Today’s Immoveable Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
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 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularly in Scotland and France, a device was used which, while not endangering life in any way, positively encouraged the unfortunate victim to reveal everything he knew, whether true or imagined. The instrument was known as the Boot.
There were several versions of this device, the variations probably owing to the fact that in those times descriptions were passed by word of mouth rather than by detailed drawings and blueprints. So torture-instrument manufacturers at one end of the country were given a different idea of how the machine functioned than was actually the case. But as long as all the machines caused excruciating agony, there was obviously no need for any standardization by the authorities.
As its name implies, the boot was designed to torture a prisoner’s legs and feet, and the device was so effective that even the early stages of its application caused injuries sufficient to induce a hasty confession.
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 legs now immoveable, the torture started 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.
The Boot
An alternative method dispensed with the frame. Instead the boards on each side of the legs were bound tightly together. For the ‘ordinary’ torture, four wedges were driven between the two inner boards. For the extra-ordinary torture, eight wedges were used, bursting flesh and bone, and permanently crippling the victim. It was described by a seventeenth-century visitor to Scotland as ‘four pieces of narrow board nailed together, of a competent length for the leg, not unlike the short cases we use to guard young trees from the rabbits, which they wedge so tightly on all sides that, not being ably to bear the pain, they promise confession to get rid of it.’
Culled from: Rack, Rope and Red-hot Pincers
Dissection Photo Du Jour!
School unknown, ca. 1900. Bucket for waste is visible in the foreground beneath table at left. Private collection.
Culled from: Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine: 1880-1930
Garretdom: Olde News
They had quite a thunderstorm in Lima, Ohio in 1886! And who knew that they had an oil boom in Ohio?
STRUCK BY LIGHTNING.
Oil Tanks in a Blaze, and a Woman Killed by a Stray Bolt.
LIMA, Ohio, Sept. 23.—This morning at seven o’clock this city was startled by a terrific clash of thunder. In a few moments, black clouds of smoke were seen rolling up from one of the oil wells on the Brotherton land. The fire at once communicated with the tank, and in a few minutes all was on fire. At the same time the gas in the tank three hundred yards west ignited. The wells, all machinery, tanks and about 2400 barrels of oil were consumed. At one o’clock the derrick at the gas works oil well was struck, consuming the entire structure, machinery and tanks and 1200 barrels of oil. This well is adjoining the gas-works, which at one time was in great danger; but the gas-works and all the machinery connected therewith are saved. The railroad bridge was on fire several times, caused by oil running down, but was saved without much damage. About that time high columns of black smoke were seen southeast from the city. Five wells are reported to have been struck by lightning and destroyed: The Hogle No. 2, Shockey, McLain, Holmes and Bowman. Rain ahs been falling in torrents. The thunder and lightning has exceeded anything of the kind known here.
Mrs. Henderson, standing in the doorway of her home near the first well struck, was struck by a stray bolt and killed.
Reports of damage by lightning at several places in this vicinity have been received. At Bluffton the Eastern and Western Narrow Gauge Railroad depot was struck by lightning and totally destroyed. At Beaver Dam the Lake Erie and Western Railroad depot was badly damaged. At Spicerville Charles Hoover’s barn was destroyed, and many barns and outhouses are reported to have been destroyed in the vicinity of Lima.
Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook