The Big Book of Pain: Torture & Punishment Through History Read Online Free

to death.
    One of the simplest, and most bizarre, forms of torture designed specifically to induce a suspect to talk was that of ‘pressing’. According to medieval and renaissance law, a suspect could only be properly tried if they openly confessed to their crime. Instances where prisoners refused to enter a plea were particularly galling because only once they admitted their guilt could their property be confiscated by the state. If they simply refused to plea, there was always enough possibility of innocence that their property would pass on to their legitimate heir. For the government to get as much satisfaction (and profit) as possible out of executing an enemy, they must confess their guilt. To this end the practice of pressing was introduced. It was extremely simple. A subject was laid on the floor of their cell or the torture chamber, a door was laid on top of them and more and more stones (or other weights) were piled on top of the door. In less than a minute breathing became difficult, then nearly impossible. As this was specifically a torture of inducement, the weight was increased very slowly: if the victim died before confessing, their estate remained in the family. Smothering is a terrible death and only the strongest willed could withstand both the crushing weight, the inability to breathe and the sure knowledge that all they had to do to make it all go away was talk. The last recorded case of pressing to extract a confession took place during the Salem, Massachusetts witch trials in 1692; in that case, like so many others before it, the victim chose not to confess to a crime of which they were wholly innocent.
    No matter how effective, or ineffectual, torture might be at making a person confess their guilt or betray their accomplices, real or imagined, torture when used as a means of punishment was guaranteed 100 per cent effective. It may not have deterred other criminals, slowed a constantly rising crime rate or even reformed the person being punished, but it was completely effective in the sense that punishment had been extracted as prescribed by law and, in almost every case, the punishment had been carried out in full view of a public who demanded constant reassurance that their government was ‘getting tough on crime’.
    Defining precisely which forms of punishment qualify as torture, and which do not, is slightly more problematic than when dealing with torture as a means of extracting a confession or information. Any time information is forcibly extracted from a prisoner there is a high probability that some form of torture has been involved because the innocent have no information to give and the guilty are unlikely to willingly offer whatever information they possess. Punishment, on the other hand, by its very nature, implies that the convict is being disciplined to some greater, or lesser, extent; the degree of punishment being determined by the severity of the crime. No matter what the crime, when the rules of the society in question have been broken, some form of retribution must be exacted if the law of the land is to be satisfied and the public is going to be reassured that their government is doing its job. Failure to follow this simple concept would lead to a state of chaos and, inevitably, to the collapse of society.
    So when does punishment become torture? Undoubtedly, when a convict is executed slowly and in an excruciatingly painful manner, it is safe to say that they are being tortured to death. Whether lesser punishments can be legitimately considered torture can only be judged by the prevailing mores of the society. In the ancient world, where life was harsh and brutal even in its quietest moments, there were only three primary kinds of punishments: whippings, imposed for minor crimes; ‘an eye for an eye’ retributionary punishments for more serious, but not capital, crimes and finally, at the top of the list, execution. Since petty crime is always more prevalent than serious