Everything about Rack Torture totally explained
The
rack is a
torture device that consists of an oblong rectangular, usually
wooden frame, slightly raised from the ground, with a roller at one, or both, ends, having at one end a fixed bar to which the legs were fastened, and at the other a movable bar to which the hands were tied. The victim's feet are fastened to one roller, and the wrists are chained to the other.
As the interrogation progresses, a handle and
ratchet attached to the top roller are used to very gradually stepwise increase the tension on the chains, which induces excruciating
pain as the victim's
joints slowly dislocate. By means of pulleys and levers this latter could be rolled on its own axis, thus straining the ropes till the sufferer's joints were dislocated.
Additionally, once muscle fibers have been stretched past a certain point they lose their ability to contract, thus victims who were released had ineffective muscles as well as problems arising from dislocation.
Because of its mechanically precise, graded operation, it was particularly suited for hard interrogation, as to extract a confession.
One gruesome aspect of being stretched too far on the rack is the loud popping noises made by snapping
cartilage, ligaments or bones. Eventually, if the application of the rack is continued, the victim's limbs are ripped right off. One powerful method for putting pressure upon a prisoner was to merely force him to view someone else being subjected to the rack. A person stretched on the rack presented a spectacle of the body in pain.
Early use
It was used since Antiquity, being used on
St. Vincent and mentioned by the Church Fathers
Tertullian (on extraction of confessions from criminals and on persisting Christian 'sacrilegers' against the state cult) and
St. Jerome (used on a woman according to his first letter).
Use in medieval Britain
Its first employment in
England is said to have been due to
John Holland, 2nd Duke of Exeter, the
constable of the Tower in 1447, whence it was popularly known as the
Duke of Exeter's daughter. Being tortured on the rack was often referred to as being "put to the question."
In 1628 the whole question of its legality was raised by the attempt of the privy council to rack
John Felton, the assassin of the
duke of Buckingham. This the judges resisted, unanimously declaring its use to be contrary to the laws of England.
Well known victims of the rack in England include
Guy Fawkes,
Edmund Campion and
Anne Askew,
venerable William Carter (1584), the famous Elizabethan dramatist,
Thomas Kyd (1592) and Jesuit lay-brother
Saint Nicholas Owen (1606).
Another well known victim was Saint
John Sarkander (1620).
Use by the Inquisition
The
Inquisition used the rack as one of their principal methods of torture. (McCall, 1979)
Other punitive positioning devices
The term rack is also used, occasionally, for a number of simpler constructions that constitute no such mechanical torture device, but simply to position the victim over for some
physical punishment, after which it may be named specifically, for example
caning rack, since in a given jurisdiction it was often custom or even prescribed to administer any given punishment in a specific position, for which the device (with or without fitting shackling and/or padding) would be chosen or specially made.
A similar device was the
intestinal crank. This method of torture involved making an incision in the abdominal area, separating the
duodenum from the
pylorus, and attaching of the upper part of the
intestine to a crank. The crank then would be rotated to extract the intestines from the gastrointestinal cavity of a conscious person, for the purposes of torture (Monestier, 1994). A similar device appears during a dream-like sequence in the
2000 movie
The Cell.
In popular culture
- In the Monty Python sketch The Spanish Inquisition, one of the inquisitors mistakes a dish washing rack for a torturing rack.
- Winston Smith, in the film 1984, is subjected to torture on a pneumatic rack.
- In the film The Punisher, the eponymous hero is tortured on a rack. Later, he subjects one of his tormentors to the same torture.
- In the film Saw III, one of Jigsaw's tests involves a man caged in a rack-like device. The victim's head was held in place by a rotating lock, while the arms and legs were held in place by spikes through the hands and feet. Each section began rotating around 180 degrees, one by one, taking his arms, legs, and head along with it and breaking the bones eventually killing the victim by breaking his neck.
- In the film Braveheart, near the end he's put in rack in front of the village.
- In Kids Next Door, the episode KASTLE A rainbow monkey is laid on a rack, when Numbuh 3 is in King Sandy's dungeon.
References and sources
Monestier, M. (1994) Peines de mort. Paris, France: Le Cherche Midi Éditeur.
Crocker, Harry W; "Triumph: The Power and Glory of the Catholic Church - A 2,000 Year History"
McCall, Andrew: "The Medieval Underworld". Hamish Hamilton, 1979. ISBN 0750937270Further Information
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