the community as a whole against a rival organization than the conviction of there existing a risk of persecution at the hands of that rival. In other words, the torturer, whether potential or actual, stands in fear and trembling at the possibility and prospect of being tortured himself. Although this may commend itself to some as a form of poetic justice, its effects are to extend and increase the potentialities for torture in all its forms and in all grades of society.
In the old days, fear of God's anger at the toleration of those who were worshippers of idols or heathen deities led to the torture of heretics in efforts at appeasement. The people concentrated on the persecution of others to ensure freedom from subjection to divine punishment themselves. Torture or be tortured has been, by implication, the unuttered battle-cry of humanity since man evolved as a consciously cerebrating anthropoid.
Certain it is that the example of the State is reflected in the attitude of society. This constitutes one of the major arguments against the use of torture in any penological system. It is owing to this fact that to punish brutality with an equal or an extra measure of brutality is indefensible. It is always evil. It cannot have anything but evil effects.
No one has a greater abhorrence of cruelty than I have — whether it be cruelty to human beings or to animals — but the contention that the only punishment for cruelty is the cat-o'-nine-tails suggests an entirely wrong approach to the problem with which we have to deal. It is impossible to hope for the abolition of torture so long as the State employs torture in its penal code. If it is wrong for an individual member of society to torture his fellows or animals, then it is wrong for the State to employ torture as a means of punish-
c
34 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
ing the offender. The culprit could probably just as logically provide some form of extenuation or justification for his own act of cruelty.
It must be remembered that between the State and the component members of society there is of necessity the closest communion. It is impossible that the acts of the State as an official body should not influence the acts of its members as private individuals and vice versa. This intimate correla- tion between the State and its members is seen in the way in which the authorities, often enough, are compelled by force of opinion to instigate more severe forms of punishment. Thus it was the frantic clamourings of the people which were responsible for the passing of the clause in the Treason Act of 1842 providing whipping as a penalty for aiming a firearm at a sovereign; of the Garrotters Act of 1863; ^^^ ^^ ^^^ provisions for the flogging of procurers and pimps in the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1912. Any extension of punishment by the State, whether it has originated in a demand on the part of the public or in an official department of the State itself, leads to an extension of the practice of cruelty by private individuals. In this way the whole thing becomes a vicious circle.
PART TWO
THE HISTORY OF TORTURE
CHAPTER VII
TORTURE AMONG SAVAGE AND PRIMITIVE RACES
The Transition fro?n Torture as a Religious Rite to Penal Torture
There is scarcely for the finding a savage or primitive race which does not employ torture either in its religious rites or its code of punishment. The nearness to animal behaviour- ism, which is a characteristic of savage life, is responsible for a crudity and a barbarity which appal modern civilization. Because of this fundamental approximation to nature, the tortures adopted by these savage tribes lack the ingenuity and subtlety of those originated by civilized and semi- civilized races.
In many parts of the world the tormenting of those captured in war was looked upon and accepted as inevitable. Often such captives were sacrificed to the gods. The acceptance by so many races of the necessity for human sacri- fice (cf . Chapter V), led to the widening of the criminal code in the race itself on the one hand, and the continual excur- sions into enemy country on the other, in efforts to secure a plenitude of victims to assauge the thirst for blood put into the mouths of the gods. So inevitable were torture and death looked upon by members of enemy tribes that in many cases they would not allow themselves to be taken alive. The Aztecs of Mexico invariably sacrificed any captives to the god Tezcatepoca. And the manner of their death was a horrible one. The captive was stretched on his back at full length
35
36 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
upon the sacrificial stone. His arms and legs were firmly held by priests. The executioner, a scarlet-robed official, using a sharp-edged instrument, slit open the breast of the victim, inserted his hand through the wound, and tore out the warm and palpitating heart. Sometimes, as a variation in the procedure, the arms and legs were methodically cut off before the heart was removed.
In Peru, says Picart, the Antis tribe sacrificed prisoners of distinction only, ordinary persons being executed on the spot and without ceremony. The victim to be sacrificed was stripped naked, tied securely to a stake, and then bits of flesh were hacked or slashed from various parts of the body with knives made of flint stone ground very sharp. The breasts, buttocks, thighs, calves, and other fleshy parts were first attacked, much in the manner in which the Chinese execu- tioner proceeds in the torture known as the " Death by the Thousand Cuts " (cf. page 105). The sacrificial and magical elements were, however, of outstanding importance and significance in this particular Antis rite : men, women and children dipped their fingers in and smeared their persons with the blood of the victim. Nursing mothers daubed this sacrificial blood upon the teats of their breasts, allowing their babies to imbibe it with the milk.
Torture is rarely absent from the theosophic, initiatory and other rites adopted by savage tribes. The callous attitude of primitive man towards bloodshed, the lack of sympathy for suffering, and the phlegmatic reaction to death itself, arc all in accord with the exhibition of stoicism in circumstances of danger or suffering. In some cases this stoic attitude, or bravery, is deliberately induced. The young men are not only inured to hardship and danger, but they are subjected to certain specific ordeals designed to inculcate fortitude in the face of most agonizing pain. The slightest sign of cowardice in the course of the ordeal, or initiation, as it is termed, would be greeted with scorn by the onlookers, and the young man would never again be able to hold up his head. Probably he would be banished from the tribe for ever. Although, in most cases, the initiate is forced to undergo the ordeals, because of the inevitable results of any refusal, he becomes for all practical purposes a willing party, and virtually therefore the torture amounts to self-torture.
TORTURE AMONG SAVAGE AND PRIMITIVE RACES 37
The Place of Torture in Initiatory Rites
The forms which the initiatory rite takes arc many, and the suffering involved may be of a relatively mild variety involving no actual risk to life itself, or it may reach such a degree of severity that a considerable proportion of the initiates fail to survive the test. An example of the first type is the flogging rite practised by the Indian tribes of Guiana. According to Brett :
" The young men and boys, fantastically adorned, vi^ere ranged in two parallel rows facing each other, each holding in his right hand the Maquarri from which the dance takes its name. The Maquarri is a whip, more than three feet long, and capable of giving a severe cut, as their bleeding legs amply testified. They waved these whips in their hands as they danced, uttering alternate cries which resembled the note of a certain bird often heard in the forests. At some little distance from the dancers were couples of men lashing each other on the leg. The man whose turn it was to receive the lash stood firmly on one leg, advancing the other; while his adversary, stooping, took deliberate aim, and, springing from the earth to add vigour to his stroke, gave his opponent a severe cut."*
Of a far more serious nature are the rites of initiation involving mutilation of the genitals which are practised by the Australian Blacks, and which apply to both sexes on attaining puberty. Although circumcision, whether prac- tised in infancy or at puberty, can scarcely be termed torture, the mutilations employed so universally among the abori- gines of Australia, Polynesia, Borneo and other places, certainly entail an amount of suffering and pain, often for protracted periods, which can be described by no other word. Similar mutilations, in other parts of the world, rank as punishments; and even among the races adopting them as religious rites these same operative measures are sometimes featured in the penological code. According to Czekanow- ski, among the Azandeh race, the punishment for adultery ' W. H. Brett, The Indian Tribes of Guiana, 1868, p, 154.
38 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
consists of the removal of the exterior genitalia and the amputation of both hands/
The mika operation of the Australian Blacks consists of incising the male sexual member, so as to expose and open the urethra, from the scrotum to the glans penis. The operation is performed on the attainment of puberty, and no anaesthetic is used. The patient is forcibly held down by assistants, while the operator, with a knife or sharp flint, cuts into the urethral channel, extending the opening thus made by forcibly tearing the tissue apart with his fingers. The suffering and pain involved are tremendous, and owing to the total lack of aseptic conditions the operation is not devoid of danger to life itself.
The sexual mutilations practised upon the girls of many races are cruel and barbarous. The commonest of these is known as infibulation. It is adopted by the natives of East Africa and Abyssinia. At puberty, the clitoris and the labia minora, and sometimes the labia majora as well, are cut or hacked off with the aid of a dull knife. The operator is usually an old woman.
Of all initiatory rites ever practised by savages, however, those adopted by the North American Indians probably ranked as the most terrifying, involving excruciating and diabolical torture. The procedure varied in different tribes, but that adopted by the Mandans appears to have been the most pitiless and sanguinary. Previous to the actual ordeal the young man was emaciated by fasting. The procedure, says Catlin, was as follows :
" The initiate placed himself on his hands and feet. An inch or more of the flesh of each shoulder, or each breast, was taken up between the thumb and finger by the man who held the knife in his right hand, and the knife, which had been ground sharp on both edges, and then hacked and notched with the blade of another, to make it produce as much pain as possible, was forced through the flesh below the fingers, and being with- drawn, was followed with a splint or skewer, from the other, who held a bunch of each in his left hand, and
^ Felix Bryk, Circumcision in Man and Woman, translated by David Berger, American Ethnological Press, New York, 1934.
TORTURE AMONG SAVAGE AND PRIMITIVE RACES 39
was ready to force them through the wound. There were then two cords lowered from the top of the lodge (by men who were placed on the lodge outside for the purpose), which were fastened to these splints or skewers, and they instantly began to haul him up; he was thus raised until his body was suspended from the ground where he rested, until the knife and a splint were passed through the flesh or integuments in a similar manner on each arm below the shoulder, below the elbow, and below the knees. Each one was then raised with the cords, until the weight of his body was suspended by them, and then while the blood was streaming down their limbs, the by- standers hung upon the splints each man's appropriate shield, bow and quiver, etc."^
As if this, in itself, did not involve enough in the way of torture, the victim was then gradually raised by means of the ropes until the weights swung clear from the ground, thus ensuring that not only the weight of the man's body but also that of the various impedimenta attached to his limbs were thrown upon those parts to which the ropes were attached. So great was the strain upon the flesh where the skewers were inserted that it was lifted from the surrounding tissue at these points in pinnacles of six to eight inches in height. And so, in a state of such agonizing pain as makes one shudder even to visualize, these initiates continued to hang in the air, covered with their own gore, biting back every suspicion of a groan in their efforts to emerge trium- phant from this supreme test of hardihood and courage. They were, says Catlin, " appalling and frightful to look at." When those in authority were satisfied, they ordered the bodies to be lowered to the ground, where they lay appar- ently lifeless, coming round in their own good time.
One might well imagine that such an ordeal was enough to satisfy the most exacting of disciplinarians. But no, this did not represent the end of the initiate's sufferings. There was yet another test to be endured. It was known as " the last race," or, in the language of the tribe, " Eh-\e-nah-\a- nah'fic\r Each of the young men was put in charge of
^ Geo. Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and Condi twns of the North American Indians, 1841, p. 17c.
40 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
two older athletic warriors. One of these escorts, as they might well be called, stood on the right side and the other on the left side of the initiate, grasping the loose end of a broad leather strap which was wrapped around each wrist. To his flesh at various points were attached, with skewers, several heavy weights. At a given signal, the two escorts started running around a large ring, dragging with them the young man in their charge. Round and round, the various initiates, dragged by their escorts, continued in pro- cession, the weights pulling at the flesh until it came out in great, ugly, bleeding lumps. The process continued until the victim fainted through loss of blood and exhaustion.
