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10 Medieval Torture Devices · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to you Stuff you should Know from house Stuff
0:04
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
0:12
Speaker 1: Josh Clarkinner's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and um. Chuck thinks
0:16
Speaker 1: we should include a warning on this one. I think
0:19
Speaker 1: we probably should. This is gonna be pretty gruesome at times. Warning. Kids,
0:24
Speaker 1: maybe ask your parents if you should play that. Parents,
0:27
Speaker 1: maybe don't play this for your kids. Done, pretty good warning.
0:32
Speaker 1: And this is history, you know, it's pretty it's pretty
0:34
Speaker 1: uh gruesome history though. Yeah. So the Middle Ages are
0:38
Speaker 1: the Medieval period in Europe. Man, Yeah, they were very
0:42
Speaker 1: gruesome time, starting about the fifth century after the fall
0:46
Speaker 1: of the Roman Empire, uh and lasting until the Renaissance
0:50
Speaker 1: the fifteenth century. It's many English years, a thousand years
0:55
Speaker 1: of um, nasty, brutish and short life. Yeah, so that
0:59
Speaker 1: the average life expectancy during the Medieval period. And all
1:04
Speaker 1: historians don't like they call it the Middle Ages because
1:08
Speaker 1: that implies that it's just basically this little bit of
1:10
Speaker 1: time in between two really important ages, the Middle Period.
1:15
Speaker 1: It's like the Jane Brady of history. Um. And they're saying, like, no,
1:19
Speaker 1: there's some really great things came about during this time
1:23
Speaker 1: and Um, you can't just call it that, so they
1:25
Speaker 1: call it the Medieval period. I still think it's the
1:27
Speaker 1: Middle Ages or the Dark Ages is another great way
1:30
Speaker 1: to put it. Brutish behavior. There was a expectancy somewhere
1:36
Speaker 1: in the forties. I didn't see specifically, but yeah, at
1:41
Speaker 1: the very least it's yeah, average age, you could live
1:44
Speaker 1: longer than that. I mean, like you, you know, if
1:47
Speaker 1: you're a woman, the chances of you dying in childbirth
1:49
Speaker 1: were pretty high. If you were a man, the chances
1:52
Speaker 1: of you being killed by getting kicked by your horse,
1:56
Speaker 1: we're probably pretty high. If you were a child making it,
2:00
Speaker 1: I think you had a thirty three percent chance to
2:03
Speaker 1: not make it past five. It was not good. It
2:07
Speaker 1: was a violent time. Um. Nutrition was not very good,
2:12
Speaker 1: it was a dirty time, and it was just it
2:14
Speaker 1: was a bad time to be alive. I think we
2:17
Speaker 1: can agree on that. Um, if you're time traveling, skip
2:20
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages. One of the one of the one
2:24
Speaker 1: of the I guess hallmarks of the Middle Ages, UM
2:28
Speaker 1: was that after the fall of the Roman Empire, Rome
2:31
Speaker 1: like owned Europe owned it outright, and under this control
2:38
Speaker 1: also came things like Rhodes currency, government justice. Yeah, like
2:44
Speaker 1: to the farthest reaches of the Roman Empire. It was
2:47
Speaker 1: under controlled generally, and these areas had public service, right
2:54
Speaker 1: public services. After the Roman Empire fell um there was
2:58
Speaker 1: a power vacuum and for three hundred years the Franks
3:02
Speaker 1: and the Saxons and the Anglo Saxons um all were fighting.
3:06
Speaker 1: And finally in about eight hundred Charlemagne was crowned the
3:11
Speaker 1: Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and the Church took
3:14
Speaker 1: over basically, which good news, right you would think. The Church, however,
3:20
Speaker 1: had a hatred of women in their fondness of torture,
3:24
Speaker 1: and the Middle Ages was also characterized by a period
3:28
Speaker 1: of really inventive thinking in how to produce human suffering. Yeah,
3:35
Speaker 1: I think it is a great quote from L. A.
3:37
Speaker 1: Parry's nineteen seventy book A History of Torture in England.
3:41
Speaker 1: The first part of this really hits home on it
3:43
Speaker 1: and hit home. But yeah, it brings up bad memories.
3:47
Speaker 1: What strikes us most in considering the medieval tortures is
3:49
Speaker 1: not so much their diabolical barbarity as the extraordinary variety
3:53
Speaker 1: in what maybe term the artistic skill they displayed. So
3:56
Speaker 1: they definitely delighted and especially reading these torture devices and
4:01
Speaker 1: being very uh inventive and probably trying to outdo one another,
4:06
Speaker 1: and how awful it was and the different mechanisms, you know,
4:10
Speaker 1: because mechanics was new, so they were probably like, look,
4:14
Speaker 1: you know this has five gears that will you know,
4:17
Speaker 1: rip your toes off. How cool? But uh yeah, so
4:22
Speaker 1: it was very ah, perversely inventive period. Yeah. Perry says
4:27
Speaker 1: that they basically ruminated and considered how suffering occurs to
4:34
Speaker 1: figure out how to produce it. That it was like
4:37
Speaker 1: basically an art form by the end. Yeah, they would
4:41
Speaker 1: in court sometimes they would um just do things like hey,
4:46
Speaker 1: let me put your arm in boiling water, and we're
4:49
Speaker 1: going to base our verdict on how long it takes
4:51
Speaker 1: it to heal. Um. I know the old thing about
4:55
Speaker 1: you know, does the witch float throw it? Throw in
4:58
Speaker 1: the lake and let's see and if she drowns, hey
5:01
Speaker 1: she was not a witch. That's sad. But if she lives,
5:05
Speaker 1: then Berner at to stay exactly. Yeah, so either way
5:08
Speaker 1: the lady dies, which is very sad. Um. And they
5:11
Speaker 1: even had a thing when they would torture people for confessions,
5:15
Speaker 1: but they wouldn't They would say basically that confession doesn't count.
