Rack (torture)
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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.
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[edit] Uses
[edit] 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).
[edit] 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).
[edit] Inquisition
The Inquisition used the rack as one of their principal methods of torture. (McCall, 1979)
[edit] 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, e.g. 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).[1] A similar device appears during a dream-like sequence in the 2000 movie The Cell.
[edit] 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 is 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.
- In The Tudors, Season 2, Episode 9, Mark Smeaton is put on the rack during his interrogation about Queen Anne's affairs.
[edit] References and sources
- ^ Witch Trials visualstatistics.net. Retrieved on October 15, 2007
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- 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 0750937270