A curious form of torture, according to Greenwood, was adopted as an initiatory rite by the Mandrucu tribe of Amazonian Indians. To look at, the instruments employed in this particular ordeal appeared remarkably innocent. They consisted of two cylindrical cases fashioned out of palm- tree bark, measuring about a foot in length, and stopped at one end. They were for all the world like a pair of huge and crudely made gloves, and it was as gloves they were used. The initiate thrust his hands into the cases, and, followed by a procession of onlookers, which in fact amounted to all the available members of the tribe, started upon a tour of the village or camp, stopping at the door of every wigwam to execute a sort of dance. These " gloves " were, however, by no means so innocent as they seemed, and the dance their wearer performed was more real than mimic. For each gauntlet contained a collection of ants and other insects, all selected for their venomous, biting capacities. And, says Greenwood, " what with the heat engendered within and the blazing sun playing without the bark gloves, the wretched hands seem literally a furnace.'" The " ordeal of the veno- mous gloves," in very truth, was something to be dreaded.
Punishment by Torture
Turning from these initiatory modes to the infliction of torture purely as a means of punishment for various crimes and offences, we are struck with the universality of the practices employed in various parts of the world. Because
* lames Greenwood, Curiosities of Salvage Life, 1865, pp. 95-6.
TORTURE AMONG SAVAGE AND PRIMITIVE RACES 4 1
of the nearness to death or severe injury which may be classed as a normal characteristic of savage life, and because of the callousness and indifference to human suffering thus generated, even the infliction of capital punishment is either carried out in a terribly cruel manner involving prolonged agony, or is preceded by torture. In the Sandwich Islands criminals who are sentenced to death are either beaten with a club until life is extinct or strangled with a rope. For those crimes where the death sentence is not pronounced, punishment assumes some form of mutilation. For instance, where a native belonging to the ordinary classes is convicted of being on terms of intimacy with a chief's wife, the punish- ment prescribed is that his eyes should be put out. The procedure is described by Arago :
" I have not seen it executed myself, but the poor wretch with whom Gaimard and myself conversed in the presence of M. Rives, told us how it was executed upon him. Two men held him by the feet, two more by the arms, and another by the hair of the head, whilst a sixth, who was the executioner, gave him a violent blow with his fist over each eye, and almost at the same instant plunged his forefinger into the lachrymal angle, and pulled out the ball; the other eye was taken out in the same manner, yet we could scarcely perceive a cicatrice under the lower eye-lid."*
For sheer barbarity, few savages have ever surpassed the North American Indians. The sanguinary, splenetic and ferocious punishments inflicted not only upon prisoners of war, but also upon those in their own tribes guilty of crimes and misdemeanours, have never been exceeded. In the long and terrible struggle between the pioneer whites and the native Indians, which raged throughout the eighteenth century and well into the nineteenth, death by torture was an everyday occurrence. The tearing out of the eyes and the placing of red-hot embers in the sockets; various forms of mutilation, and burning to death over a slow fire, were customary methods. During the period from 1846 to 1852
* J. Arago, Narrative of a Voyage Round the World, 1823, Vol. II, p. 139.
42 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
it is estimated that in Texas alone two hundred whites were put to death by torture every year. A frequent practice was to tie a captive to a tree, and day by day to cut away a Hmb or a portion of the flesh until ultimately death mercifully supervened.
The Choctaws, one of the most barbarous of the tribes of American aborigines, were peculiarly ingenious in their methods. Before scalping their expiring victims, these savages stripped them naked, pinioned their arms, and tied a strong grape-vine, which acted as a rope, about their necks. The other end of the vine was fastened to the top of the war- pole. In this way the prisoner could run around the pole over a considerable area of ground, much in the way that a bear could run around in the old days when bear-baiting was an English sport. Then, says Greenwood:
" The women make a furious onset with their burning torches; his pain is soon so excruciating that he rushes from the pole with the fury of the most savage beast of prey, lashes them with the trailing vine-rope, and bites and kicks and tramples on all he can catch. The circle immediately fills again either with the same or fresh persons; they attack him on every side — now he runs to the pole for shelter, but the flames pursue him. . . . Should he sink or flag under the torture, they pour over him a quantity of cold water till his spirits recover, and so the like cruelties are renewed until he falls down and happily becomes insensible to pain."^
The Indians who were captured by enemy tribes and subjected to various tortures bore their sufferings with a stoicism for which the ordeals described in the earlier part of this chapter acted as preparatory torments, and which were no doubt ordained to this end. For a " brave " to groan or supplicate was to disgrace not only himself but the tribe of which he was a member. Not all the whites whose unfortunate lot it was to be made prisoners by the Redskins could be expected to show such stoicism and fortitude. But some did. And of those of whom we have any authentic record none is more remarkable than the case of Father Jean de Brebcuf, who was one of that brave company forming the
' James Greenwood, op. cit., pp. 35-6.
TORTURE AMONG SAVAGE AND PRIMITIVE RACES 43
Jesuit mission to the Hurons in Canada. He was captured by the Iroquois in 1649 and was put to death by torture. For stark horror the record of the sufferings which this missionary had to endure before he died is probably un- rivaUed in all history. It was undoubtedly an instance where the powerful physique and iron constitution of the victim were to be regretted purely because they caused him to have to endure sufiering and agony which long before would have killed or rendered insensioie a weaker man.
To start with, de Brebeuf's hands were chopped off. His flesh, at many and different parts of the body, was pierced with pointed iron instruments of various kinds. Tomahawks made red-hot were suspended around his neck, so that every turn of the head was a torment; while a belt composed of bark smeared with resin and pitch was tied around his body and set alight. These various tor- ments, in all their severity, were such as would neither kill nor render unconscious a strong man. They were specifi- cally designed to ensure a gruesome liQgering death and to provide prolonged entertainment for the savages who capered around their prisoners — other members of the mission, as well as a number of Hurons, were captives too and were being treated in similar fashion. But de Brebeuf, we are told, endured these agonies staunchly. More, he lifted up his voice and preached to his persecutors. They retaliated by seizing burning brands from a fire and thrusting them into his mouth. Even this could not stop the flow of eloquence. They proceeded to further out- rages and mutilations, eventually silencing him for all time by cutting off his lips. Then, over his body, they flung, again and again, buckets of boiling water. They cut pieces of flesh from his limbs and trunk, avoiding any part likely to prove fatal, roasted them in the fire and ate them there and then before his eyes. The sands of life were running low by this time, but before death actually came, they managed to amputate his feet and to tear o£E his scalp. ^
^ For a full narrative of the life and martyrdom of this heroic missionary, I would refer the reader to The Travels and Sufferings of Father Jean de BrSbeuf, edited by Theodore Besterman, Golden Cockerel Press, 1938; to which work I am indebted for the salieiu details contained in the above account.
CHAPTER VIII
TORTURE IN ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME
Torture of Free Citizens
In the statement so often repeated by various writers that torture {qucestio) in Greece and Rome was rigidly re- stricted to slaves, we see another example of the way in which historians and others have been misled through the restriction of the term to the mode of securing confession. In Greece, for example, although torture for the purpose of obtaining testimony or confession was never applied to free citizens, it was used as a means of punishment appli- cable to all classes. Aristophanes alludes to the wheel being frequently employed for this purpose.^ The rack, too, was in regular use. Among other free-men, Antiphon was racked to death. Accordmg to Polybius, the tyrant Nabis used an infamous instrument of torture shaped like a woman (anticipating the " Virgin Mary " of the Spanish Inquisition and the Jungfernkuss of mediaeval Germany) in which the victims were clutched undl they paid tribute in money. (See Chapter XXII.)
In Rome the free-man was not, in any ordinary circum- stances, liable to torture as a means of extorting confession. The exception to this rule was in the case of anyone accused of treason. The subjection to torture of those sus- pected or accused of this particular crime was first justified by Arcadias Charisius. Gibbon implies that the extension of legal torture to cases of treason virtually annulled the principle by which the free-man was supposed to be exempt from the qucestio except in these supposedly rare cases of treason, because it was a comparatively easy matter to bring a variety of offences into this somewhat elusive category. Treason, says Gibbon, " included any offence that the subtlety of lawyers could derive from an hostile intention^ The rank of the accused individual did
* Lysistrata.
44
TORTURE IN ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME 45
not save him, for it was contended that in regard to treason all were on an equal footing. This same waiving of all rights to exception on account of official position or noble birth applied in the case of anyone accused of sorcery or witchcraft.
In regard to certain other crimes also, the free-man could, with some exceptions, be subjected to torture. A woman accused of poisoning her husband could be put to the quastio; so, too, could anyone who, in giving evidence, betrayed inconsistency. In the reign of Severus, one guilty of adultery could be tortured; under Maximus the quastio was applicable in cases of incest; and under Con- stantine to sorcery and magic. The most notable of the exceptions, in relation to all crimes except the above men- tioned ones of sorcery and treason, applied to the aristo- cracy, to priests, to pregnant women, to soldiers, and to children below the age of fourteen years. Torture was restricted, however, to those actually accused of the crimes concerned; it was not applicable to witnesses, and it could not be applied to a prisoner before the actual time of trial. And it is noteworthy that anyone bringing a charge of treason against another individual, and failing to substan- tiate such a charge, could himself be subjected to the qtUEstto.
Turning to the use of torture as a means of punishment, we find that its use was widespread. In some cases it con- stituted the whole of the punishment; in others it was but a part of it, preceding banishment or the death penalty. Under the Republic, private individuals were empowered to torture debtors, confining them in private prisons and subjecting them to any form of torture short of causing death, until the debts were paid. Offences against the Church in particular were punished with torture of the utmost severity. By the express order of Justinian anyone guilty of insulting a priest or a bishop in a church could be tortured. In some cases mutilation was the prescribed punishment. In the early days, the feet and hands were often amputated in toto, but Justinian tempered the sever- ity of this law, restricting it to the amputation of one hand only. In accordance with the Theodosian Code, anyone convicted of heresy could be flagellated with a whip the
46 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
thongs of which were weighted with lead (contusus plumbo). Apart from those guilty of this particular crime, of certain other offences against the Church, and of adul- tery, which was punished by flogging and the amputation of the nose, whipping was not inflicted upon free-men. It was the punishment of the slave : a mark of dishonour and degradation so profound that the average Roman pre- ferred death to scourging.
The Torture of Slaves
In Greece and in Rome the torture of slaves was ac- cepted as their lot and destiny. Scarcely a voice was raised against it. Even the philosophers were in favour of it. Aristotle, for one, expressed his approval. Plato, in pre- senting his concept of Eutopia, admitted the necessity of one law for the free-man and another law for the slave. He subscribed to the common and popular doctrine of flogging the slave for an offence which, in the case of a free-man, deserved only censure; of putting the slave to death where the free-man would be let off with a fine.
The slaves in ancient Greece were at first confined to those captured in warfare or during marauding expedi- tions. The nation had realized that the forcing of enemies to perform all the degrading and humiliating tasks of life was a far better proposition than executing them or con- fining them in dungeons. The principle of slavery, once it had been put into practice, appealed to the populace. More and more did people applaud the notion of having distasteful work performed by someone who could neither refuse to do the tasks set them, nor could command any- thing in the way of remuneration beyond their bare keep. It was natural that as the supply of captives became insuffi- cient, eyes should be cast upon other means of securing fresh and additional recruits. Criminals or offenders were pressed into service. Until Solon stopped the practice, any- one who owed money and could not pay the debt became automatically the slave of his creditor. Then came the traffic in mankind. Slaves were bought and sold like cattle. In the notorious slave-market of Athens thev were
TORTURE IN ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME 47
exposed in all their nakedness — men and women bodi — and sold to the highest bidder.