5:19
Speaker 1: So they would say, you know what, within that twenty
5:21
Speaker 1: four hour period, we won't torture you, see if you
5:23
Speaker 1: still confess, and if you don't, we'll just torch you again. Right.
5:27
Speaker 1: That was to corroborate your own confession that was extracted
5:30
Speaker 1: under torture. So even even back then, they realized, like, yeah,
5:34
Speaker 1: you can't really rely on a confession under torture because
5:37
Speaker 1: people say anything to get you to stop doing the
5:39
Speaker 1: things that we're about to describe they were doing to them, right,
5:42
Speaker 1: or they would torture you very publicly. That's a very
5:44
Speaker 1: common thing with most of these dissuade criminal activity. Yeah,
5:48
Speaker 1: humiliation shaming, scarlet letters, Yeah, that kind of thing, permanent
5:54
Speaker 1: scarlet letters. Even so, we're talking about the torture advices,
6:00
Speaker 1: some of the more famous, more diabolical ones that came
6:03
Speaker 1: out of the Middle Ages. Yeah, and this is a
6:07
Speaker 1: surprise for you. I told you I had a little
6:08
Speaker 1: game we're gonna play. We're gonna as we go, we
6:11
Speaker 1: will also find out, because I've done this research, which
6:14
Speaker 1: of these torture devices are also the names of heavy
6:17
Speaker 1: metal bands. Oh yeah, that's a great one because at
6:21
Speaker 1: the very first one I saw The Brazen Bull, I
6:23
Speaker 1: was like, surely that's a band. Yeah. When I was
6:25
Speaker 1: researching this, I was thinking, like, I wonder how many
6:28
Speaker 1: times Chuck's gonna be like, that's a great band name. Well,
6:30
Speaker 1: the Brazen Bull is, in fact the band in Chicago,
6:33
Speaker 1: three piece uh grinder core metal band. Give me another
6:37
Speaker 1: example of grind core. So I I know, I don't
6:40
Speaker 1: even know. I think it's just the stuff that's so
6:42
Speaker 1: like fast and heavy and like I like that. Yeah,
6:46
Speaker 1: so I've I found. I tweeted out this picture of
6:49
Speaker 1: like the different characters from Lord of the Rings and
6:52
Speaker 1: then based on like their looks, what kind of metal
6:55
Speaker 1: they were into? Really yeah, like Golam was in the
6:58
Speaker 1: new Metal New Metal. Yeah, and then I can't remember.
7:03
Speaker 1: I think um Vigo Mortenson was into like, um, I
7:08
Speaker 1: can't remember. It's it's worth checking out going too our
7:11
Speaker 1: Twitter for you look like three weeks four weeks back. Yeah,
7:14
Speaker 1: I'll find it, you'll love it. I'm sure I didn't
7:16
Speaker 1: describe grind Cork correctly. That's cool. I'm not hip on
7:19
Speaker 1: the metal scene, Chuck. The Brazen Bull. The Brazen Bull
7:24
Speaker 1: is old. Indeed, they think that an ancient Greek name
7:28
Speaker 1: Perillus invented it, yeah, for for a tyrant named Phalaris
7:34
Speaker 1: of a grinchined him and so basically like, hey, let
7:40
Speaker 1: me build you this torture device. You're gonna love it.
7:43
Speaker 1: And the guy was like, I love it, get in it?
7:47
Speaker 1: What And apparently that's how it went down, right. So
7:50
Speaker 1: what is the Brazen Bull. Well, it's a brass bull,
7:53
Speaker 1: which is why it's brazen. And the bowl yeah, um,
7:56
Speaker 1: it's a large one, big enough for human to fit him,
8:00
Speaker 1: and there is a locking mechanism on the outside once
8:02
Speaker 1: the human is in. Because they built fires around the
8:07
Speaker 1: brazen bowl, lit them and then waited for the brazen
8:12
Speaker 1: bowl the heat up with the person inside, who would
8:15
Speaker 1: then scream and move around. And the muted sounds because
8:20
Speaker 1: it was brass because their tongue was often cut off.
8:23
Speaker 1: Um made it look and sound like the the bull
8:26
Speaker 1: was alive and making noise. Yeah, And we found through
8:30
Speaker 1: all of these grab Sir wrote this. Of course at
8:32
Speaker 1: Grabanowski it was usually followed with to the delight and
8:36
Speaker 1: entertainment of the crowd. So apparently, you know the bull
8:39
Speaker 1: started rocking and making noises. People were just like, oh,
8:42
Speaker 1: I love it. It's great. Someone's getting seared alive inside
8:47
Speaker 1: that hollow bowl. Yeah, because this thing you're not being
8:50
Speaker 1: You're not being like charred, You're being seared to death. Ultimately, Ultimately,
8:56
Speaker 1: I imagine you would pass out and die from the heat,
9:00
Speaker 1: probably hopefully, but I mean being seared to death that's
9:03
Speaker 1: pretty bad. Or even being steered in the meantime before
9:07
Speaker 1: you pass out from the heat. Yeah. I think with
9:09
Speaker 1: most of these, your best hope is to pass out
9:11
Speaker 1: as soon as possible from pain, you know. So, thumb
9:15
Speaker 1: screws is one that that are They're interesting in that
9:20
Speaker 1: they aren't designed to kill you, like a lot of
9:23
Speaker 1: these tortures are designed like to either kill you or
9:27
Speaker 1: you could die from them. And if you do well
9:30
Speaker 1: whatever with thumb screws, it's like, no, this is just
9:33
Speaker 1: for inflicting pain on you. Yeah, band or not a band?
