Torture chamber

“ Torture chamber was the people's name for the dungeon in Castle Mulgrave, where the Lord President of the Council of the North was wont to examine prisoners. From that chamber men had come with maimed limbs and shaken wits, men whose only crime was their unwillingness to give the testimony which his lordship desired.
"I don't think there is much fear of that with so many brave fellows to stand by me; but if I should be taken or killed, I beg you to defend this lady and her father until they are under the roof of the Vicar of Crowle." ”

“ The first, or slight torture, which consisted mainly in the apprehensions it caused, comprised the threat of severe torture, introduction into the torture chamber, stripping, and the tying of the rope in readiness for its appliance. To increase the terror these preliminaries excited, a pang of physical pain was added by tightening a cord round the wrists. This often sufficed to extract a confession from women or men of highly strung nerves. ”

“ Having seen that Beatrice was sentenced to the torture ordinary and extraordinary, and having explained the nature of these tortures, we proceed to quote the official report:— "And as in reply to every question she would confess nothing, we caused her to be taken by two officers and led from the prison to the torture chamber, where the torturer was in attendance ”

“ Many of the deported and enslaved laborers joined the victims of the concentration camps, where they were literally worked to death in the course of the Nazi program of extermination through work. We propose to show that this Nazi combination of the assembly line, the torture chamber, and the executioner’s rack in a single institution has a horrible repugnance to the twentieth century mind. ”

“ Iraqi refugees tell us how forced confessions are obtained — by torturing children while their parents are made to watch. International human rights groups have catalogued other methods used in the torture chambers of Iraq: electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and rape. If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning. ”

“ The apartments once occupied by the Countess Cosel, as a prison first, as a residence after the death of Augustus, might be made habitable even now. Exceedingly interesting are the old-time torture chambers and the subterranean living rooms of the "sworn torturer" and the dogs, man-shaped, that served him.
Sanct. Donatus Tower, a wing of the great, black pile, was the ancient habitat of these worthies, and the torture chamber, still extant, is a hall almost as big as the Dresden throne-room. ”

“ Sometimes the secret chamber hides not a misfortune, but a crime. There is an insanity of criminality which delights in the torture of the weak, the suffering, the mentally deficient. Now and again the world is startled by the narrative of secret cruelty practised on helpless children, of an afflicted wife kept as a prisoner neglected and ill-treated. ”

“ The mystery and terror that once reigned, seems still to linger on the walls; the chamber of the Council of Ten, paved with black and white marble, is peculiarly impressive in its aspect and decorations: near at hand was the chamber of torture, and a door led to a dark staircase and the state dungeons.
The man who showed us the prisons was a character—he wanted at once to prove that they were not so cruel as they were represented, and yet he was proud of the sombre region over whose now stingless horrors he reigned. ”

“ The poore men, perceiving they were made believe each had accused others before they had so done, indeed, showed them their tortured bodies and said— "'If a stone were thus burnt, would it not change his nature? How much more we that are flesh and blood?'"
To such reasoning there could be no reply. The English prisoners had tasted too deeply the bitter pangs of the torture chamber, had themselves offended too much against truth under the infernal stimulus applied, to be able to raise their voices in censure. ”

“ The while he spoke came thither two judges more, who said in secret to the priest, that the question would not be administered to Monsieur le Grand, but that, for the sake of justice and in obedience to its forms, they must conduct him to the torture chamber. Whereupon the reverend father accosted Cinq Mars, and drawing him aside from his guards, he said, “Are you capable of keeping an important secret?” He said, “Father, I pray you to believe I have been wanting in faith to none save God.” “Well then,” he returned, “you will not suffer, nor will you be presented to the torture ”

“ It legally belonged to the progress of the investigation, and how many who had by no means recovered from the last exposure to the rack were constantly obliged to enter the torture chamber? Besides, the judges would be charged with partiality by the tailor and his followers, and to show such visible tokens of favour threatened to prejudice the dignity of the court. ”