As it was recognized in Roman law that so far as a slave was concerned the best and in most cases the only way in which the truth could be secured was by torture, and as, additionally, the owner was vested with very nearly absolute power, the life of a slave, often enough, was punctuated by continual punishments of the most cruel and brutal nature.
All of which does not mean there were no State regula- tions respecting torture. There were many such regulations. But these were in respect of those modes of punishment apart from and in addition to the private tortures to which every slave was liable to be exposed; an owner being entided to punish any slave in his possession for any offence, real or imaginary, and to any extent he decreed. The State regula- tions were restricted to offences coming within the jurisdic- tion of the courts. For instance, whether the slave was accused of a crime or whether he was merely a witness (with certain exceptions) he could be tortured for the purpose of eliciting the truth. Where a husband charged his wife with adultery, the slaves of the husband, of the wife, and of the wife's father, could all be subjected to torture in order to extract evidence. Generally speaking, however, no slave was allowed to give evidence against a master. Exceptions to this general rule were concerned with charges of treason.*
The property right of the owner in the slave affected the matter of torture by any other authority than his own. It was a reasonable argument that the after-value of a slave might, as a result of judicial punishment, be seriously im- paired. Thus, where a slave was tortured against the will or without the express consent of his master, security was given to the owner for the cash value of the slave. In the event of an accusation being brought against a slave by some- one other than his master, and this accusation being proved to be false, the owner of the tortured slave was entided to secure recompense from the accuser for the damage sustained up to double the value of the slave.
The nature of the torture and its extent rested with the
* Adultery, coining, and frauds concerning the revenue were looked upon as coming under the heading of treason.
48 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
judge. Only when all other proofs had been duly submitted and examined could torture be resorted to. In the case of an accusation, when all evidence had been presented, and the only remaining point to secure conviction was confession, torture could be ordered. If this torture failed to secure a confession, despite the evidence against the accused being strong and wellnigh complete, the judge was empowered to order its repetition. He could give such an order again and again, there being no limit fixed to the number of repetitive tortures where the occasion was deemed to warrant them. Unlike a free-man, a slave was denied the right of appeal, though his master possessed this right. While any such appeal was under consideration the accused was confined in prison but he could not be subjected to torture in any form.
Of the forms of judicial torture employed, the rack {equuleus) was perhaps the principal, as well as the earliest, being referred to by Cicero. Compression of the arm by means of gradually tightening cords was frequently used to induce witnesses to give evid- ROMAN FLAGELLUM ^^^^ gj^^^^ ^^^^ continually The coin depicts a contest punished by flagellation. Whips
between gladiators r J o r
of various types were used. The terrible Roman fiagellum^ made of thongs of ox-leather, cut into the flesh like a knife. According to Horace, the sadistic cruelty and vindictiveness of some judges led them to order floggings which were so excessive, and continued so long, that the executioner often enough, through sheer exhaustion, was obliged to desist before the sentence was completed. Many slaves di^d under the whip. For lesser crimes there was the scutica, a whip consisting of thongs of parchment; while for minor offences, the ferula, a flat strap of leather, was used. Apart from sentences given in the courts, slave-owners used the whip daily and for all manner of offences. Nor were there in force any regulations respect- ing these private punitive measures either as regards the severity of the punishment or the type of whip to be used. Slave-drivers exercised their ingenuity in devising more
From Moore's Martyrology, 1809.
TORTURES OF THE PROTESTANTS IN THE PIEDMONT VALLEY DURING THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
<
X OJ
I s
£ u c- I
TORTURE IN ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME 49
terrible instruments of correction than any used by the courts. The thongs were knotted with bones and pieces of metal; sometimes lead balls, cruel hooks or spikes were affixed to the ends. Ladies who could not wield the whip themselves hired the public executioner or compelled other slaves to flog their servants.
Apart from flogging, the forms of punishment to which slaves were subjected were numerous, and although not all these punitive measures could justifiably be called tortures, the majority, indubitably and without any straining of the truth, were flagrandy cruel and brutal. Slaves who attempted to escape and were caught, were often branded upon the forehead. So were thieves. In other cases, they were suspended by the hands, with weights attached to their feet, and in this position whipped until near to death. The iron collar and the manacles were in common usage. For certain forms of theft one hand was hacked off at the wrist.
Where the sentence was death, crucifixion ranked as the most common method of execution. A slave condemned to death by crucifixion was compelled to wear the furcUy a collar in shape something like a letter V. The furca was fixed over the back of the neck, the ends resting on the shoulders. The criminal's hands were bound to his thighs. In this fashion he was marched to the place of execution, while all the way carnifices, walking behind, beat him with cudgels or flogged him with whips.
Under Constantine a slave guilty of seduction, or an accessory to the crime, was put to death by burning or the pouring of molten lead down the throat.
The Roman women, we are told, had certain of their young male slaves made into eunuchs, for purposes of sexual pleasure and to avoid the risk of parentage; a procedure which was considered to exhibit a marked advance in every respect on the practice of the Scythian women, who, says Montaigne, " put out the eyes of all their slaves and prisoners of war, that they might have their pleasure of them, and they never the wiser. "^
^ Montaigne's Essays (Charles Cotton's translation), 1711, Book III, Ch. V, p. no.
50 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
The Roman Gladiators
Of all the tortures which flourished in the mighty days of Rome, nothing approached in fiendish ingenuity and in horror those to which the gladiators were compelled to sub- mit as a means of providing entertainment for the populace. The gladiatorial exhibitions of ancient Rome have acquired a degree of celebrity and a reputation which exist to this day. Much of their brutality has been covered up or purposely obliterated in the passage of time, and to the average English- man or American of to-day they rank as evidence of the sport-loving qualities of the Romans of old. Their true nature is rarely commented upon.
In these exhibitions men were matched to fight against wild beasts and against one another. The gladiators, about whom an aura of glamour has been woven, contrary to popular opinion, were not willing contestants, longing for an opportunity to show their strength, skill and bravery. They were not even paid contestants. They were captives, criminals, offenders, et al., who had been sentenced to death. The gladiatorial exhibition was their prescribed mode of execution. It was just as surely a method of execution as if they had been hanged or shot. It differed only from other forms of execution in being infinitely more cruel, in involv- ing for the condemned man tortures indescribable in their nature and extent. The notion even that the man thus forced to take part in this fight to the death had a slender chance of escaping with his life is a fallacy. He had no such chance. His death, in some horrible form, and to the accom- panying cheers of the spectators, was a certainty. Litde wonder that the authorities, to avoid being deprived of their sadistic pleasure, had to exercise the most strict watch and to take all manner of precautions, to ensure that the con- demned man did not commit suicide before the time came for him to feature in a gladiatorial display. Often, despite every precaution, he did commit suicide. One such notable instance occurred when Symmachus ordered a number of prisoners to fight in honour of his son. They strangled one another to escape the destiny which he had designed for them/
* Quoted by W. G. Sumner, Folf^u/ays, p. 572,
TORTURE IN ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME 51
Almost every type of savage animal was used m the amphitheatres. Lions, bears, leopards, tigers, panthers and wolves were pitted against men in fights to the death. The human fighter was hopelessly handicapped from the start. In many cases where wolves or mad dogs were their oppon- ents the men were tied to stakes just as, a thousand years later, bears and bulls were tied to furnish pleasure for English audiences. Some faced certain death bravely, put- ting up the best fight they could. Others, of weaker or softer calibre, refused to enter the arena, in which case they were whipped until they changed their minds, or they were flung to the waiting animals, neck and crop. When the supply of criminals or captives ran short, slaves were purchased to take their place. The vast audiences which gathered regularly in the amphitheatres were not to be deprived of their amuse- ment.
Occasionally women were forced to fight in the arena. Nero, master sadist of them all, we are told, gloated over such exhibitions. According to Martial, on one occasion a woman was mangled by a lion. The same authority instances a case where a robber was nailed to the cross, and in this position was ripped to pieces by a bear. In all cases the manner of death was frightful to witness. With scarce an exception, before the end came, the victims were begging to be granted the favour of a quick execution.
CHAPTER IX
THE PROGRESS OF TORTURE
The Attitude of the Church
The pagan gods were merciless, revengeful, unjust and cruel. Yahveh, the God of Israel, according to the wealth of testi- mony provided in the Old Testament, for sheer cruelty, terrorism and frightfulness, surpassed belief. Those who displeased Him He massacred in thousands; He smote the Israelites "with a very great plague";^ He approved the punishment of derelictions of duty and petty offences by such tortures as stoning to death and burning alive.
It was not unnatural that the ecclesiastical authorities, in punishing offences committed by the people, should be inspired by the example of the god they worshipped and feared. And further, in particular reference to those crimes which were specifically directed against God and His com- mands, was it natural they should be especially concerned in following divine example and instruction. Thus heresy and blasphemy, in particular, being likely to anger God, were punished with the utmost rigour. Moreover, as regards all crimes, the primitive concept of vengeance, put into the mouth of Yahveh, as in the days of the pagans the same concept was put into the mouths of a miscellany of deities, represented the keynote and fundament of every form of punishment.
The development of religion from its basic anthropo- morphic sun-worship into a trinitarian Godhead, with a visualized heaven in which there was to be a future perpetual sinless life, had its effects upon the concept of punishment. Death was never looked upon as annihilation. Punishment upon this earth was viewed with something approaching resignation by the person who was assured of a life free from persecution in another and far better world. It was due to this firm conviction that the martyrs bore their persecutions
^ Numbers xi. 33. 52
THE PROGRESS OF TORTURE 53
with a stoicism which in these days, when the Christian faith lingers in an emasculated state, is almost incomprehensible.
The Christian Approach
The Hebrew policy of retribution, as we have already noted, was adopted by the early Christians. The humani- tarianism of Jesus, as expressed so repeatedly in the Gospels, has conveyed an impression that Christianity was mightily concerned with the negation of all cruelty. The belief is fallacious. The concept of vengeance lived. We read in St. Matthew : " The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth."
To a very big extent the Christian Church adopted the Roman law of torture in regard to treason, applying it to heresy, which they construed to be " treason against God."^ It also adopted the principle of confiscation of all property owned by those guilty of heresy;^ a policy peculiarly danger- ous to society as a whole in view of the Church's perpetual need of funds and the opportunities afforded by such a measure for securing such funds.
The ecclesiastical authorities condemned every faith out- side Christianity as demonology; they averred, in a crescendo of denunciation, that the worship of pagan and heathen deities angered the true Christian trinitarian Godhead; that wherever a heretic reared up his ugly head there was danger to the whole neighbourhood through God's anger being directed towards the inhabitants of this particular spot. Lecky says : " It is not surprising that the populace should have been firmly convinced that every great catastrophe that occurred was due to the presence of enemies of the gods."^ Nor is it to be wondered at that when once the public discovered a heretic in their midst they looked upon him as we to-day should look upon a leper; that in their mortal
^ Crimm Icesce majestatis divince.
' The term heresy included analogous or associated offences, notably
blasphemy. rr i t
* W. E. H. Lecky, History of European Morals, 1869, Vol. I, p. 437.
54 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
terror they clamoured for his immediate extermination.