9:37
Speaker 1: A band thumb screw out of Austin, Texas metal band.
9:43
Speaker 1: Uh so Yeah, like you said, you're not gonna die.
9:45
Speaker 1: It's basically a these upright metal bars, three upright metal
9:51
Speaker 1: bars that you put your thumbs in and then a
9:54
Speaker 1: wooden bar slides down and presses your thumbs down, and
9:57
Speaker 1: then it has screws and they just crank it down,
10:00
Speaker 1: like squeezing your thumbs until they're crushed and broken. I
10:03
Speaker 1: would imagine, Yeah, if you want to just start to
10:05
Speaker 1: get even the slightest bit of idea of it, just
10:09
Speaker 1: just pressed down on your thumb a little bit about
10:12
Speaker 1: within the top third of your thumb above the quick
10:16
Speaker 1: Jerry's not doing it, She's just watching us, and it
10:18
Speaker 1: just it starts as like a little throbbing pain. Now,
10:22
Speaker 1: imagine like somebody's screwing a vice down on top of
10:25
Speaker 1: that while you're screaming. That's what the thumb screws met for.
10:30
Speaker 1: Apparently there was a tin finger version called a pilly wink.
10:33
Speaker 1: And that's a cute name. Is that a metal band name? No?
10:36
Speaker 1: I looked that up though, um, and it's supposedly originated
10:40
Speaker 1: in the Russian army is punishment for bad soldiers. And
10:43
Speaker 1: then a Scotsman said, this is great, let's bring it
10:46
Speaker 1: back home to the UK. Yeah. A guy named Quotability
10:49
Speaker 1: tam Delio who was a seventeenth century UH minister of
10:54
Speaker 1: parliament um who liked to use them himself. Not on himself, no,
11:00
Speaker 1: but he liked to use them on people. Okay, Number eight,
11:03
Speaker 1: the rack band not a band band. No, I couldn't
11:07
Speaker 1: find it. It's gotta be I think. Um, it's just
11:11
Speaker 1: a little too like vague. That was my explanation. But
11:14
Speaker 1: it is a workout device. Someone's actually named their little
11:17
Speaker 1: workout machine the rack. No way. Yeah, it looks like
11:20
Speaker 1: it looks like a walker, you know, like if you
11:22
Speaker 1: can't walk, so great, but you can do like dips
11:25
Speaker 1: and push ups and sit ups and stuff with it. Yeah.
11:27
Speaker 1: So do you think they were like making a joke?
11:31
Speaker 1: I have no idea, I hope so. Um. So the
11:34
Speaker 1: rack is pretty self explanatory and you've all seen this before.
11:38
Speaker 1: Um has many different forms, but generally it is a
11:42
Speaker 1: person tied to a table with each limb um, you know,
11:46
Speaker 1: tied to a corner, and then it is cranked and
11:49
Speaker 1: you were pulled apart or at least dislocated, right, like
11:53
Speaker 1: the wheel is cranked, or like an axle is cranked
11:57
Speaker 1: or something that that that wines that coils the rope
12:01
Speaker 1: that your limbs are tied to up And yeah, it's
12:04
Speaker 1: either dislocated or if you really want to get down,
12:07
Speaker 1: you can just keep going and pull the limbs right
12:10
Speaker 1: off of the body. Yeah, I imagine there was a
12:13
Speaker 1: about a four second period where it was great, you
12:17
Speaker 1: know where your back just cracked just right, and they're like, oh,
12:20
Speaker 1: that's fantastic. And then it was like no, no, no, no, no,
12:23
Speaker 1: can we stop there? Oh no, yeah, I don't like
12:27
Speaker 1: this anymore. Uh. And they called you you know, would
12:30
Speaker 1: be called broken on the rack or racked or stretched
12:32
Speaker 1: on the rack. And there was one type that apparently
12:35
Speaker 1: looked like a horse even yeah, I get the impression
12:38
Speaker 1: that was a little bit like a sawhorse, looking kind
12:40
Speaker 1: of just a beam with legs, and um torque Mata,
12:45
Speaker 1: who was the head of the Spanish inquisition, he preferred
12:48
Speaker 1: one called the portoro, right, but again the inventiveness, like
12:53
Speaker 1: they would make one look like a horse, or you know,
12:55
Speaker 1: they would apply little artistry to it, which is even
12:57
Speaker 1: more perverse I think. And there's another one. It's kind
13:00
Speaker 1: of related to the rack. It's called the wheel. Virtually
13:04
Speaker 1: the same principle, no man um the it's basically the
13:09
Speaker 1: same principle as the wreck. Your your limbs are tied
13:12
Speaker 1: to the wheel, or they're broken ahead of time in
13:16
Speaker 1: two places with an iron bar and then threaded through
13:19
Speaker 1: the spokes in the wheel, and then once you're secured
13:21
Speaker 1: this wheel. They can do all sorts of stuff. They
13:23
Speaker 1: can swing it like a pendulum and spikes that you're
13:27
Speaker 1: you're grazed over or fire or the fire below you,
13:30
Speaker 1: and just swing you slowly over that. Or they can
13:33
Speaker 1: use the wheel as it was meant to be used
13:36
Speaker 1: and tie you to it and send you down a
13:38
Speaker 1: rocky hillside. You'll tell you on the outside of it. Yeah,
13:41
Speaker 1: it's not to make you dizzy. Myself almost said that
13:44
Speaker 1: was my favorite. The wheel is your favorite? Well, tying
13:47
Speaker 1: them on the outside and rolling them down the hill.
