Torture instrument
17th-century thumbscrew,
Markisches Museum Berlin
17th-century thumbscrew,
Markisches Museum Berlin
Scottish
thumbscrew
Scottish thumbscrews
The
thumbscrew
is a
torture
instrument which was first used in
early modern
Europe
. It is a simple
vise
, sometimes with protruding studs on the interior surfaces. The crushing bars were sometimes lined with sharp metal points to puncture the nails. While the most common design operated upon a single thumb or big toe, variants could accommodate both big toes, all five fingers of one hand, or all ten toes.
[1]
Other terminology
[
edit
]
The thumbscrew was also referred to as
thumbkin
or
thumbikin
(1675?1685), "kin" being a diminutive suffix of nouns.
[2]
An alternate spelling was
thumbikens
.
[3]
The terms
pillywinks
and
pilnie-winks
[4]
were also in use.
Historians James Cochrane and John McCrone wrote in 1833,
Thus we read, that in 1596, the son and daughter of
Aleson Balfour
, who was accused of witchcraft were tortured before her to make her confess her crime in the manner following: Her son was put in the
buits
where he suffered fifty seven strokes; and her daughter about seven years old, was put in the
pilniewinks
. In the same case, mention was made, besides
pilniewinks
,
pinniewinks
or
pilliwinks
, of
caspitanos
or
caspicaws
, and of
tosots
, as instruments of torture. Lord Royston in his manuscript notes upon Mackenzie's criminal law conjectures that these may have been only other names for the
buits
and
thumbikens
; thus much seems certain, that in those times there was some torturing device applied to the fingers which bore the name of pilniewinks; but it will immediately appear, that the most authentic accounts assign the introduction and use of the instrument known by the name of
thumbikens
to a much later period.
[3]
History
[
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]
Cochrane and McCrone argue that the thumbscrew entered Britain later than the invasion of the
Spanish Armada
in the 16th century:
"It has been very generally asserted," says Dr. Jamieson, "that part of the cargo of the invincible Armada was a large assortment of
thumbikens
, which it was meant should be employed as powerful arguments for convincing the heretics." The country of the
inquisition
was certainly a fit quarter from whence to derive so congenial an instrument; but other accounts, as we have said, and these apparently unquestionable, assign it a later introduction... In the torturing of [William] Spence,
Lord Fountainhall
mentions the origin of the
thumbikens
, stating that this instrument "was a new invention used among the colliers upon transgressors, and discovered by Generals
Dalyell
and Drummond, they having seen them used in
Muscovy
." The account which Bishop
Burnet
gives of the torturing of Spence confirms the then recent use of the
thumbikens
. ... This point we think is put beyond all doubt by the following act of the
privy council
in 1684, quoted in Wodrow's invaluable history: "Whereas there is now
a new invention and engine called the thumbikens
... the Lords of His Majesty's Council do therefore ordain, that when any person shall be put to the torture, that the boots and the thumbikens both be applied to them..."
[3]
In 1612 the Baroque painter
Orazio Gentileschi
accused his colleague,
Agostino Tassi
, of raping his daughter, the painter
Artemisia Gentileschi
. During the five-month long trial, Artemisia was cross-examined under thumb-screw torture.
[5]
[6]
As late as the mid-18th century, the ex-slave
Olaudah Equiano
, in his autobiography
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
, documented the use of thumbscrews to torture slaves.
[7]
During this period (mid-18th century),
Thomas Clarkson
carried thumbscrews with him to further his cause for the
abolition of the slave trade
and later emancipation of slaves in the
British Empire
. He hoped to, and did, inspire
empathy
with the display of this and other torture devices used on slaves.
[8]
They were used on
slave ships
, as witnessed and described by Equiano and
Ottobah Cugoano
.
[9]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Held, Robert.
Inquisition: A Bilingual Guide to the Exhibition of Torture Instruments from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Era
, Florence: Qua d'Arno, 1985.
- ^
"Thumbkin"
.
Dictionary.com
. 2015
. Retrieved
June 2,
2015
.
- ^
a
b
c
Cochrane, James; McCrone, John (1833).
The Waverley Anecdotes: Illustrative of the Incidents, Characters, and Scenery, Described in the Novels and Romances, of Sir Walter Scott, Bart
. Vol. 1. London; Boston: J. Cohrane and J. McCrone. pp. 46?50.
The
Thumbikens
, as the name imports, was an instrument applied to the thumbs, in such a manner as to enable the executioner to squeeze them violently; and this was often done with so much force as to bruise the thumb-bones, and swell the arms of the sufferer up to his shoulders.
- ^
Brown, Peter C. (2014).
Essex Witches
. New York: The History Press.
ISBN
9780750957953
.
- ^
Heller, Nancy G. (2003).
Women Artists: An Illustrated History
(4th ed.). New York:
Abbeville Press, Ltd.
p. 30.
ISBN
978-0-7892-0768-5
.
- ^
Chadwick, Whitney (2020).
Women, Art, and Society
(6th ed.). London: Thames & Hudson. p. 111.
ISBN
978-0-500-20456-6
.
- ^
Equiano, Olaudah (1789).
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African
.
The iron muzzle, thumb-screws, &c. are so well known, as not to need a description, and were sometimes applied for the slightest faults.
- ^
Hochschild, Adam.
Bury the Chains: The British Struggle to Abolish Slavery
(Basingstoke: Pan Macmillan, 2005)
- ^
Smith, Mary-Antoinette (2010).
Thomas Clarkson and Ottobah Cugoano: Essays on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species
. Broadview Press. p. 36.
ISBN
9781460402054
. Retrieved
August 11,
2014
.
External links
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]