The result of all this was that heresy, " the crime against God," was considered by all to be the most terrible offence conceivable, meriting the severest punishment and calling aloud to heaven for vengeance. To prove the guilt of any- one suspected of heresy was a matter of vital necessity,
Tortures of the Middle Ages as depicted in Ulric Tengler's Layenspiegel (1511)
transcending in importance anything else. To secure this proof, by the extraction of a confession from the accused party, was a case where, it was held, the end justified any measures. Once anyone was suspected of heresy the public waited neither for guidance nor authority from Church or State. They took the law into their own hands. They tortured the suspect until a confession was secured, and then
THE PROGRESS OF TORTURE 55
without more ado burned him at the stake. The fact of an individual being accused of heresy was sufficient to ensure his martyrdom. Often enough the wish was father to the thought. It only required the occurrence of something in the nature of a catastrophe for the people to form the conclusion that there was a heretic in their midst. Once such a conclusion was reached, they searched the district diligently until someone was unearthed who, in accordance with the elastic interpretation of which heresy was capable, could be accused of the crime.
The penalty of burning may be said therefore to have been devised in the first place, not by the State, but by the public. Here, as in so many cases, mob law anticipated or suggested State law. Similarly, the Inquisition was rendered possible by the public approval of the torture of persons suspected of heresy. The Inquisition was not, in its early stages at any rate, the detested and abhorred tyrannous establishment that certain historians would have us believe; to the contrary, it was approved by the public. In many instances it may truly be said that the Inquisition saved suspected heretics from an even more evil fate.
Once the populace had started the campaign against heresy, the Church took control and organized the crude efforts of the rabble into a definite system of persecution, which came to its head in this powerful Holy Inquisition, with the activities of which we shall deal in another chapter.
The notion, however, that the Catholic Church held a monopoly of the art of persecution may, to members of the Protestant faith, have been a comforting thought, but it by no means represented the whole truth. It was merely that the activities of the Inquisition, because of their extent, their consistency and their unexampled rigour, eclipsed all the other forms of torture that were in progress during the Middle Ages. It was owing to the Inquisitions being known and celebrated as places of torture, and the spectacularity of the autos da fe, that these particular operations overshadowed all others; and so far as history is concerned have sufficed to relegate to the background every other contemporary form of persecution.
While the Church persecuted the followers of all rival faiths deemed to show possibilities of becoming powerful
50 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
competitors of Christianity, they disapproved of judicial torture. St. Augustine denounced it, contending that should the accused individual " be innocent, he v^ill undergo for an uncertain crime a certain punishment, and that not for having committed a crime, but because it is unknown whether he committed it." In 384 a synod at Rome denounced the use of torture by civil courts.^ And at all times the Church attempted, not always with success, to secure the exemption of the clergy from submission to the qucestion in all cases except those tried by the ecclesiastical courts.
The Persecutions Suffered by the Waldenses
About the middle of the seventeenth century the mem- bers of the sect known as the Waldenses, who had settled in the valleys of the Piedmont to escape persecution in their native countries, were accused of heresy.
On January 25, 1655, under the sanction of the Duke of Savoy, Andrew Gastaldo, doctor of civil laws, issued the following order :
" That every head of a family, with the individuals of that family, of the reformed religion, of what rank, degree, or condition soever, none excepted, inhabiting and possessing estates in Lucerne, St. Giovanni, Bibiana, Campiglione, St. Secondo, Lucernetta, La Torre, Fenile, and Bricherassio, should, within three days after the publication thereof, withdraw out of the said places. . . . This to be done on pain of death, and confiscation of houses and goods, unless within the limited time they turned Roman-catholics."
The result of this edict was the commencement of a rigorous campaign of persecution conducted by the Catholics in the district and by the troops.
" The armed multitude," says an eye-witness, " fell apon the Waldenses in a most furious manner. Nothing now was to be seen but the face of horror and despair; blood stained the floors of the houses, dead bodies be-
* Lea, Superstition and Force, Philadelphia, 1878.
THE PROGRESS OF TORTURE 57
Strewed the streets, groans and cries were heard from all parts. Some armed themselves, and skirmished with the troops; and many, with their families, fled to the mountains. In one village they cruelly tormented 150 women and children, after the men were fled; beheading the women, and dashing out the brains of the children. In the towns of Villaro and Bobio, most of those that refused to go to mass, who were over fifteen years of age, they crucified with their heads downwards; and the greater number of those under that age were strangled."
The soldiers, in particular, exercised their lust for cruelty m a most diabolical manner. Mutilations of every possible form preceded the coup de grace, in many cases, no final blow was given, the maimed victims being left to die of starvation or bleed to death. Isaiah Garcino was literally minced; Mary Raymondet had the flesh sliced from her bones piece by piece until she died in frightful agony. Giovanni Pelanchion was tied by one leg to the tail of a mule and dragged through the streets of Lucerne, the mob pelting his body with stones. Ann Charbonierre was trans- fixed upon a stake and left to die slowly. Others were suspended from trees and beams with iron hooks piercing their abdomens. Holes were bored in Bartholomew Frasche's heels, ropes were passed through the open wounds, and in this way he was dragged to the dungeon where he died.
A favourite torture was to place small bags of gunpowder in the mouths of the victims and then set fire to them. Daniel Rambaut had his fingers and toes amputated in sections, one joint being cut off each day, in an effort to induce him to embrace the Roman faith. Burning at the stake, drowning and suffocation were common methods of execution.
Sara Rastignole des Vignes, for refusing to repeat Jesus Maria, had a sickle thrust into the lower part of her abdo- men. Another young woman, Martha Constantine, was raped and then killed by cutting off her breasts.
" A servant of Jacopo Michalino of Bobio," says Morland, " received divers stabs with a dagger in the
58 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
soles of his feet, and in his ears, by the hands of one GuHelmo Roche, a famous massacrer of Lucerna, and another called Mandolin, who afterwards cut off his privy members, and then applied a burning candle to the wound, frying it with the flame thereof, that so the blood might be stopt, and the torments of that miserable creature prolonged. This being done to their mindes, they tore off his nayls with hot pincers, to try if they could by any means force him to renounce his religion. But when nothing would do, they tied one of his legs to the Marquis of Lucerna's mule, and so dragged him along the streets, till such time as he had almost ended his painfull life; and then binding his head about with a cord, they strained and twisted the same with a staff until they wrung his head from his body."^
Children were cut to pieces, decapitated and killed in various ways before the eyes of their parents. Mary Pelanchion was stripped naked and hung head downwards from a bridge over a river, and in this position made a target for the soldiers to fire at. Cypriania Bastia, on being com- manded to renounce his religion and accept the Popish faith, said : " I would rather renounce life, or turn dog," to which a priest answered, " For that expression you shall both renounce life and be given to the dogs." Bastia was thrown into prison, and when deprivation of food had brought him near to death, he was pitched into the road and left there to be devoured by wild dogs.
Jacopo di Rone, a schoolmaster of Roras, was stripped to the skin, had his nails torn off with red-hot pincers, and holes bored through his hands. A rope was then tied around his middle, and by this he was led through the streets of Lucerne, with a soldier-guard marching on each side. Alter- nately, as the procession moved along, one of these guards sliced off a bit of the victim's flesh with a sword, and the other struck him with a bludgeon, both of them crying, " Wilt thou yet go to mass? "
As a result of these continual persecutions and murders, the towns and villages of the Piedmont valleys were almost
* Samuel Morland, The History of the Evangelical Churches of the Valleys of Piedmont, London, 1658, Book II, p. 341.
THE PROGRESS OF TORTURE 59
depopulated. Those who were not actually exterminated on the spot, for the most part, after escaping to the mountains, died of starvation, or fell victims to disease.
The Persecutions Suffered by the Qua\ers
In 1646 George Fox founded the Society of Friends. The movement met wdth much success. In a few years it became a serious menace to the established Church. Then began a series of persecutions designed to discourage the securing of new recruits, and to cause the abandonment of their project by Fox and his immediate followers. In the reign of Charles the Second the Star Chamber got to work in dead earnest. The Quakers, as the followers of this new cult were dubbed, were imprisoned in hundreds, their goods were confiscated, they were oppressed and hounded in every way short of actually putting them to death, and there is little doubt that a good many of them were surreptitiously tortured.
In the face of such travail, some of the leading lights of the movement, despairing of making any progress in their own country, turned hopeful eyes westwards towards the virgin fields of America. In the July of 1656, Mary Fisher and Ann Austin, Quakers both, with hope and faith big in them, braved the perils of the three-thousand-mile voyage and reached Boston. But their hopes were dashed at the outset. They stepped right out of the frying-pan into the hottest of fires. They were met, not by a brass band and the welcoming obeisance of men and women panting to embrace a new and novel faith, but by a mob of infuriated citizens clamouring for their blood. Mary and Ann were seized, they were " stripped stark naked, in such an im- modest manner as modesty will not admit to mention," says a chronicler, they were whipped at a cart's tail, and packed, bag and baggage, on to the ship that had brought them, with threats of what would happen if they ever dared to again sully the soil of New England with their heretical feet.
Though these two women had been the first Quakers actually to set foot on American soil, they had not been alone in their determination to found a colony of Friends in the New World. Others were on their way, and altogether a sizable band of them managed to reach Boston during the
6o THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
years of 1656 and 1657. They preached their gospel in this town and that, they secured many recruits; they threatened the very security and existence of the Church. And so, the New England Puritans, under the leadership of Governor Endicot, embarked upon a campaign of persecution that was characterized by some of the most cruel acts that the history of religious intolerance has to show. Both men and women were whipped unmercifully, branded, mutilated and im- prisoned. Many were put to death; many more were sold as slaves to the plantations.
"Mary Tomkins and Alice Ambrose were cruelly ordered to be whipped at a cart's tail through eleven towns at one time, ten stripes apiece on their naked backs, which would have amounted to no in the whole, and on a very cold day, they were stripped and whipped through three of the towns (the priests looking on and laughing) and through dirt and snow, sometimes half leg deep, till Walter Barefoot, of SaUsbury, got the warrant and discharged them."^
Lydia Wardel was stripped from the waist upwards, tied to a fence-post, " with her naked breasts to the splinters of the posts, and there sorely lashed, with twenty or thirty cruel stripes."^ Ann Coleman was whipped within an inch of her life, the knots of the whip splitting her breasts. Edward Wharton was flogged so severely that, it was testified, " peas might lie in the holes that the knots of the whip had beat into the flesh of his arms and back; and his body was swelled, and very black from the waist upwards."^ Thomas Newhouse was stripped and fastened to a gun-wheel, where he was given ten stripes, and then on three separate occasions whipped at the cart's tail.
And so the tale of persecutions goes on. The complete account of it would need a volume in itself. Let us close with the narration of the treatment meted out to WiHiam
^ John Whiting, Truth and Innocency Defended Against Fahehood and Envy, 1702, p. 108.
* George Bishop, New England Judged by the Spirit of the Lord, 1703,
P- 377-
» Ibtd., p. 442.
THE PROGRESS OF TORTURE 6 1
Brend, as Bishop gives it in his gory catalogue of the suffer- ings endured by these Quakers.
** The gaoler put him into irons, neck and heels, lockt so close together, as there was no more room between each, than for the horse-lock that fastened them on; and so kept him in irons for the space of sixteen hours (as the gaoler himself confessed) for not working; and all this without meat, whilst his back was torn with the whipping the day before, which did not satisfy the blood- thirsty gaoler, but as a man resolved to have his life, and by cruelties to kill him, he had him down again the next morning to work, though so many days without meat, his back beaten, his neck and heels bruised, by being bound so long together, because he could not bow to his will; yet he laid him on with a pitch'd rope twenty blows over his back and arms, with as much force as he could drive, so that with the fierceness of the blows the rope untwisted and his arms were swollen with it : presently after this, the gaoler having either mended his old, or got a new rope, came in again; and having haled him down- stairs with greater fury and violence than before, gave his broken, bruised, and weak body fourscore and seven- teen blows more, foaming at the mouth like a madman, and tormented with rage; unto which great number he had added more blows, had not his strength and rope failed him, for now he cared not what he did do: and all this, because he did not work for him, which he could not do, being unable in body and unfree in mind. So he gave him in all 117 blows with a pitch'd rope, so that his flesh was beaten black, and as into a jelly, and under his arms the bruised flesh and blood hung down, clodded as it were in baggs, and so into one was it beaten, that the sign of one particular blow could not be seen."^
The Growth of Judicial and Penal Torture in Europe
Practically every European State practised torture for extorting confessions of guilt in all cases of criminal trials, adopting the principle embodied in the old Roman code. At
* Ibid., pp. 65-6.