13:49
Speaker 1: When I read that, I was like, very inventive. Yeah,
13:51
Speaker 1: that's off to you. What else you gonna do with
13:54
Speaker 1: the wheel using as a pendulum? That's stupid. Yeah. The
13:57
Speaker 1: one where they would break your arms was kind to
14:00
Speaker 1: crucifixion because, like you said, basically they would thread you
14:03
Speaker 1: through it and then put it high on a steak
14:05
Speaker 1: and just let you bake out in the sun until
14:06
Speaker 1: you died with four broken limbs. Alright, the rack in
14:11
Speaker 1: the wheel, the steak burning at the steak not a
14:14
Speaker 1: band name, no, and it was usually a form of execution,
14:18
Speaker 1: but it was so painful that it's also considered a
14:21
Speaker 1: form of torture. How long would it take, Josh, So
14:25
Speaker 1: it's just a poll that somebody's tied to with some
14:28
Speaker 1: dry kindling around it, like kindling and um. Depending on
14:34
Speaker 1: the conditions, it could take thirty minutes for you to
14:38
Speaker 1: finally go unconscious from the pain of the fire. Thirty
14:42
Speaker 1: minutes of being burned before you finally feigned. Now, if
14:46
Speaker 1: it was windy out and the fire is blowing away
14:49
Speaker 1: from you a little bit, you could be during that
14:51
Speaker 1: for up to two hours, unbelievable of being burned to death.
14:58
Speaker 1: Two hours of being burn to death at the steak. Yeah.
15:01
Speaker 1: And the Netherlands they got a little more creative with it.
15:04
Speaker 1: They would um a lot of times. They would remove
15:06
Speaker 1: the tongue or do something to the tongue I think,
15:07
Speaker 1: to just muffle the screams and make it a little
15:11
Speaker 1: more palatable. Uh. And in the Netherlands they would apparently um,
15:15
Speaker 1: sandwich your tongue between two hot iron plates and uh.
15:19
Speaker 1: Of course you couldn't do a lot with that except
15:22
Speaker 1: you know, make weird muffled screaming noises. Right. I don't
15:24
Speaker 1: know if it was to make it more palatable or
15:26
Speaker 1: people during the Dark Ages thought it was hilarious where
15:28
Speaker 1: people couldn't talk. Yeah, maybe so you know, you're right
15:32
Speaker 1: like that was like Jerry Lewis of periods, the Jam
15:37
Speaker 1: Brady and the Jerry Lewis of periods. Wow, that's pretty
15:42
Speaker 1: exciting time. Um, are we onto the Pillory? Oh well,
15:47
Speaker 1: we should say probably that there was a modicum of
15:50
Speaker 1: mercy with the steak where the church would strangle you
15:55
Speaker 1: if you confess to being a heretic, they would strangle
15:58
Speaker 1: you to death first before burning you at mistake, and
16:00
Speaker 1: then it was just a symbolic burning. Right, you're being
16:03
Speaker 1: consumed by fire. That's a very nice thing to do.
16:08
Speaker 1: So Pillory band or not a band? I would say
16:12
Speaker 1: they are a band out of Boston and they're a
16:15
Speaker 1: hardcore band and actually listened to one of their songs.
16:18
Speaker 1: You want to know the name of it is, what
16:21
Speaker 1: hang nail in a Jeez? That's a metal band song title.
16:27
Speaker 1: It sure is. So the pillory you've all seen. It's
16:30
Speaker 1: um basically the two parallel wooden boards that are classed
16:34
Speaker 1: together around your neck and arms and you're bent over
16:38
Speaker 1: hanging through them. Your hands are your hands and your
16:40
Speaker 1: head stick through these things. Yeah. I always thought that
16:42
Speaker 1: was the stocks. Yeah, it's just like to restrain your ankles.
16:48
Speaker 1: But the point is your immobile and you put on
16:51
Speaker 1: a platform in a very public area to be shame
16:54
Speaker 1: and humiliated and have rotten fruit thrown at you and
16:57
Speaker 1: more than that, feces. And I imagine the worst case
17:00
Speaker 1: scenario for this would be a group of like twelve
17:04
Speaker 1: year old boys in the Middle Ages when you're in
17:08
Speaker 1: the pillory. Yeah, twelve year old boys have like families
17:11
Speaker 1: and kids by that, that's true, But I bet they
17:15
Speaker 1: were the meanest of all. Like, some people would die
17:18
Speaker 1: in the pillory because they would be you know, beaten
17:19
Speaker 1: to death. Uh. Some people would be lauded though, if
17:22
Speaker 1: they were like thumbing their nose at the government and
17:24
Speaker 1: saying I didn't pay my taxes, some people would bring
17:26
Speaker 1: them flowers and like food and stuff. Yeah, basically the
17:29
Speaker 1: pillory was meant to just be left up to the
17:32
Speaker 1: crowd what what was to be done with you. At
17:34
Speaker 1: the very least, you were shame publicly just for being
17:36
Speaker 1: up there for an hour or two. But if the
17:39
Speaker 1: crowd decided that, you know, you needed more justice, Like
17:43
Speaker 1: there was a four Englishmen who would um wrongfully accused
17:46
Speaker 1: some people and send them to the gallows in order
17:50
Speaker 1: to get the reward money. Those guys were beaten to
17:52
Speaker 1: death when they were put into the pillory. That's no good.
