Use Of Torture example essay topic

We went to the torture room in a kind of solemn precession, the guards walking ahead with lighted candles. The chamber was underground and dark, particularly near the entrance. It was a vast shadowy place and every device and instrument of human torture was there. They pointed out some of them to me and said I should have to taste them. Then they asked me again if I would confess.

I cannot., I said. (Abbott, 1) Those words were spoken by John Gerard, a Jesuit priest accused of spreading Catholicism in England. And in 1597 he was captured, taken to the Tower of London and put to the question. Whatever the country, whatever the crime, one could see the authorities dilemma, when suspicion, strong and sometimes reinforced by evidence, would point to an individual, who usually vehemently denied all accusations.

Yet the truth had to be determined. While in an age where social conditions were brutally harsh, where epidemics of fatal diseases decimated the population and violence was almost a way of life, what more natural than to attempt to extract a confession by using force. Torture which is understood to be the torment and suffering of the body in order to elicit the truth. Its concept is based on two fundamental facts, first, that we all have imaginations. (Abbott, 1-4) Torture is a vile and depraved invasion of the rights and dignity of an individual.

It is a crime against humanity, for which there can be no possible justification. (Innes, 7) Torture was used as early as the 11th century, as evidence shows that William the Conqueror ordered the maiming of criminals, while Henry I ordained that those guilty of counterfeiting the nations currency, would be punished by having their right hand severed and then afterwards castrated. The human anatomy seems to have been express designed to be pierced. The human bodys soft, yielding flesh, with vulnerable parts such as fingers and toes, ears and noses, sticking out, positively invited the attention of a torturers keen blade and sharpened spike.

(Abbott, 67) Since the primary principle of torture is to inflict pain or, at the very least, to threaten pain, therefore exploiting the fear of it. Probably the most infamous instrument of torture in Medieval England was the rack. (The Tower... , 2) It is believed that the rack was introduced into England around 1420 by the Duke of Exeter, who was constable of the Tower of London at the time. (Innes, 87-88) Although many variations of the rack have been used throughout the centuries, the basic principle has always been the same. The victims hands are secured by ropes to a beam at one end, and their bodies gradually stretched by ropes attached to their feet.

At first, they resist the stretching, not only with the muscles of their arms, and legs but also with their abdominal muscles. Then suddenly, the muscles of their limbs give way, first in the arms and subsequently in the legs: the ligaments, and then the fibres of the muscles themselves, are torn. Further stretching ruptures the muscles of the abdomen, and finally torn from their sockets. (Innes, 123) If they did not die of their injuries, they were often so injured that they could not take part in their public confessions. (Tower of...

, 2) Persuasion by means of pressing usually ended in death, hardly desirable in court cases where confessions and names of accomplices were required. However in the 16th and 17th centuries, a device was used which, while not endangering life in any way, positively encouraged the victim to reveal everything he knew, whether true or imagined. The instrument was known as the Boot. As its name implies, the boot was designed to torture a prisoners legs and feet, and the device was so effective that even the early stages of its application caused injuries so harsh that a hasty confession was usually the result. the most common form of the boot required the victim to sit on a bench, to which he was securely tied. An upright board was then placed on either side of each leg, splinting them from knee to ankle; the boards were held together by ropes or iron rings within a frame. With the victims legs now immovable, the torture begun with wooden wedges hammered between the two inner boards and then between the outer boards and their surrounding frame, compressing and crushing the trapped flesh.

(Abbott, 30-31) The torture of the boot was described by those who witnessed it as it as the most severe and cruel pain in the world. Indeed, as Bishop Burnet wrote: When any are to be stuck in the boots, it is done in the presence of the council, and upon that happening, almost all offer to run away. The sight is so dreadful that, without an order restraining such a number to stay, the press would remain unused. (Innes, 3) Torture remained strong throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance period, however; punishment by death was beginning to become a very infamous form of torture.

The ultimate torment, slow death by burning at the stake, was practiced in England for several centuries. The victim would be smeared with pitch, and then dragged on a hurdle to the place of execution. There the accused was made to stand on a barrel of pitch surrounded by faggots, and chained to the stake. A noose was then placed about the victims neck, the rope ran through a pulley at the top of the stake and into the executioners hands. The fire was lit, and the rope was pulled, however; sometimes the fire would reach the victim before the executioners had a chance to strangle the accused.

Because of this the victim would suffer feeling their body being burned from the outside in at least till the flames consumed their whole body, which in some cases could take up to an hour. (Innes, 94) To be executed by having ones head removed by cold steel was considered an honorable death by the Normans, in as much in keeping with ones rank as being killed in battle by the battle-axe or the sword. This method of being punished for ones crimes was introduced into England by William the Conqueror in 1076. The instrument used was the sword, and this type continued to be used for many years to come. (Abbott, 191) In England the sword was soon superseded by a weapon which resembled the battle-axe in name only, for the heading axe was a crude and ill-balanced implement little better than a heavy, unwieldy chopper. The clumsy weapon weighs seven pounds fifteen ounces and kills, not with a clinical cutting action, but by crushing its way through the vertebrae, not unlike a very blunt chisel.

(Beheadings, 3) To a dedicated executioner, and even more to the victim prone in front of him, a sliced shot had results too horrific to contemplate, as James, Duke of Monmouth, found out to his cost in 1685. Jack Ketch, the public executioner could not after five strokes sever the Dukes head from his body. Ketch had to take a knife, and sever the strip of skin still connecting the head to the torso. After every decapitation it was the executioners duty to pick up the head by the hair, remove the blindfold if necessary, and display it from each corner of the scaffold, shouting, Behold the head of a traitor! So die all traitors! (Abbott, 94) Stocks were perhaps the most widely used punitive device, some also being utilized to secure offenders awaiting trial.