62 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
first the whole matter of procedure was in a most amorphous state, but as time went on, and the ingenuity of man added to the variety of methods adopted, certain rules and regula- tions were enacted and carried out with some thoroughness.
The development of judicial torture seems to have kept pace, almost in fact step by step, with the elaboration of torture as an ecclesiastical weapon. The courts of Europe and the Inquisition were using torture at the same time, and there is little doubt that the attitude of the one influenced the attitude of the other. Even in countries where the Inquisition had no power, its methods were adopted in the civil and ecclesiastic courts.
Towards the close of the thirteenth century judicial torture flourished in Italy as strongly as it did in the days of the Caesars. Gradually it spread into other countries, with the result that by the birth of the seventeenth century there was scarcely for the finding a European State (Scandinavia appears to have been the one exception) where torture was not looked upon as a necessary part of criminal procedure. In Germany, in France and in Spain, judicial torture became incorporated in the regular penal system.
The success of torture was the reason for its development and extension. The old Roman rule that it should be resorted to only in cases where the evidence was sufficient to indicate the guilt of the accused and his confession or admission was alone wanting, was disregarded. Mere sus- picion of complicity in a crime was a sufficient excuse for the application of torture. On an accusation, unsupported by any evidence whatever, being made by any one individual against another, the accused or the suspected person was liable to be seized and put to the quicstion. Prevarication, silence, unexplained absence, and even pallor, says Lea,^ were all considered to sanction the use of torture. The system was extended to include witnesses as well. When two witnesses presented opposing or conflicting evidence, they were both tortured in the presence of each other until agreement was reached. Indeed full power was given the judges to order torture as they thought fit, and there seems no reason to believe that the majority of them erred on the side of leniency or mercy.
* H. C. Lea, Superstition and Force, p. 439.
THE PROGRESS OF TORTURE 63
In France, by the closing years of the fourteenth century, the records of the Chatelet of Paris show that " torture had virtually become the rule and the main reliance of the tribunal, for the cases in which it was not employed appear to be simply exceptional."^ Even the admission of guilt did not always ensure freedom from this ordeal, for if the crime was not of sufficient magnitude to warrant a capital sentence it became customary to torture the culprit into admitting a more serious offence. Thus Fleurant de Saint-Leu, on January 4, 1390, charged with stealing a silver buckle, after admitting under torture his guilt, was again tortured in an effort to induce him to confess the commission of other crimes, but although nothing further was extorted, he was executed just the same.^ And Marquerite de la Pinele, for stealing a ring, after additional torture failed to extract admissions of other offences, was buried alive. ^ The length of time during which this method of repetitive torturing con- tinued to be practised is indicated by the fact that Beccaria was denouncing the system in 1764. Even Farinacius, the seventeenth-century procurator-general to Pope Paul V, and author of Praxis et Theoricce Criminalism one of the most complete works on torture ever written, stated that the qu(£stion was admissible for the discovery of crimes other than those with which the prisoner was charged or of which he was suspected.
In all countries the punishments employed for various kinds of offences and crimes involved torture. Capital punishment, in itself, was usually preceded by torture. Thus in France and Germany, murderers had portions of their flesh pinched off with red-hot pincers and their right hands burnt away, before execution. In other cases, the form which the death penalty took (e.g., breaking on the wheel, burning alive, flogging with the \nutm and partial hanging followed by quartering) amounted to death by torture.
^ Ihid., p. 441. * Jbid., p. 443. » Ibid., p. 444.
CHAPTER X
THE HOLY INQUISITION
The Birth and Development of the Holy Office
The Inquisition was a court of justice or tribunal founded by the Roman Catholic Church for the express purpose of suppressing and eradicating heresy. The war on heresy antedated the Inquisition by a thousand years, and, as we have seen, heretics were hounded without mercy from the dme when Christianity was born. In the year of grace 382 an Act was passed by which anyone convicted of heresy was to be executed. Then, with Christianity firmly established, for some centuries the persecution of the heretics by the Church itself was not so blatant, so thorough or so merciless. Anyone guilty of the crime, for it continued to rank as a crime, was excommunicated, and in most cases the Church was content to let it go at that. Sometimes, probably as a result of sporadic campaigns, heretics were much more severely handled, and even on occasion condemned to death.
As time went on, however, and as a result of leniency, and other factors, various heretical cults gained strength, and even threatened to become rivals of Christianity itself, the ecclesiastical leaders came to the conclusion that sterner measures were essential. In particular, the activities of the heretical sect known as the Albigenses, roused the Roman Church to vigorous action. The result was the beginning of a war of extermination. Innocent III conceived a scheme, or accepted the rough-and-ready idea of it from some other party, for dealing with all those who had the temerity to rebel against the Church. The result was the founding, in the first half of the thirteenth century, of the Holy Inquisi- tion, with Dominique as the first Inquisitor-General.
Once initiated, tlie Inquisition set about its task in grim earnest. Its aim was to rid the country of heresy by destroy-
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TORTURE OF A NATIVE GIRL IN TRINIDAD
(See Text, page 149.)
AN AUTO DA FE
From Moore"s Martyrology. 1809.
ROCHUS BURNT AT THE STAKE BY ORDER OF THE INQUISITION (See Text, page 81.)
THE HOLY INQUISITION 65
ing the cancer, root and branch. Spies were appointed and were soon at work everywhere. The slightest suspicious remark was sufficient for the individual uttering it to be haled before the court. Witnesses hed glibly and with gusto, not only because of their hatred of supposed heretics, but also to placate the officials of the Holy Office.
The first Inquisition was established at Toulouse in 1233. Five years later another court was opened at Aragon. The movement spread rapidly. In Germany, in Holland, in Spain, in Portugal, in France, courts were established and proceeded merrily in the war, deliberate and concerted, against heresy in all its forms.
These courts, in many cases, were magnificent structures. Often they were palaces. The Inquisition of Portugal, for instance, contained four courts, each of which was some forty feet square. The chief inquisitor had his own set of apartments, which were spacious and elegant. Around the huge courtyard were a number of magnificent salons and chambers, which the royal family, members of the court, and a number of other dignitaries, during an auto da /^, occupied for the purpose of observing the executions.
What a contrast these magnificent chambers and apart- ments presented to the dungeons or cells which housed the prisoners. There were some three hundred of these dun- geons; dark, damp and small. The only accommodation provided was a miserable apology for a bedstead, a urinal, wash-hand basin, two pitchers, a lamp and a plate. The prisoners were given poor and scanty food, they were for- bidden to speak or make any kind of noise, and punished severely for any breach of the regulations. Torres de Castilla, in describing the Portuguese Inquisition of Goa, says the places allocated to the prisoners were the
" dirtiest, darkest and most horrible that can possibly be, into which the rays of the sun never penetrate. The kind of noxious air that must be breathed may be imagined when it is known that a dry well in the middle of the space where the prisoners were confined and which is always uncovered, is used as a privy, the emanations from which have no other outlet for escape than a small opening. The prisoners live in a common privy."
E
66 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
The Examination of the Accused
The procedure was much the same in all the Inquisitions. The prisoner was often kept for months in one of the dungeons before he was examined. This was probably part of a carefully thought out scheme to wear down his powers of resistance. On being brought before the tribunal, the accused was asked to speak the truth, and to promise to conceal the secrets of the Holy Office. Acceptance implied that the examination would proceed ; refusal meant a return to the dungeon and probably the infliction of some form of punishment. In the case of the examination being con- tinued, a number of questions were put by the president of the tribunal and the prisoner's answers were recorded by a clerk. In a few days, the accused was again brought before the tribunal for further examination. He was asked to confess his crimes against the Holy Office, and led to believe that the inquisitors possessed evidence and that they had secured witnesses who were prepared to testify against him. He was not allowed to know either the nature of the evidence or the identity of the witnesses. Continued resis- tance and denial of guilt led to the inquisitors adopting sterner measures.
Inside the Torture Chamber
Torture was introduced for the express purpose of extract- ing confession, being authorized by Pope Innocent in a Bull issued in 1252. The inquisitors reduced torture to some- thing approaching a fine art, and in the process showed the possession of much psychological knowledge and insight, the procedure being nicely calculated to wear down the resistance even of the strongest minded and most powerfully built man. First, the accused was threatened with torture, which threat, in itself, had often the desired effect. If this failed to extort confession, he was conducted to the torture chamber and shown the instruments used. This torture chamber was well designed to afflict all except those possess- ing nerves of iron, with horror, dread and despair. It was usually an underground apartment, devoid of windows, and lighted with nothing better than a couple of candles. The
THE HOLY INQUISITION 67
executioner was an extraordinary, awesome apparition. Clothed from head to foot in a black garment, with his head and face covered, except for two eye-holes, with a black cowl, he presented a most diabolical and satanic appearance.
Should the sight of the torture chamber, its impedimenta and the executioner, fail to have the desired effect, the prisoner was stripped to the buff, and his hands bound.
** The stripping," says Limborch, " is performed without regard to humanity or honour, not only to men, but to women and virgins, the most virtuous and chaste of whom they have sometimes in the prisons. For they cause them to be stripped, even to their very shifts, which they afterwards take off, forgive the expression, even to their pudenda, and then put on their strait linen drawers."^
When the accused was all prepared for the infliction of torture, again were the questions repeated, and in the event of the prisoner continuing to deny his guilt, the actual tor- ments began.
The main tortures employed by the Inquisition were the pulley, the rack, and fire. There were also various modifica- tions and extensions of these, as well as a number of lesser persecutions, all of which will be described in detail in another part of this work. (See Chapter XIX.)
It is important to note, however, that the whole inquisi- torial system, from the moment anyone was unfortunate enough to fall into its clutches, until released by banishment or death, constituted one long torment. " In many cases," says Lea, '* torture and prolonged imprisonment, in the foulest of dungeons, doubtless produced partial derangement, leading to the belief that he had committed the acts so per- sistently imputed to him."*
Punishment of a severe nature, and often in itself amount- ing to torture, was inflicted for the slightest breaches of the regulations. Says Torres de CastiUa, writing of the Inquisi- tion of Lisbon,
* Philip a Limborch, The History of the Inquisition, 1731, p. 219.
* H. C. Lea, A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, Mac- millan, New York, 1906, Vol. Ill, p. 506.
68 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
" should anyone commit a fault he is flogged in a most cruel manner. They strip him naked and lay him on the ground with his face downwards, and in this position he is held by several men while others flog him most unmercifully with cords stiffened by being dipped in melted pitch, which brings away flesh at every stroke until the back is one large ulcer."
It may be stated here, however, that the tortures were of such a nature that few failed to confess. This applied to the innocent just as much as to the guilty. The few that remained silent and continued to protest their innocence until unconsciousness sealed their lips, were carried back to their cells. When some amount of recovery had been made, another appearance before the tribunal followed, with more threats, and, if no confession were made, further tortures. And since, as a rule, confession meant life imprisonment or death, the majority either suffered this penalty or died as a result of the tortures they endured.