17:56
Speaker 1: That's what they call English justice. Yeah, and can you
17:58
Speaker 1: imagine that being able to move and just have someone
18:01
Speaker 1: like beating you about the head that brings up a
18:05
Speaker 1: not be able to bring her hands up at least
18:07
Speaker 1: guard your face. That still goes on today as public execution.
18:12
Speaker 1: There are some countries out there that use stoning. Iran
18:15
Speaker 1: is a very prominent one where you are sentenced to
18:18
Speaker 1: death by stoning. Yeah. They bury you up to your
18:21
Speaker 1: neck and your head is just exposed so you can't
18:24
Speaker 1: move and people throw rocks at you until you die.
18:29
Speaker 1: Usually they cover you with the sheets that they can't
18:30
Speaker 1: see you, but they judge that you're you're done when
18:33
Speaker 1: you stop moaning and you're bleeding through the sheet. But
18:37
Speaker 1: there's a really interesting article I think you should read.
18:39
Speaker 1: I wrote this blog post, Chuck. It's called five most
18:42
Speaker 1: entertaining academic papers of all time, and one of them
18:46
Speaker 1: and entertaining I use this in a strange way. But
18:49
Speaker 1: one of them is called the possible pain experience during
18:52
Speaker 1: execution by different Methods is by Harold Hillman, was written
18:55
Speaker 1: in the I think the early nineties, and one of
18:58
Speaker 1: the ones he covers is stone. But he goes through
19:00
Speaker 1: and takes like all of this like, um, He's like,
19:03
Speaker 1: there's no there's no body of work on how much
19:07
Speaker 1: pain stoning causes. So he compares it to pain reported
19:10
Speaker 1: from like a car crash or something like that, and
19:13
Speaker 1: then makes assumptions that are you know, pretty good educated
19:17
Speaker 1: guesses of what pain a person experiences, and basically rates
19:20
Speaker 1: methods of execution from hanging to stoning to the gas chamber,
19:26
Speaker 1: um in in so far as how much pain and
19:28
Speaker 1: suffering they produce. Entertaining, Yes, the other ones are much
19:35
Speaker 1: more entertaining that one had to be in there. It's
19:38
Speaker 1: just the Originally I call them the five greatest academic
19:41
Speaker 1: papers of all time. But you know s e o
19:45
Speaker 1: um okay, so we're done with the Pillory and the Stocks. Correct? Yeah?
19:49
Speaker 1: Were the Stocks a band name? No? Uh? And actually
19:52
Speaker 1: have the Iron Maiden band or not a band? Uh?
19:58
Speaker 1: You know they have their own beer Iron Maiden Beer
20:01
Speaker 1: trooper Ale. Really yeah, it's got Eddie on the cover
20:04
Speaker 1: and everything. Oh wow, it's pretty neat. I'll try that
20:06
Speaker 1: around the label. I should say, can you get it
20:08
Speaker 1: like here in the States? No, you're gonna only get
20:09
Speaker 1: in the EU. I tried. It's probably sixty announces too.
20:13
Speaker 1: It looks good, like it's well made. It's not just
20:15
Speaker 1: like I'll put her name on this crap. Like it's
20:17
Speaker 1: clearly like a kind of craft beer. That's awesome. Yeah,
20:21
Speaker 1: you know, Bruce Dickinson's like a full on pilot, like
20:25
Speaker 1: seven pilot. I don't know, Like he flies there big
20:27
Speaker 1: jumbo jet that the band travels on. That's cool. Um.
20:32
Speaker 1: So the Iron Maiden um. At one point they didn't
20:35
Speaker 1: even believe this was real because it sounded so diabolical,
20:38
Speaker 1: but then they found one in uh Nuremberg, Germany and
20:44
Speaker 1: uh sometimes it's called the Iron Maiden of Nuremberg for
20:47
Speaker 1: that reason. But it's a sarcophagus, you've seen it before,
20:51
Speaker 1: like King Tutt was buried in. But it's got little
20:52
Speaker 1: double doors and very strategically play spikes on the inside
20:59
Speaker 1: done well. When you shut these double doors, including one
21:02
Speaker 1: over the door, including one over the face that has
21:06
Speaker 1: two spikes that are designed to take your eyes out.
21:09
Speaker 1: These spikes go into your vital organs. They're arranged in
21:13
Speaker 1: such a way so that your heart gets it, your kidneys,
21:16
Speaker 1: your liver just a bit right. Yeah, The spikes aren't
21:19
Speaker 1: so long that they just go right through you and
21:20
Speaker 1: kill you. They're short enough that they're gonna puncture these
21:23
Speaker 1: organs and you're gonna die. But it's gonna take many hours,
21:26
Speaker 1: and the the lord of the castle in Nuremberg gets
21:30
Speaker 1: to sit there and listen to you moan and die. Wow.
