Read The Big Book of Pain: Torture & Punishment through History for Free Online Page A

the Inquisitors and the criminals. The sight of watching people choke on the end of a rope or have their entrails ripped out excites people. When the Duke of Monmouth was beheaded in 1685 for plotting to overthrow his tyrannical uncle, England’s King James II, a crowd of thousands shrieked, screamed and dipped their handkerchiefs in his blood as though he were a holy martyr. They did this because they loved him. Slightly over a century later, when the French Reign of Terror ordered that King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette be led to the guillotine, the reaction was almost identical, but for precisely the opposite reason – Louis they hated, Monmouth they loved, but both executions sent the mob into an ecstatic fervour. Why? For exactly the same reason that torture masters enjoyed their job – pain is both exciting and addictive, and it is this specific aspect of torture and punishment that makes it both so dangerous and so prevalent throughout history. No matter how much societies and governments insist that torture is a legitimate tool for discovering the truth, or for exacting retribution from convicted criminals or imposing the law of God on religious transgressors, the fact remains that it makes both individuals and the state feel good to exercise the ultimate power over those who do not quite fit into society’s accepted mould.

     
The public execution of the Duke of Monmouth in 1685. This was a ghastly spectacle in which the headsman (Jack Ketch) did a very poor job. According to an eyewitness, ‘the butcherly dog did so barbarously act his part that he could not, at five strokes [of the axe] sever the head from the body.’ Finally, Ketch used his belt knife to sever the Duke’s head from his body.
     

Section II
     

A HISTORY OF TORTURE
     

     

     

     

TORTURE IN THE ANCIENT AND CLASSICAL WORLD
     
    I n the preceding section we saw that torture can be a common by-product of weak, frightened, paranoid regimes. It would be logical then, to assume that early, primitive cultures would be more prone to the use of torture than more modern, sociologically advanced cultures. But this is simply not the case. While no one can say with certainty which society invented the concept of torture, we can examine those cultures which first kept judicial records and compare the ways in which they dealt with malefactors, transgressors, and enemies.
    Most early record-keeping societies – primarily those around the eastern rim of the Mediterranean Sea and in the Tigris and Euphrates basin – shared certain standards as to which crimes were worthy of extreme physical punishment. Patricide (the killing of one’s father), adultery and the dishonour of being taken as a prisoner of war were all considered unforgivable and worthy of severe punishment. Beyond these few common factors, how these societies dealt with other crimes seems to have depended on the particular culture.
    Egypt under the Pharaohs was, by and large, a pretty enlightened place. Neither did the Egyptians impose unconscionable punishments on those convicted of crimes. Capital crimes, such as murder, were generally dealt with by hanging. One of the few exceptions to this rule came into play when a parent was convicted of having murdered a child. In this case, the parent was condemned to have the body of their dead child tied around their neck and left there until it decomposed: nasty and unhygienic, no doubt, but hardly excessive considering the crime. Another exception to hanging was when the murder victim was the killer’s father. Those convicted of patricide were subjected to creatively slow and painful ends, including having the flesh whipped from their body with bundles of reeds, being thrown into thorns and rolled back and forth until they were nearly flayed and then being tossed, still living, into a roaring fire. Lesser crimes were accompanied by lesser punishments.
    For most non-capital crimes, both civil and criminal, the standard punishment was