Among the cases on record where, in spite of every effort of the inquisitors, the victim's lips remained sealed, is that of Tomas de Leon, who, at Valladolid, on November 5, 1638, was racked until his left arm was broken. More remarkable still was the case of Florencia de Leon, who underwent three forms of torture, the balestilla, the mancuerda, and the potro, and yet remained silent; while Engracia Rodriguez, at sixty years of age, despite having one arm broken and a toe torn off in the balestilla, refused to confess.^ On the other hand, many confessed at the very threat of torture, even though they were well aware that confession meant being sen- tenced to death. Gilles de Rais was one such. He admitted the whole category of sadistic crimes with which he was charged.
At every examination there was present either an in- quisitor or a commissioner of the Holy Office. The decision as to the nature and degree of the torture to be inflicted was left to the discretion of the tribunal. No one, other than the judges, the registrar and the executioners, were allowed in the chamber while the torture was in progress. The walls
* H. C. Lea, A History of the Inquisition of Spain, MacxniU^n, New York, 1906.
THE HOLY INQUISITION 69
of the apartment were lined with heavy quilts to prevent the screams and cries of the prisoner being heard outside. Any confession made during the process of torture, which confession was duly recorded by the registrar, had to be ratified by the prisoner later. If he retracted this confession and refused to sign the document he could be again tortured. This repetition of torture was given in the code of Torque- mada issued to the Spanish Inquisition in 1484, and similar codes were in force in other Inquisitions. In no other cir- cumstances, it was stated, could torture be repeated. The rule, however, proved of little practical use in conditioning or restricting the persecutions to which prisoners were sub- jected once they became inmates of the dungeons. The inquisitors tortured their victims again and again, but instead of calling these fresh torments repetitions, they described them as continuations of the same torture.
An instructive example of this was furnished by the case of Maria de Coceicao, a young lady residing in Lisbon, who was charged with heresy and ordered to be tortured on the rack. So severe were the torments that, unable to endure them longer, she confessed. Later, when called upon to ratify her confession, she refused to sign the document they had prepared. Her ground for refusal was that any confession she had made had been forced from her during the terrible ordeal to which she had been subjected. The inquisitors thereupon ordered her to be again racked. Once again she confessed. On recovery, she was again requested to sign the confession, and again she refused, stat- ing that if they repeated the torture a hundred times *' as soon as I am released from the rack I shall deny what was extorted from me by pain." A third and last time did the executioners do their fell work with the rack; but on this occasion she did not even confess, and refused to answer a single question. Changing their tactics, the inquisitors ordered her to be publicly whipped through the streets and banished for ten years.
The duration of the torture varied considerably according to the regulations in force in the different courts. Philip III issued a Bull limiting it to one hour. Often the victim became unconscious long before the stipulated time. In any such case an examination was made by a physician in order
70 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
to ascertain whether the condition was real or simulated. In accordance with the physician's verdict the torture was sus- pended or continued. Even so, there are numerous cases on record where the torture was continued for far longer periods than it would appear were countenanced in the regulations. Lea says it often lasted two or even three hours. '^ He in- stances a case where one, Antonia Lopez, at Valladolid, in 1648, was tortured continuously from eight till eleven o'clock, leaving him with a crippled arm. The poor fellow tried to commit suicide by strangling himself. He died in his prison within a month.*
The Auto da Fe
A confession having been secured, the penalty was then decreed. Punishments in the less serious cases were whip- ping, imprisonment, the galleys, and banishment; those of a graver nature called for death either by burning at the stake or by strangling. The capital sentence did not necessarily mean that the prisoner would escape the ordeal in the torture chamber by confessing at the very threat of persecution. The death sentence was looked upon as an additional punishment.
The doomed prisoners, at a certain specified time, were led in procession to the place of execution. The ceremony was known as the auto da fe (Act of Faith) or gaol delivery. These autos da fe were. not held at any regular times, or even annually, but in accordance with the discretion of the Holy Office. They might be held at intervals of one year, or every two, three or four years. The ceremony, which always took place on a Sunday, was the occasion of a gathering of all the populace. The victims were to be burned to death in public or otherwise punished.
" The victims who walk in the procession," says Dr. Dowling, in his History of Romanism, " wear the san benito, the coroza, the rope around the neck, and carry in their hand a yellow wax candle. The san benito is a penitential garment or tunic of yellow cloth reaching down to the knees, and on it is painted the picture of
^ H. C. Lea, A History of the Inquisition of Spain. « Ibid.
THE HOLY INQUISITION 7I
the person who wears it, burning in the flames, with figures of dragons and devils in the act of fanning the flames. This costume indicates that the wearer is to be burnt ahve as an incorrigible heretic. If the person is only to do penance, then the san benito has on it a cross, and no paintings or flames. If an impenitent is con- verted just before being led out, then the san benito is painted with the flames downward; this is called ' fuego resuelto,' and it indicates that the wearer is not to be burnt alive, but to have the favour of being strangled before the fire is applied to the pile. Formerly these garments were hung up in the churches as eternal monuments of disgrace to their wearers, and as the trophies of the Inquisition. The coroza is a pasteboard cap, three feet high, and ending in a point. On it are likewise painted crosses, flames and devils. In Spanish America it was customary to add long twisted tails to the corozas. Some of the victims have gags in their mouths, of which a number is kept in reserve in case the victims, as they march along in public, should become outrageous, insult the tribunal, or attempt to reveal any secrets. The prisoners who are to be roasted alive have a Jesuit on each side continually preaching to them to abjure their heresies, and if anyone attempts to offer one word in defence of the doctrines for which he is going to suffer death, his mouth is instantly gagged."^
On arrival at the place of execution, where a large scaf- fold had been erected, prayers were offered, and a sermon preached in which the Inquisition was praised and heresy bitterly condemned. If the prisoner were prepared to accept and to die in the Catholic faith he had the privilege of being strangled first and then burnt. In the event of him electing to die a Protestant or a member of any other heretic cult, he was roasted alive. And now let Dr. Geddes, who was himself the horrified spectator of the auto da fe held at Madrid in 1682, take up the tale.
" The officers of the Inquisition, preceded by trum- pets, kettle-drums and their banner, marched on the
* Quoted by James Gardner in Faiths of the World, 1858, Vol. I, pp 267-8.
72 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
30th of May, in cavalcade, to the palace of the great square, where they declared by proclamation that on the 30th of June the sentence of the prisoners would be put in execution. There had not been a spectacle of this kind at Madrid for several years before, for which reason it was expected by the inhabitants with as much impatience as a day of the greatest festivity and triumph. When the day appointed arrived, a prodi- gious number of people appeared, dressed as splendid as their respective circumstances would admit. In the great square was raised a high scaffold; and thither, from seven in the morning till the evening, were brought criminals of both sexes; all the Inquisitions in the kingdom sending their prisoners to Madrid. Twenty men and women out of these prisoners, with one renegade Mahometan, were ordered to be burned; fifty Jews and Jewesses, having never before been im- prisoned, and repenting of their crimes, were sen- tenced to a long confinement, and to wear a yellow cap; and ten others, indicted for bigamy, witchcraft and other crimes, were sentenced to be whipped and then sent to the galleys : these last wore large pasteboard caps, with inscriptions on them, having a halter about their necks, and torches in their hands. On this solemn occasion the whole court of Spain was present. The grand inquisitor's, chair was placed in a sort of tribunal far above that of the king. The nobles here acted the part of the sheriffs' officers in England, leading such criminals as were to be burned, and holding them when fast bound with thick cords; the rest of the criminals were conducted by the familiars of the Inquisition.
" At the place of execution there are so many stakes set as there are prisoners to be burned, a large quantity of dry furze being set about them. The stakes of the Protestants, or, as the inquisitors call them, the pro- fessed, are about four yards high, and have each a small board, whereon the prisoner is seated within half a yard of the top. The professed then go up a ladder betwixt two priests, who attend them the whole day of execution. When they come even with the afore- mentioned board, they turn about to the people, and
THE HOLY INQUISITION 73
the priests spend near a quarter of an hour in exhort- ing them to be reconciled to the see of Rome. On their refusing, the priests come down, and the executioner ascending, turns the professed from off the ladder upon the seat, chains their bodies close to the stakes, and leaves them. Then the priests go up a second time to renew their exhortations; and if they find them ineffectual, usually tell them at parting, that ' they leave them to the Devil, who is standing at their elbow ready to receive their souls, and carry them with him into the flames of hell-fire, as soon as they are out of their bodies.' A general shout is then raised, and when the priests get off the ladder, the universal cry is : ' Let the dogs' beards be made ! ' (which implies, singe their beards). This is accordingly performed by means of flaming furzes, thrust against their faces with long poles. This barbarity is repeated till their faces are burnt, and is accompanied with loud acclamations. Fire is then set to the furzes, and the criminals arc consumed.
" The intrepidity of the twenty-one men and women in suffering the horrid death was truly astonishing; some thrust their hands and feet into the flames with the most dauntless fortitude; and all of them yielded to their fate with such resolution that many of the amazed spectators lamented that such heroic souls had not been more enlightened. The near situation of the king to the criminals rendered their dying groans very audible to him; he could not, however, be absent from this dreadful scene, as it is esteemed a religious one, and his coronation oath obliges him to give a sanction by his presence to all the acts of the tribunal."
Influence of the Inquisition
It was only to be expected that in every country where the Inquisition existed, or, in other words, in every coun- try where the Roman Catholic religion flourished, any one who had the temerity to flirt with heresy in any form, lived continuously under the shadow of a terror. It is axiomatic that cruelty begets cruelty, persecution begets persecution.
7^ THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
The inquisitors, gorged with their inhumanity, developed a degree of callousness rarely rivalled in the annals of civilization. So wide was the interpretation of the term heresy that the free expression of opinion in all Catholic countries, for the five hundred years of the Inquisition's tyranny, may be said to have been inexistent. It was bad enough as regards spoken opinion; it was a hundred times worse in relation to the written word. Every book that came from the press was scrutinized minutely with the express object of finding some passage which might be in- terpreted as being against the principles or interests of the Catholic faith. The censorship of books took three forms : (i) complete condemnation and suppression; (2) the expunging of certain objectionable passages or parts; and (3) the correction of sentences or the deletion of specific words. A list of the various books condemned upon any of these three heads was printed every year, after which anyone found to be in the possession of a volume coming under section (i) or an unexpurgated or uncorrected copy of a volume coming under section (2) or (3) was deemed guilty of a crime and liable to severe punishment. The author and the publisher of any such book often spent the remainder of their lives in the dungeons of the Inquisition.
In a considerable number of instances charges were deliberately faked against individuals who, in some way or other, had incurred the enmity of the inquisitors or of high and powerful authorities, ecclesiastical or otherwise, con- nected with the Church. The vast power of the inquisitors, and particularly their authority to order prisoners to be tor- tured, enabled them to secure a conviction with ease against anyone against whom they had a grudge. For this reason. Catholics as well as heretics, were in danger. The very fact of having a charge brought against one, and of being sum- moned to the Inquisition, was sufficient to strike abject terror into the bravest man or woman. For few who entered the doors of that hall of torment emerged whole in mind and body. If they escaped with their life, they were, with rare exceptions, maimed, physically or mentally, for ever.