21:35
Speaker 1: And they had one apparently that was even shaped like
21:37
Speaker 1: the Virgin Mary and her arms so when he got
21:40
Speaker 1: in she would hug you. Yeah, when you like turn
21:42
Speaker 1: to crank, the arms would draw you closer into the
21:45
Speaker 1: spikes again very fiendish. Uh. Scavenger's Daughter band or not
21:51
Speaker 1: a band? I know that as a band. I ran
21:53
Speaker 1: across it during my research to four bands. From what
21:57
Speaker 1: I saw it was one of the UK, one in St. Louis,
22:00
Speaker 1: in Shanghai and when in Poland? Cool? Did they really
22:02
Speaker 1: spread out? Maybe it's all the affiliate to the same band.
22:05
Speaker 1: They're also city are he's a scavenger's daughter co well?
22:09
Speaker 1: Hell see uh? The original name for the Scavenger's daughter
22:13
Speaker 1: Skeffington's Jeeves or Geeves. I don't know how you would
22:17
Speaker 1: pronounce that g y v E s. That's a band too,
22:21
Speaker 1: Is it from Tallahassee? I can believe that so um.
22:24
Speaker 1: It was named after the inventor Skevington and Todd Skevington.
22:31
Speaker 1: This the best way I'm gonna describe this is um.
22:34
Speaker 1: It looks sort of like an arch. Imagine the St.
22:37
Speaker 1: Louis arch shrunk down two about two ft and attached
22:41
Speaker 1: to a bass plate, and you would get down in
22:43
Speaker 1: like the tornado crowds position and get inside of this thing,
22:48
Speaker 1: and then they would crank it down on the back
22:50
Speaker 1: of your neck and back at the top of the arch,
22:53
Speaker 1: the top of the center of the archers screw that
22:55
Speaker 1: they can crank to crank the whole arch down on
22:57
Speaker 1: top of your Yeah, so you're in like a crowd's position.
23:00
Speaker 1: They just further crouch you until your spine cracks in
23:03
Speaker 1: your breastbone breaks, and like it's the opposite of the
23:06
Speaker 1: wreck where the rack tears you apart. The Skevington's gyre
23:11
Speaker 1: dives is meant to compress you and like you will
23:15
Speaker 1: bleed out of your fingertips and your eyes and your
23:17
Speaker 1: ears because your body is being compressed into this tiny
23:21
Speaker 1: balls like a car crusher. And yeah, and you're exactly
23:24
Speaker 1: And there's actually one on display at the Tower of London. Yeah,
23:27
Speaker 1: it's all on the on the internet. Was pretty cool
23:29
Speaker 1: looking and again not delighting in this, but it's just insane.
23:34
Speaker 1: Like I was looking at it on the internet today too,
23:36
Speaker 1: and I was thinking, like human beings used to be
23:40
Speaker 1: placed in that a few hundred years ago, like the
23:43
Speaker 1: suffering that this machine, this contraption produced at the hands
23:47
Speaker 1: of other people. Like if you just sit there and
23:51
Speaker 1: like forced perspective on yourself, it's really it's really unnerving. Yeah,
23:56
Speaker 1: well some people might say that putting someone in a
23:58
Speaker 1: chair and sitting like Trusty through their body until they
24:01
Speaker 1: dies the same thing. Oh yeah, you know for sure.
24:04
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen that the Errol Morris documentary on
24:06
Speaker 1: the inventor of the Electric Chair? No, what's it called
24:09
Speaker 1: Mr Sparky? No, I think it's called Doctor Death. Uh.
24:14
Speaker 1: And then Colin what his name is Lucher maybe or something.
24:18
Speaker 1: I don't know. Really fascinating though, because he Yeah, just
24:22
Speaker 1: just read it and it's Errol Morris, that's all you
24:24
Speaker 1: need to know. Uh. These last two are really pretty Uh,
24:28
Speaker 1: brutal and brutal against women. Yeah, and it's pretty gross.
24:32
Speaker 1: So if you're not into hearing about that, maybe you
24:34
Speaker 1: should turn off the podcast. Yeah, this to me is
24:36
Speaker 1: like this is the worst. The other ones for um,
24:39
Speaker 1: gender neutral, Yeah, you know, and I guess the last
24:44
Speaker 1: one we're going to talk about is technically gender neutral,
24:46
Speaker 1: but like the the idea of it being inflicted on
24:50
Speaker 1: women to kind of, as Grabowski points out, to destroy
24:53
Speaker 1: aspects of femininity. Yeah, is it makes everything even more disturbing,
24:58
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, agreed. And this is called the breast Ripper,
25:01
Speaker 1: not a band. And not to make light of this,
25:03
Speaker 1: but there was a Yahoo answer where a guy said, quote,
25:07
Speaker 1: I need a brutal band name something like diseases or
25:10
Speaker 1: disorders or something to do with babies being eaten. It
25:14
Speaker 1: needs to be killer. And one of the people said,
25:17
Speaker 1: you should call yourself the breast Ripper. Did he say awesome? No?
