If you're a bit of a history aficionado then you'd probably be interested in learning all about the various ways people have treated each other horribly over the years.
Depending on which period of history takes your fancy you might be more of a Brazen Bull fan and be enamoured by a Greek contraption which cooks the occupant while turning their screams into animal noises.
If the ancient Persians are more your tempo then you'll no doubt be familiar with scaphism and know that with two boats, some milk and lashings of honey you could subject some poor soul to the worst experience ever.
However, if you're in the market for a more UK-centric method of torture and execution for proper Brits then there's plenty to sate your fascination with the darker side of history too.
This local method of torture for local people is known as the rack, and you've likely witnessed it at some point in the grand world of pop culture.
An artistic depiction of a man being tortured by the rack in the Tower of London, a truly horrible fate (Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
The device is pretty basic in its operation, you pretty much lie your victim on a table that has a couple of rollers at either end, tie their arms and legs to the rollers and as you turn them it pulls them further and further away.
You might be thinking 'Oh it's just a bit of stretching, it might hurt a bit but I could take that'.
No you f**king couldn't.
The rack would tear your limbs out of their joints, rupture your muscles and leave you in catastrophic agony and ready to say whatever you think would get you out of your current predicament, rather underlining the fact that torture isn't an effective method of gathering information.
In extreme cases your bones could even break under the pressure, and the person running the torture would work to make sure you stayed awake as long as possible to experience it all.
A torture rack in the Tower of London (By David Bjorgen - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1069250)
While the rack originates from a time period long ago it maintained popularity throughout the ages and continued to be used in medieval times.
In England, a rack used in the Tower of London got the nickname 'the Duke of Exeter's daughter' as it was supposedly used often enough that he became associated with it.
In 1606 a man named Nicholas Owen who built priest holes for Catholics to hide in died on the rack in the Tower of London but gave up no information, he was canonised as a saint in 1970 and became the patron saint of illusionists and escapologists.
Guy Fawkes is thought to have been tortured on the rack before his execution, while in 1628 a man who assassinated a noble was threatened with being put upon the rack before judges declared that using the torture device was illegal.
It was certainly a decision for the best.
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English (US) ·