The power and security of the Inquisition were strength- ened and solidified by the grip of terror which it secured
THE HOLY INQUISITION 75
upon the people. Whatever anyone dare think, he could not, without running the risk of being incarcerated, give voice to any criticism or disparagement of the Holy Office. To the contrary, everyone chanted its virtues and praised its fairness. Even those — the fev^^ there were — who were released from its clutches, either kept rigid silence respecting the treatment that had been meted out to them or otherwise glorified the institution. Says Dellon, in his account of the Inquisition at Goa, written in 1788 :
" Those who have thus escaped the fire by their forced confessions, when they are out of the prison of the Holy Office, are strictly obliged to publish that they were treated with much goodness and clemency, since their life was preserved to them, which they had justly for- feited. For if a man who having confessed himself guilty, should afterwards presume to justify himself after his enlargement, he would be immediately accused, arrested, and burnt at the first Act of Faith, without any hope of pardon."
Many of the inquisitors were sadists. Many were libidinous monsters. They took such women as they wanted, on trumped-up charges of heresy, and kept them for the rest of their days as mistresses. When the French troops captured the city of Aragon, Lieutenant-General M. de Legal ordered the doors of the Inquisition to be opened, and the prisoners, numbering some 400, to be released. " Among these were sixty beautiful young women who appeared to form a seraglio for the three principal inquisitors." One of these ladies had a remarkable story to tell. She related it to the French officer who later became her husband, and to M. Gavin, the author of A Master Key to Popery. I repro- duce the account in her own words.
I went one day, with my mother, to visit the Countess Attaras, and I met there Don Francisco Tirregon, her confessor, and second inquisitor of the Holy Office. After we had drank chocolate, he asked me my age, my confessor's name, and many intricate questions about religion. The severity of his countenance
76 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
frightened me, which he perceiving, told the countess to inform me that he was not so severe as he looked. He then caressed me in a most obliging manner, presented his hand, which I kissed with great reverence and modesty; and, as he went away, he made use of this remarkable expression, ' My dear child, I shall remember you till the next time.' I did not, at the time, mark the sense of the words; for I was inexperienced in matters of gallantry, being, at that time, but fifteen years old. Indeed, he unfortunately did remember me; for the very same night, when our whole family were in bed, we heard a great knocking at the door. The maid, who laid in the same room with me, went to the window, and inquired who was there. The answer was, the Holy Inquisition. On hearing this I screamed out, ' Father ! Father ! Dear father, I am ruined for ever ! ' My father got up, and came to me to know the occasion of my crying out; I told him the Inquisition were at the door. On hearing this, instead of protecting me, he hurried me downstairs as fast as possible; and, lest the maid should be too slow, opened the street door himself; under such abject and slavish fears are bigoted minds ! As soon as he knew they came for me, he fetched me with great solemnity, and delivered me to the officers with much submission.
" I was hurried into a coach, with no other clothing than a petticoat and a mantle; for they would not let me stay to take anything else. My fright was so great, I expected to die that very night; but judge my surprise, when I was ushered into an apartment, decorated with all the elegance that taste, united with opulence, could bestow. Soon after the officers left me, a maid-servant appeared with a silver salver, on which were sweetmeats and cinnamon-water. She desired me to take some refresh- ments before I went to bed; I told her I could not, but should be glad if she could inform me whether I was to be put to death that night or not. ' To be put to death ! ' exclaimed she, ' you do not come here to be put to death, but to live like a princess, and you shall want for nothing in the world, but the liberty of going out; so pray don't be afraid, but go to bed and sleep easy; for to-morrow
THE HOLY INQUISITION fj
you shall see wonders within this house; and as I am chosen to be your waiting-maid, I hope you'll be very kind to me.'
There follows a long discursive account of the manner in which, through the medium of this servant girl Mary, Don Francisco sent to his latest victim elegant clothes, valuable presents, and personal messages, both polite and endearing, and an invitation to have dinner with him, which, acting on Mary's advice, the young lady accepted. Don Francisco informed her that, because of certain accusations which had been made against her in connexion with matters of religion, the Inquisition had pronounced sentence of burning alive " in a dry pan, with a gradual fire," but that he, out of respect for her family and pity for her, had managed to stop the execution of the terrible sentence, at any rate, for the present. The man made it plain, however, and Mary made it additionally plain, that there was only one way of escaping death, and that anyone other than a born fool would take it. Probably acting under instructions from Don Francisco, Mary went further and, after securing a promise of absolute secrecy from the already terrified young lady, offered to show her the implements of torture. And so the next morning, before anybody was stirring,
** taking me downstairs, she brought me to a large room, with a thick iron door, which she opened. Within it was an oven, with fire in it at the time, and a large brass pan upon it, with a cover of the same, and a lock to it. In the next room there was a great wheel, covered on both sides with thick boards; with a little window in the centre, Mary desired me to look in with a candle; there I saw all the circumference of the wheel set with sharp razors, which made me shudder. Mary then took me to a pit, which was full of venomous animals. On my expressing great horror at the sight, she said, * Now, my good mistress, I'll tell you the use of these things. The dry pan is for heretics, and those who oppose the holy father's will and pleasure; they arc put alive into the pan, being first stripped naked; and the cover being locked down, the executioner begins to put a small fire
y8 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
into the oven, and by degrees he augments it, till the body is reduced to ashes. The wheel is designed for those who speak against the Pope, or the holy fathers of the Inquisition; for they are put into that machine through the little door, which is locked after them, and then the wheel is turned swiftly, till they are all cut to pieces. The pit is for those who contemn the images, and refuse to give proper respect to ecclesiastical persons; for they are thrown into the pit, and so become the food of poisonous animals.
" We went back again to my chamber, and Mary said that another day she would show me the torments designed for other transgressors; but I was in such agonies at what I had seen, that I begged to be terrified with no more such sights. She soon after left me, but not without enjoining me strict obedience to Don Fran- cisco; * for if you do not comply with his will,' says she, * the dry pan and gradual fire will be your fate.' The horrors which the sight of these things, and Mary's expressions, impressed on my mind, almost bereaved me of my senses, and left me in such a state of stupefaction that I seemed to have no manner of will of my own.
** The next morning Mary said, * Now let me dress you as nice as possible, for you must go and wish Don Francisco good morrow, and breakfast with him.' When I was dressed, she conveyed me through a gallery into his apartment, where I found that he was in bed. He ordered Mary to withdraw, and to serve up breakfast in about two hours' time. When Mary was gone, he commanded me to undress myself, and come to bed to him. The manner in which he spoke, and the dreadful ideas with which my mind was filled, so terribly frightened me, that I pulled off my clothes, without knowing what I did, and stepped into bed, insensible of the indecency I was transacting : so totally had the care of self-preservation absorbed all my other thoughts, and so entirely were the ideas of delicacy obliterated by the force of terror."
After the seduction of the girl, she was introduced to the other young ladies, numbering fifty-two in all, the eldest of
THE HOLY INQUISITION 79
which was about twenty-four years, who formed the seraglio. And for three days, gorgeously upholstered, living in the most luxurious apartments, eating and drinking the finest products of the land, she lived the life of a queen. Then, after an evening of gaiety, the girl was taken to a small, dungeon-like room, in which was another young lady. Mary, who was her conductor on this occasion too, said, " This is your room, and this lady your bed-fellow and com- panion," and immediately went away. Then . . . but let the narrator resume her story :
" My perplexity and vexation were inexpressible; but my new companion, whose name was Leonora, prevailed on me to disguise my uneasiness from Mary. I dis- sembled tolerably well when she came to bring our dinners, but could not help remarking, in my own mind, the difference between this repast and those I had before partook of. This consisted only of plain common food, and of that a scanty allowance, with only one plate, and one knife and fork for us both, which she took away as soon as we had dined. When we were in bed, Leonora, upon my solemn promise of secrecy, began to open her mind to me. ' My dear sister,' she said, ' you think your case very hard; but, I assure you, all the ladies in the house have gone through the same. In time you will know all their stories, as they hope to know yours. I suppose Mary has been the chief instrument of your fright, as she has been of ours; and I warrant she has shown you some horrible places, though not all; and that, at the very thought of them you were so terrified that you chose the same way we have done to redeem yourself from death. By what hath happened to us, we know that Don Francisco hath been your Nero, your tyrant; for the three colours of clothes are the distinguish- ing tokens of the three holy fathers. The red silk belongs to Don Francisco, the blue to Don Guerrero, and the green to Don Aliaga; and they always give those colours (after the farce of changing garments, and the short- lived recreations are over) to those ladies whom they bring here for their respective uses. We are strictly commanded to express all the demonstrations of joy, and
80 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
to be very merry for three days, when a young lady first comes amongst us, as we did with you, and as you must now do with others; but afterwards we hve hke the most wretched prisoners, without seeing anybody but Mary, and the other maid-servants, over whom Mary hath a kind of superiority, for she acts as housekeeper. We all dine in the great hall three days in a week; and when any one of the inquisitors hath a mind for one of his slaves, Mary comes about nine o'clock, and leads her to his apartment. Some evenings Mary leaves the door of our chambers open, and that is a token that one of the inquisitors hath a mind to come that night; but he comes so silent that we are ignorant whether he is our patron or not. If one of us happens to be with child, she is removed into a better chamber till she is delivered; but during the whole of her pregnancy she never sees any- body but the person appointed to attend her. As soon as the child is born it is taken away, and carried we know not whither; for we never hear a syllable mentioned about it afterwards. I have been in this house six years, was not fourteen when the officers took me from my father's house, and have had one child. There are, at this present time, fifty-two young ladies in the house; but we annually lose six or eight, though we know not what becomes of them, or whither they are sent. This, however, does not diminish our number, for new ones are always brought in to supply the place of those who are removed from hence; and I remember, at one time, to have seen seventy-three ladies here together. Our continual torment is to reflect that when they are tired of any of the ladies, they certainly put to death those they pretend to send away; for it is natural to think that they have too much policy to suffer their atrocious and infernal villainies to be discovered, by enlarging them. Hence our situation is miserable indeed, and we have only to pray that the Almighty will pardon those crimes which we are compelled to commit.' "
This description, the narrator continues, proved to be a true one. Eighteen months were to elapse before the French officers opened the doors of the Inquisition, and during this
Prom Moore's Manyrology, 1809.
TORTURES INFLICTED ON THE PROTESTANTS, BY THE IRISH PAPISTS,
IN 1642
After Picart.
TORTURE OF THE CHAIN— AN ANCIENT CHINESE PUNISHMENT (See Text, page 103.)
From Macartney's Embassy to China, 1796.
CHINESE PUNISHMENT OF THE TCHA (See Text, page 104.)
THE HOLY INQUISITION 8l
period, while eleven of the inmates disappeared in the mysterious manner mentioned by Leonora, nineteen new girls entered, making the total number at the moment of deliverance no fev^^er than sixty.
Victims of the Inquisition
Precisely how many people were burned to death, and how many were tortured and allowed to die in the dungeons, it is impossible to say. Many statements have been made regarding the number of executions. But it is more than likely that none is accurate. Where the historian does not underestimate, the probability is that he exaggerates. Llorente, the Roman Catholic writer, who for years acted as secretary to the Spanish Inquisition, estimates that from 148 1 to 15 1 7, that is during a period of less than forty years, 13,000 persons were burnt alive, and 17,000 were condemned to different forms of punishment. These figures are prob- ably under rather than over the true mark. The triviality of the offences for which punishments, and often death, were incurred was instrumental in causing the total number of persecutions to be so immoderately large. A glance at the records shows the trifling nature of these offences and the severity of the punishments meted out to the offenders.