25:21
Speaker 1: I didn't like to follow up and like look to
25:22
Speaker 1: see if that's what he chose. But the guy had
25:25
Speaker 1: listed it like a bunch of names, you know that
25:27
Speaker 1: were mainly torture devices. I mean, if you're a metal
25:30
Speaker 1: band searching torture devices, medieval torture devices, it's going to
25:35
Speaker 1: yield nine D or two exactly. So uh, extending back
25:40
Speaker 1: to the Roman times and probably before, females have had
25:43
Speaker 1: a rough time of things, um when it comes to torture,
25:49
Speaker 1: being marched through the streets, naked, public humiliation, uh, forced rape,
25:54
Speaker 1: sexual mutilation. Um all like just terrible, terrible things, specifically
25:59
Speaker 1: geared towards women. And the breast ripper was probably the
26:03
Speaker 1: worst thing I've ever heard. Yeah, so basically wants to
26:07
Speaker 1: describe it. I thought it was very bad too. Back
26:09
Speaker 1: to you, go ahead, um, after you a woman was
26:14
Speaker 1: it would be tied to a wall or basically forced
26:16
Speaker 1: to be a mobile. And then this, um, the breast ripper,
26:19
Speaker 1: which was basically a claw of spikes that could be
26:23
Speaker 1: open and then placed on the breast and then shut
26:26
Speaker 1: clamped down onto the breast, but then we pull away,
26:30
Speaker 1: basically just mangling the breasts and like the thumb screws,
26:35
Speaker 1: it was not intended to kill. As a matter of fact,
26:40
Speaker 1: I get the impression from this article that it was
26:42
Speaker 1: used very frequently, um to basically say, hey, everybody, look
26:47
Speaker 1: at this person, like like the scarlet letter, right exactly.
26:50
Speaker 1: It was it was meant to label somebody. Yeah, in England,
26:53
Speaker 1: I know they were fond of branding women on the
26:55
Speaker 1: face to shame them. Yeah, and apparently if you're in
27:00
Speaker 1: the stock case or the pillory, one of the things
27:02
Speaker 1: that may also a company that was to be branded
27:05
Speaker 1: by having your nose slit or an ear cut off. Maybe. Yeah.
27:10
Speaker 1: What was wrong with people back then? I don't know.
27:13
Speaker 1: And what changed? I wonder that's like that the most
27:17
Speaker 1: peaceful period in history? What right after the Middle Ages? Well,
27:21
Speaker 1: that's what we were talking about, like remember Stephen Pink
27:23
Speaker 1: Like the Middle Ages were particularly bad. I don't know
27:26
Speaker 1: what it was that that changed, but the I think
27:30
Speaker 1: the idea that government came in and created a monopoly
27:35
Speaker 1: on violence, that's fairly That's that's what we're talking about here.
27:39
Speaker 1: That doesn't really account for it because the government had
27:42
Speaker 1: not necessarily a monopoly. It was supposed to. But it
27:45
Speaker 1: was pretty violent itself. Yeah, And it's not like things
27:48
Speaker 1: got great, like you said, they're still stoning people and
27:50
Speaker 1: they use the electric chair in this very country. But
27:54
Speaker 1: it definitely wasn't the Middle Ages. No. And also when
27:57
Speaker 1: you know, I mean you could get you could be
28:00
Speaker 1: richards for all sorts of things like your neighbor could
28:02
Speaker 1: be like you're a witch, and all of a sudden
28:04
Speaker 1: you're tortured, right, you know, so I would be very
28:07
Speaker 1: curious to know exactly what accounts for that change, because
28:10
Speaker 1: something changed. Yeah, And they also point out in the
28:13
Speaker 1: article I did that. UM. A lot of times these
28:15
Speaker 1: were used to also get you too, uh sing about
28:19
Speaker 1: your accomplices, and that was basically like you just say
28:22
Speaker 1: whatever you want, like yeah, it was my my neighbor there,
28:26
Speaker 1: and the neighbors like huh, and then all of a sudden,
28:28
Speaker 1: it's in the pillory to you know, alright. Our final
28:32
Speaker 1: one is the pair of Anguish band or not a band,
28:37
Speaker 1: It's got to be a band. It's a band, pour
28:39
Speaker 1: metal band from Roanoke, Virginia, man Roanoke, North Carolina. So
28:45
Speaker 1: the pair of Anguish was, UM, I guess I'll do
28:48
Speaker 1: this one since you had to did the breast ripper.
28:51
Speaker 1: It is a pear shaped device and the pair is
28:55
Speaker 1: actually four metal leaves um joined at the top by
28:59
Speaker 1: a hinge with like a key crank. So just imagine
29:02
Speaker 1: a pair that if you crank like where the stein
29:05
Speaker 1: would be, the four leaves would open up and they
29:08
Speaker 1: would use this on women in like the worst places
29:11
Speaker 1: and on homosexual men in the worst places an orifice basically, yeah,
29:16
Speaker 1: and open it up. And I showed Emily this morning.
29:19
Speaker 1: She was like, so that looks like an early speculum
29:21
Speaker 1: to me. And that's you know, kind of this along
29:25
Speaker 1: those same lines, and that's the pair of Anguish. And
29:29
Speaker 1: you can get pictures of all these and look at them,
29:32
Speaker 1: not in use obviously, but actually some of them are
29:34
Speaker 1: like they have drawings of like the rack and things
29:36
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, but luckily not of the pair of English.
