TORTURE. THE RACK.

WHEN, in 1628, Felton was about to be put on his trial for the assassination of the Duke of Buckingham, it was suggested by the King that Felton might be put to the rack, in order to make him discover his accomplices; but the judges unanimously declared that the laws of England did not allow the use of torture. This was the first adjudication of the illegality of this mode of extorting confession. Lingard says, upon this point: "Notwithstanding the formal opinion of the judges in the case of Felton, there is no doubt that the practice continued during the whole reign of Charles I., as a warrant for applying the torture to one Archer, in 1640, is to be seen at the State Paper Office. This, however, appears to have been the last occasion on which this odious practice was resorted to. There is no trace of it during the Commonwealth; and in the reign of Charles II., where we might have expected to find it, there is not a single well-authenticated instance of the application of the torture.

"The following is an account of the kinds of torture chiefly employed in the Tower:-The rack was a large open frame of oak, raised three feet from the ground. The prisoner was laid under it on his back on the floor; his wrists and ancles were attached by cords to two collars at the ends of the frame; these were moved by levers in opposite directions, till the body rose to a level with the frame; questions were then put, and if the answers did not prove satisfactory the sufferer was stretched more and more, till the bones started from their sockets. The scavenger's daughter' was a broad

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hoop of iron, so called, consisting of two parts, fastened to each other by a hinge. The prisoner was made to kneel on the pavement, and to contract himself into as small a compass as he could. Then the executioner, kneeling on his shoulders, and having introduced the hoop under his legs, compressed the victim close together, till he was able to fasten the extremities over the small of the back. The time allotted to this kind of torture was an hour and a half, during which time it commonly happened that from excess of compression the blood started from the nostrils; sometimes, it was believed, from the extremities of the hands and feet. Iron gauntlets, which could be contracted by the aid of a screw; these were also called manacles. They served to compress the wrists, and to suspend the prisoner in the air, from two distant points of a beam. He was placed on three pieces of wood piled one on the other, which, when his hands had been made fast, were successively withdrawn from under his feet. I felt,' said F. Gerard, one of the sufferers for the Gunpowder Plot, 'the chief pain in my breast, belly, arms, and hands. I thought that all the blood in my body had run into my arms, and began to burst out at my fingers' ends. This was a mistake; but the arms swelled till the gauntlets were buried within the flesh. After being thus suspended an hour I fainted, and when I came to myself I found the executioners supporting me in their arms; they replaced the pieces of wood under my feet, but as soon as I was recovered they removed them again. Thus I continued hanging for the space of five hours, during which I fainted eight or nine times.'

"A fourth kind of torture was a cell called 'little ease,' of so small dimensions, and so constructed, that

the prisoner could neither stand, walk, sit, nor lie in it at full length; he was compelled to draw himself up in a squatting posture, and so remain during several days."

Hallam observes, that though the English law never recognised the use of torture, yet there were many instances of its employment in the reign of Elizabeth and James; and among others, in the case of the Gunpowder Plot. He says, indeed, that in the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth," the rack seldom stood idle in the Tower."

Sir Walter Raleigh, at his trial, mentioned that Kentish was threatened with the rack, and that the keeper of this horrid instrument was sent for. Campion, a Jesuit, was put to the rack in the reign of Elizabeth ; and in Collier's Ecclesiastical History are mentioned other instances during the same reign. Bishop Burnet, likewise, in his History of the Reformation, states that Anne Askew was tortured in the Tower in 1546; and that the Lord Chancellor, throwing off his gown, drew the rack so severely that he almost tore her body asunder.* It appears from the Cecil Papers that all the Duke of Norfolk's servants were tortured by order of Queen Elizabeth, who also threatened Hayward, the historian, with the rack.

PRESSING TO DEATH.

BETWEEN the Court-house in the Old Bailey, and Newgate prison, is a large open space, known as the Press-yard, from its having been the scene of the terrible punishment of " Pressing to Death" for stand

* Prints of the Rack are to be seen in the old edition of Foxe's "Book of Martyrs."

ing mute—that is, when a prisoner arraigned for treason, or felony, either made no answer at all, or answered foreign to the purpose. He was examined by judges: if found to be obstinately mute, then, in treason, it was held that standing mute was equivalent to conviction; and the law was the same as to all misdemeanours. But upon indictment for any other felony, the prisoner, after trina admonitio, and a respite of a few hours, was subject to the barbarous sentence of peine forte et dure; viz. to be remanded to prison and put into a low dark chamber, and there laid on his back on the bare floor naked, unless where decency forbade ; that there should be placed on his body as great a weight of iron as he could bear, and more: that he should have no sustenance, save only on the first day three morsels of the worst bread, and on the second three draughts of standing water that should be nearest to the prison-door; and that, in this situation, such should be alternately his daily diet till he died, or, as anciently the judgment ran, till he answered.

In the Perfect Account of the Daily Intelligence, April 16th, 1651, we find it recorded: "Mond. April 14th. This Session at the Old Bailey, were four men pressed to death that were all in one robbery, and, out of obstinacy and contempt of the court, stood mute and refused to plead."

It appears from the Sessions Papers that tying the thumbs together of criminals, in order to compel them to plead, was practised at the Old Bailey in the reign of Queen Anne. Among the cases is that of Mary Andrews, in 1721, who continued so obstinate that three whipcords were broken before she would plead. And in 1711, Nathaniel Haws had his thumbs squeezed,

after which he continued seven minutes under the press with 250 lbs., and then submitted.

In the year 1659, Major Strangewayes was tried before Lord Chief-Justice Glyn for the murder of Mr. John Fussel; and refusing to plead, was pressed to death. By the account of this execution, which is added to the printed trial, he died in about eight minutes, many people in the press-yard casting stones upon him to hasten his death. From the description of the press, it appears that it was brought nearly to a point where it touched his breast. It is stated likewise to have been usual to put a sharp piece of wood under the criminal, which might meet the upper part of the rack in the sufferer's body. Holinshed states that the back of the criminal was placed upon a sharp stone. Other precedents mention the tying his arms and legs with cords, fastened at different parts of the prison, and extending the limbs as far as they could be stretched.*

No. 674 of the Universal Spectator records two instances of pressing in the reign of George II.: “ Sept. 5, 1741.-On Tuesday was sentenced to death at the Old Bailey, Henry Cook, the shoemaker, of Stratford, for robbing Mr. Zachary on the highway. On Cook's refusing to plead, there was a new press made, and fixed to the proper place in the Press-yard; there having been no person pressed since the famous Spiggot the highwayman, which is about twenty years ago. Barnworth, alias Frasier, was pressed at Kingston in Surrey, about sixteen years ago.”

These horrible details have often been discredited; but records of pressing, so late as 1770, exist; with the addition, however, that "the punishment was seldom

* Barrington, On the More Ancient Statutes.