Rochus, a carver of St. Lucar, Spain, for defacing an image of the Virgin Mary rather than sell it to an inquisitor for a mere trifle, was burnt at the stake. The keeper of the prison at Triano, Spain, for showing kindness to the prisoners in the castle, was sentenced to 200 lashes and six years labour as a galley slave. A woman servant in the Inquisition, for granting favours to the captives, was whipped in public and branded on the forehead. Ferd- mando, a Protestant schoolmaster, for teaching the principles of his faith to his pupils, was first tortured, and then burnt. Another Protestant, named John Leon, and some Spaniards of the same faith, on endeavouring to escape to England, were captured by agents of the Inquisition, tortured, starved, and finally burnt. For refusing to take the veil and turn nun, but instead taking up the Protestant faith, a young lady was condemned to the flames.
Christopher Losada, an eminent physician of his day, for
82 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
professing the tenets of Protestantism, was racked and burnt. A monk of the monastery of St. Isidore, Seville, who turned Protestant, was tortured and burnt. A Protestant writing- master of Toledo, who had decorated the walls of a room in his house with a reproduction of the ten commandments in full,^ in his own handwriting, was burnt at the stake at Valladolid in 1676. At the same court, Martin-Juan de Salinas was sentenced to 200 lashes for bigamy.
An Englishwoman, marrkd to a man named Vascon- cellos, and Hving in Madeira, in 1704, was charged with heresy and sent to the Inquisition of Lisbon. For nine months and fifteen days this woman, for a crime of which she steadfastly claimed to be innocent, was kept in a dungeon, on nothing but bread and water, and no better sleeping provisions than a damp straw-bed. In attempts to extort confession she was whipped on several occasions with knotted cords; her breast was burnt with a red-hot iron in three different places and the wounds left to heal themselves. Finally, she was conveyed once again to the torture chamber and commanded by the executioner to sit in a fixed chair, to which she was bound with cords in a way which prevented the slightest motion. Her left foot was then bared, and an iron slipper, which had been put in the fire until it was red- hot, was fixed on her naked foot, where it remained until the flesh was burnt to the bone. The woman fainted. She was then flogged so fiendishly that her back from the shoulders to the waist was one mass of torn flesh. They then threatened to put the red-hot slipper on her right foot. Un- able to endure any further torments she signed the paper they held in front of her.
Jane Bohorquia, a lady of noble family living at Seville, for conversing with a friend about the Protestant religion, was seized and imprisoned. She was pregnant at the time, but immediately after the birth of the child, and while still in a lamentably weak state, she was racked with such severity that the flesh was cut through to the very bones and blood gushed from her mouth. A week later she died. In this case, as on many another occasion, it was reported that she had been found dead in prison, no official mention being
* The Papists omitted that part of the second commandment forbidding the worship of images.
THE HOLY INQUISITION 83
made of the torture to which she had been subjected. The report read : " Jane Bohorquia was found dead in prison; after which, upon reviewing her prosecution, the Inquisition discovered that she was innocent. Be it therefore known, that no further prosecutions shall be carried on against her, and that her effects, which were confiscated, shall be given to her heirs at law."
The allegation that death was due to an accident or to illness was a favourite method employed by the inquisitors when the torture inflicted had proved fatal and the case was one where it might conceivably be difficult to justify such extreme cruelty. Thus at Valladolid, in 1623, one Diego Enriquez, had an " accident " and died in hospital.^
There is the case of Isaac Martin, an English Protestant, at Malaga, in 1714. Because of his name, he was accused of being a Jew. Martin was seized and taken to the Inquisition at Granada for trial. He was locked up in a dungeon and given these instructions : " You must observe as great silence here as if you were dead ; you must not speak, nor whisde, nor sing, nor make any noise that can be heard ; and if you hear anybody cry, or make a noise, you must be still, and say nothing, upon pain of 200 lashes." After a long imprisonment, punctuated by several audiences with the chief lord inquisitor, Martin was convicted of heresy, and sentenced to receive 200 lashes through the streets of Granada and to be banished from Spain. As Isaac Martin is one of the few who suffered torture at the hands of the inquisitors and was in a position to tell the truth, let him give the tale of his sufferings in his own words.
" The next morning about ten of the clock, I was brought downstairs, the executioner came in with ropes and a whip. He bid me take off my coat, waistcoat, wig and cravat. As I was taking off my shirt, he bid me let it alone, he would manage that. He sHpp'd my body through the collar, and ty'd it about my waist. Then took a rope and ty'd my hands together, put another about my neck, and led me out of the Inquisition, where there were numerous crowds of people waiting to see an
* H. C, Lea, A History of the Inquisition of Spai».
84 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
English heretic. I was no sooner out, but a priest read my sentence at the door, as followeth : ' Orders are given from the Lords of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, to give unto Isaac Martin 200 lashes, through the public streets. He being of the religion of the Church of England, a Protestant, a Heretic, irreverend to the Host, and to the Image of the Virgin Mary, and so let it be executed.' Knowing what was to be done to me, I was not so frightened as when they blind-folded me. The sentence being read, the executioner mounted me upon an ass, and led me through the streets, the people huzzah- ing, and crying out, an English Heretic ! Look at the English Heretic, who is no Christian! and pelting me. The cryer of the city walked before me, repeating aloud the sentence that was read at the door of the Inquisition, the executioner whipping me as I went along, and a great many people on horseback, in ceremonial robes, with wands and halberts following."^
There is, too, the remarkable case of Francisco Moyen. At the age of twenty-nine, this Frenchman, who was then living at Potosi, was seized by the Inquisition and charged with heresy. He was sent to Lima for trial. In those days, travel in South America was a lengthy process. The journey was a long one and, in consequence, it was not until the March of 1752 that Moyen, after undergoing incredible hardships and privations, was handed over to the Inquisition at Lima. He was tried as a heretic and sentenced to 200 lashes and ten years imprisonment. In 1754, with the aid of the candle supplied at supper-time, he set fire to his cell door in the hope of being able in this way to effect his escape. The scheme failed and for the remainder of his term of imprisonment, he had to eat his meals in darkness. The man was shackled for the whole of these ten interminable years, and his condition may be judged from the fact that, in view of the malignant ulcers with which the ankle was covered and the fear that gangrene might set in and deprive them of their prey, the inquisitors ordered the shackle to be removed from the affected foot. On the 6th April, 1761,
* John Marchant, A Review of the Bloody Tribunal or The Horrid Cruelties of the Inquisition, Perth, 1770, p. 121.
THE HOLY INQUISITION 85
Moycn was released and banished from the country, a mere caricature of a man.
The Inquisition respected neither rank nor station. Rich or poor, peasant or nobleman, it was God help anyone who fell into its hands. One of the most illustrious of the many victims was no less a personage than Don Carlos, the eldest son of Philip the Second, and heir-apparent to the crown. Appalled at the excesses committed, in the name of God, by the Popish hierarchs, Don Carlos, on more than one occasion, when among his friends and acquaintances, de- claimed against the methods of the inquisitors. The matter came to the ears of the Holy Office and the prince was arrested. That the power of a king was less than that of the Spanish Inquisition Philip was well aware; and his thorough realization of this, added to the fact that he was not over fond of his son, caused him to make no real effort at interference. Don Carlos was found guilty of heresy and condemned to death. Owing to his rank, one concession was granted him — the choice of the manner of his death. He decided to have a vein opened and bleed to death.
CHAPTER XI
TORTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND
The Rise of Judicial Torture in England
Englishmen have always been, as they are to-day, incUned to boast that torture has never been practised in their country. The statement is an erroneous one. It is based upon and is due to the fact that torture has never been legally recognized by the common law of England. Apart, however, from the many cases where, in defiance of common law, and with the authority of the reigning monarch, torture was repeatedly used both to extract confession and to obtain evidence; persecution, as I have been at some pains to point out (cf. Chapter I), has always existed. However it may have been disguised, euphemized or justified under the name of punishment or as discipline, torture it has remained none- theless. And in this respect, all through the ages, torture in England has been applied in full measure.
The Anglo-Saxons, like all other contemporary races, were callous and cruel. Servants were slaves in all but name, and were beaten and ill-used by their masters and mistresses. On the slightest provocation they were loaded with fetters, kept without food, and often scourged to death.
Long before the Roman conquest there are indications that mutilation was a common form of punishment, and that brutal floggings were inflicted for trivialities. At the time of the invasion, according to Milton, " the Roman wives and virgins hang'd up all naked, had their breasts cut off, and sow'd to their mouths, that in the grimness of death they might seem to eat their own flesh. "^
In the early days, trial by ordeal, which, in some forms, such as the cold-water and hot-iron tests, represented forms of torture, was common. But as these practices declined, and in course of time were abolished, offenders refused to
* John Milton, The History of Britain, I'j']'], Book II, p. 78.
S6
TORTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND 87
accept any alternative forms of trial. When brought before the court they pleaded neither guilty nor not guilty, but maintained a silence which threatened to balk every effort of justice, as it was impossible to convict an accused person who remained mute.
To deal with cases such as these the punishment known as peine forte et dure was brought into use. Here, in particular, we have a form of punishment which did not, according to English common law, constitute torture, but which in reality was as barbarous a method of perse- cution as anything used in the Spanish Inquisition. Thumb-tying was widely adopted as a means of inducing prisoners to plead or witnesses to give evidence; and the " pricking " of those suspected of witchcraft was frequently adopted in the Middle Ages. These practices were forms of torture, but they were not recognized as such. This reasoning, which was nothing but rank sophistry, seems to have been unconditionally accepted by the people, for appar- ently few raised the slightest remonstrance or protest.
When it came to the use of the rack, however, judges recognized there was no way in which this could be des- cribed as anything other than torture, and as torture was prohibited by common law, they had to set about finding some way or justifying the use of the qucestion in special circumstances. They solved their problem by making it possible for torture to be employed in circumstances where a special licence was granted by the reigning monarch or by some body, such as the Privy Council or the Star Chamber,^ whose authority superseded common law.
In the year 13 lo we find a royal warrant being issued to authorize the torturing of the Templars. In 1468, Sir Thomas Coke, Lord Mayor of London, was tried and found guilty of treason, upon evidence provided by a single witness, which evidence was secured by torture. As time went on
^ The Court of the Star Chamber was formed in the reign of the eighth Henry. It consisted of two chief justices and the Privy Council, and it was established for the purpose of considering important cases and those involving legal problems of more than ordinary gravity or complexity. This Court, however, quickly abused its power. It became unjust, pre- judiced and tyrannical. As a result of orders given by the Star Chamber there were inflicted some of the most brutal tortures that ever disgraced English justice. The Court was abolished in 1640.
00 THE HISTORY OF TORTURE THROUGHOUT THE AGES
the use of torture became more frequent. In fact, although it is probable that torture in some form or other and under other names, was employed widely from the beginning of English history, references to its use in the earlier years are remarkably scanty, but during the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the evidence is abundant. In the opinion of no less an authority than Jardine, torture was " always used in all grave accusations at the mere discretion of the King and the Privy Council."^ A few instances may be given.
" On the 9th June, 1555, letters were written to the Lord North and others, to put such obstinate persons as would not confess to the torture, and there to order them at their discretion; and a letter was written to the lieuten- ant of the Tower to the same effect."^
" On December 28, 1566, a letter was addressed by the Privy Council to the Attorney-General and others, that : where they were heretofore appointed to put Clement Fisher, now prisoner in the Tower, in some fear of torture. Whereby his