29:39
Speaker 1: There's a spoon from I think the Nuremberg Castle um
29:43
Speaker 1: that has many iron maiden on the top of it. Yeah,
29:47
Speaker 1: probably displayed. Wow, yeah you can. I mean there's there's
29:51
Speaker 1: photos of these and and some of them are relics
29:53
Speaker 1: in in museums around the world, like the Skevington's Jeeves
29:58
Speaker 1: in the Tower of Lone. Then there's probably a torture
30:01
Speaker 1: museum and that somewhere. There's there's the London Dungeon. That
30:05
Speaker 1: one's awesome. I went with my dad my sister years
30:09
Speaker 1: and years ago. I was like seventeen, maybe it was
30:13
Speaker 1: like thirteen maybe perfect though, Yeah, well, yeah, anywhere from there,
30:16
Speaker 1: but it's like they really did it up because they
30:18
Speaker 1: use like whack dummies and it's like there's like a
30:20
Speaker 1: head in the basket on the guillotine exhibit. Plus there's
30:23
Speaker 1: a great Misfits song named that too, name what London Dungeon? Nice? Uh?
30:29
Speaker 1: And one more thing I wanted to say. And two
30:32
Speaker 1: thousand three, after the US invaded iraq Um, they found
30:37
Speaker 1: you know, Udi Hussein Saddam's oldest son. He was the
30:41
Speaker 1: Minister of Sports and he was very famous for like
30:43
Speaker 1: torturing athletes that he didn't think we're performing well enough.
30:46
Speaker 1: What they found an iron maiden at the Ministry of Sports,
30:51
Speaker 1: his iron maiden that he used on people. Yeah, that
30:54
Speaker 1: certainly doesn't encourage athleticism, you know. No, it encourages defection
30:58
Speaker 1: and running away whenever you go somewhere to play somebody
31:02
Speaker 1: in another country. Wow. Yeah, that's very sad. So that's
31:07
Speaker 1: it for ten medieval torture devices. Yeah, very bizarre time
31:11
Speaker 1: in this world's history for sure. Uh. If you want
31:13
Speaker 1: to see pictures of these things read more about them.
31:16
Speaker 1: You can type that in medieval m E D I
31:19
Speaker 1: E v A L Torture devices in the search part
31:22
Speaker 1: house stuff works, and I said search bars, its time
31:24
Speaker 1: for messenge brick and now I listener mail Yes, all right,
31:33
Speaker 1: thank you. So this from Matthew and Cook listened to
31:36
Speaker 1: the Living Off of the Grid podcast and it reminded
31:39
Speaker 1: him of his friend Michael's aunt. Uh. He and his
31:41
Speaker 1: friend are very technically oriented and they've been wiring little
31:44
Speaker 1: dude dads and things for years. His aunt bought a
31:47
Speaker 1: house some years back which turned out to be a
31:49
Speaker 1: long term witness protection house for local authorities. She called
31:54
Speaker 1: us in because there were about a thousand little switches
31:56
Speaker 1: and project boxes all over the house, tucked in the
31:59
Speaker 1: nooks and crannies, automated everything from the window blinds to
32:03
Speaker 1: the lights, to the door and window locks. It's very
32:05
Speaker 1: reminiscent of something we've seen in old James Bond movie,
32:07
Speaker 1: so this is not like a new thing, which is
32:09
Speaker 1: why it was weird. She had no idea how to
32:11
Speaker 1: operate any of them, or even what half of them did,
32:14
Speaker 1: so we got to come and play in the house
32:15
Speaker 1: basically for a while and figured out what we could.
32:18
Speaker 1: We found the house had many defense measures, including motion
32:21
Speaker 1: sensor alarms in the surrounding woods and driveway, and backup
32:25
Speaker 1: power and water supplies, which included rainwater collection, solar panel panels,
32:30
Speaker 1: a huge backup generator, and a wind turbine on a
32:33
Speaker 1: telephone pole type thing that could be raised or lowered
32:35
Speaker 1: and adjusted using a hand winch. What made the house
32:39
Speaker 1: really cool is while many of the home automation and
32:42
Speaker 1: power water conservation measures implemented are now things that can
32:46
Speaker 1: be purchased and installed professionally, this was all done well
32:49
Speaker 1: before this, as evidenced by all the project boxes and
32:52
Speaker 1: very retro togcle switches and such. For us, it was
32:55
Speaker 1: like seeing history as some clever guy or girl actually
32:58
Speaker 1: had to think up these pieces and then design and
33:00
Speaker 1: build them from scratch. I feel like I'm really not
33:03
Speaker 1: doing this house justice and the engineer's justice, but that
33:06
Speaker 1: could be the over excited geek and me. We're calling
33:08
Speaker 1: this find Matthew and Cook. So that's pretty cool. It's
33:11
Speaker 1: very cool, Thanks Matthew. Apparently the aunt wasn't too into it. Yeah,
33:15
Speaker 1: she's like, I got a good deal on this house. Yeah,
33:17
Speaker 1: Like once they figured out how to do like the
33:19
Speaker 1: lights and stuff, she's like, all right, get out. Um,
33:22
Speaker 1: I would be very curious to see photos of this house.
33:25
Speaker 1: Send them along. Yeah. Um, we love cool photos of
33:29
Speaker 1: very cool places, whether they're abandoned or unusual or whatever.
33:34
Speaker 1: So if you have like a photo spread of a
33:36
Speaker 1: cool house or a cool old asylum or whatever, send
33:40
Speaker 1: us a link because if we want to see it.
33:42
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33:45
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33:47
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33:53
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33:55
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