Portrayed in Anglo-Saxon books, Stocks were in constant use for many centuries, changing little in design. They were of simple construction, consisting of two sturdy uprights fixed in the ground, having grooves down their inner surfaces in which were slotted two solid timber boards, one above the other. Each plank had semicircular notches in it, positioned so that when aligned with the other, the notches formed holes which encircled the culprits ankles. With the upper plank locked in position with a padlock, there was no escape for the victim until he or she was released by the appointed official. (Abbott, 149) Situated as they were in the centre of the village, the unhappy occupant of the stocks was inevitably the focus of attention. They became targets for jibes and taunts, if nothing more injurious, the victims could do little to retaliate, or even defend themselves.

This of course was the whole purpose of the punishment, literally to make a laughing-stock of them by exposure to the scorn and opprobrium of the others in the community. (Peters, 35) In an age when there was little or no entertainment as we know it, and poverty and disease made life cheap, an execution anywhere in the country was a diversion to look forward to. A wide range of offenses, from shoplifting to murder, carried the death penalty. In earlier days London boasted to have the best hangings. The vast majority of the criminals were hanged at Tyburn. Tyburn fields originally consisted of 270 acres of rough ground It is estimated that over 50,000 people died a violent death at Tyburn.

In the early part of the 12th century the gallows, used for hanging, consisted merely of two uprights and a crossbeam, capable of accommodating ten victims at a time. Once the victim arrived, at Tyburn, the doomed men and women were forced to mount a ladder and the rope about their necks was tied to the beam above. After a prayer or a speech, one by one they would be the ladder would be kicked out from under them so that they swung in the empty air. (Hanging, 4) In course the procedure was speeded up by the use of a horse and cart, one large enough to transport a number of prisoners together with their coffins. The English language was thereby enriched by such phrases as in the cart and gone west, the direction of Tyburn from the two places of imprisonment.

(Hanging, 1) Even though the process of hanging was speeded up, the effectiveness was brought down. Many times a victim didnt die by the snapping of the neck, but by the strangulation which was very tormenting to the victim. (Davis, 112) At a more domestic level, and years away from barbaric religious tribunals and torture chambers, the Ducking stool its place in the life of many villages. Innocuous as the words may sound, nevertheless its name sent shivers down the spines of nagging wives, shrews, harlots, strumpets and, rarely, dishonest tradesmen. The device took many forms, and was governed by deciding factors as whether the village had a deep river nearby, a muddy scream with or with out a bridge, or just a pond. (Abbott, 116) In its simplest form, a chair or stool was fixed to one end of a long pole, which was either pivoted on a support, or manhandled by a number of people.

Sometimes it was mounted on a wheeled trolley, when it was known as the tree bucket. The victim was strapped in the seat, and then lowered into water, generally a muddy or stinking pond. The process could be repeated several times, until the victim, spluttering furiously; was nearly drowned and, on at least one occasion, the outcome was death. (Innes, 137-138) Such rural punishments gave rise to many a ribald verse. One, composed by Benjamin West in 1780 read, There stands, my friend, in yonder pool, An engine call a ducking stool; By legal power commanded down, The joy and Terror or the town.

If jarring females kindle strife, Give language foul or lug the coif, If noisy dames should once begin To drive the house with horrid din, Away, you cry, youll grace the stool, Well teach you how your tongue to rule. The fair offender fills the seat In sullen pomp, profoundly great, Down in the deep the stool descends, But here at first we miss our ends. She mounts again, and rages more Than ever vixen did before. So throwing water on the fire Will but make it burn the higher. If so, my friend pray let her take A second turn into the lake; And, rather than your patience lose Thrice, and again repeat the dose No brawling wives, no furious wenches, No fire so hot water quenches. (Abbott, 119-120) We are to understand that torture is a pretty usual part of criminal proceedings, unless the defendant is a noble whose alleged crime does not touch the safety of the state.

It is also true that wise men have discouraged the practice, which Pope Nicholas I did in AD 866. When he wrote A confession must be voluntary and not forced, by means of torture an innocent man may avowal in such a case what a crime for the judge! Or a person may be subdued by pain, and acknowledge himself guilty, though he be innocent which throws an equally great sin upon the tribunal! (Abbott, 166) The official justification for torture has always been the need to obtain information: from a criminal concerning the extent of his crimes, and the names of his accomplices; from a prisoner taken in war, who may have knowledge of his generals intentions; from heretic who can be persuaded to confess his beliefs and implicate others; or from a terrorist whose actions can endanger dozens maybe hundreds of innocent lives. Sadly, the application of torture in such instances in itself is inexcusable, has been over shadowed by the fact that it is regarded also as a punishment.

The inevitable outcome is that the trade of torturer has attracted only the most sadistic of human beings, and that the use of torture has moved away from any practical need to obtain information, or impose a legal penalty for wrongdoing, to allow the more powerful to enjoy the pleasure of inflicting random pain upon the less fortunate. (Innes, 7-9) Anyway you look at it torture is just a vile and depraved invasion of the rights and dignity of an individual, a crime against humanity for which there can be no possible justification.

Bibliography

Press. Abbott, G. (1997).
Rack, Rope And Red- Hot Pincers. Great britain: B rockhampton Beheadings (1999).
1/12/00], web Davis, W.S. (1951).
Life on a Mediaeval Barony. New York: Harper and Row Death by Hanging (1999) [1/12/00], web Innes, B.
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The History of Torture. New York: St. Martins Press. Peters, E. (1985).