Psyche

Grim executioner methods of the past

By Wieke Veenboer | #!30Sun, 10 Sep 2023 10:00:13 +0200+02:001330#30Sun, 10 Sep 2023 10:00:13 +0200+02:00-10Europe/Amsterdam3030Europe/Amsterdam202330 10am30am-30Sun, 10 Sep 2023 10:00:13 +0200+02:0010Europe/Amsterdam3030Europe/Amsterdam2023302023Sun, 10 Sep 2023 10:00:13 +02000010009amSunday=9#!30Sun, 10 Sep 2023 10:00:13 +0200+02:00Europe/Amsterdam9#09-10-2023#!30Sun, 10 Sep 2023 10:00:13 +0200+02:001330#/30Sun, 10 Sep 2023 10:00:13 +0200+02:00-10Europe/Amsterdam3030Europe/Amsterdam202330#!30Sun, 10 Sep 2023 10:00:13 +0200+02:00Europe/Amsterdam9#

Are there any Taylor Swift fans here in the audience? If so, you probably know the song Death By A Thousand Cuts from her album Lover (which I think is really an underrated song, it deserves much more love), and you probably also know why it's called that. Death by a thousand cuts was actually a torture technique: making as many cuts as possible on someone until they die from it. Quite grim and it stands in stark contrast to a rather cheerful song... But if you know what kind of torture techniques were used in the past, Taylor's isn't that bad; because yes, I have of course looked that up for you.

Voilà: the most grim torture techniques that were actually used in the past. And don't go using this secretly on your ex, okay? Unless that person did something really nasty...

1. Flaying alive
We start off cheerfully: the victim was tied naked to a pole, and with a large sharp knife, the skin was then peeled off. Like a kind of apple being peeled. Sorry for this mental image — but unfortunately, the list gets even grimmer.

2. Deprivation of sleep
This seems to me personally the most terrible way to kick the bucket: being forced to stay awake. In the past, this was used to extract confessions from people, for example. I would give in immediately, knowing that otherwise this would await me. Good thing I don't live in the Middle Ages, because I wouldn't last a day. And how were people kept awake? With two heretic forks, one placed on the chest and the other on the chin.

3. The rack
I have seen this ‘in real life’ once, in the castle in the French city of Carcassonne. A particularly grim place anyway, because they used to have dolls standing in the places where the knights used to stand. Or rather the people who had to take a seat on the rack; I really have nightmares about this. The torture speaks for itself: someone is tied to a table and slowly the joints are pulled apart. The horror.

4. Scavenger’s Daughter
I had never heard of this one, but I might find this even worse than the deprivation of sleep; victims were chained in the most uncomfortable position (for example, with knees drawn up and neck forward, so that you were completely hunched over). Besides being extremely uncomfortable, it is also painful and even deadly: your body is under so much pressure that your back can break.

Source: Historianet.nl