“ Two years afterwards the inquisitor determined that he should be threatened with torture, IN ORDER TO OBTAIN INFORMATION THAT MIGHT HELP THEM TO CRIMINATE OTHERS. He was accordingly taken to Valladolid, and in a subterranean chamber, called the 'chamber, or dungeon, of torment,' stripped naked, and bound to the 'ladder.' This might well have extorted something like confession from an old man of seventy-one; but he told them that whatever he might say when under torture would be merely extorted by the extreme anguish, and therefore unworthy of belief ”

“ "Oh indeed!" exclaimed the King. Then he turned to his servants and said: "Please take General Crinkle to the torture chamber. There you will kindly slice him into thin slices. Afterward you may feed him to the seven-headed dogs." ”

“ The further extremity of the place was involved in a profound darkness which could not be dissipated by feeble rays of the lamp.
'Here,' said the Dead Man, addressing his prisoner—'you will be kept in confinement for the rest of your life—a confinement varied only by different modes of torture which I shall apply to you, from time to time. This dungeon is called the Chamber of Death—for what reason you will ere long find out. It is built directly under the sewers of the city, which accounts for the liquid filth that oozes through the ceiling. ”

“ The pillar is seared with the red-hot irons employed in the torture; that by burning being continued during three-quarters of an hour, with intervals of five minutes; if it induced confession, the private stair from the small chamber conducted the condemned to the potence in the dungeon below. The door has been walled up, on account of the vicinity of the powder magazine. Our guide led to the eating-hall, which was the kitchen also. ”

“ It makes one's flesh creep to go through these dark chambers with the old instruments of torture carefully arranged therein. Finger-screws, thumb-screws and arm-screws, benches on which unfortunate prisoners were laid while their legs and arms were broken by an iron bar stroke by stroke, Instruments of torture in Europe.spiked girdles which held them fast while they were put under the lash, chains, and swords, and axes and the knife of the guillotine of more recent times are all arranged in one dark chamber. ”

“ It has escaped miraculously, to stand as a memento when the graves of the victims it describes have fallen in, when grass has grown over the pits of its gallows, when the writings in blood and bullets have disappeared from the walls of its torture chambers. ”

“ In the central prison the internees were beaten and tortured. Day and night shrieks and groans were heard in the torture chambers. Every day from 30 to 35 people died as a result of the tortures. Whoever survived the ill-treatment and torture would return to his cell absolutely unrecognizable, burned to the bone, with parts of his body torn to pieces. No medical aid was given to the tortured.”
The Hitlerites subjected Soviet citizens to ill-treatment and torture in every town of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic. ”

“ What occurred in the torture chambers of Stavropol was no exception at all. The same misdeeds were perpetrated everywhere. In confirmation I will refer to the report of the Extraordinary State Commission regarding the depredations and atrocities committed by the German fascist aggressors in the city of Kiev. That is Exhibit USSR-9 (Document Number USSR-9) . The Tribunal will find this document on Page 238 of the document book, Paragraph 2 from the top, Column 2. I begin the quotation:
“Murders were often preceded by sadistic torture. ”

“ Two such of stone, weighing each fifty pounds, were kept here some years back, as well as many other implements of torture since removed or sold for old iron. The raised stone bench around the room was for the use of the executioner and attendants. The vaulted roof condensed the voice of the tortured man, and an aperture on one side gave it freedom to ascend into a room above, where the judicial listeners waited for the faltering words which succeeded the agonising screams of their victim. ”

“ Even the dying were not spared by the fascist murderers. The medico-legal examination of the exhumed corpses revealed, among a number of other bodies of prisoners of war, the body of a prisoner who, in his death agony, had been wounded in the groin with a knife. He had been thrown into his grave while still alive, with the knife sticking in the wound, and was then covered over with earth.
“One method of mass torture in the ‘Lazarett’ consisted in locking the sick and wounded in a detention cell—a room without heat and with a concrete floor. ”

“ It is not necessary to recount further cruelties and tortures. Assemblies surrounded and people shot; preachers seized and hanged; men sent to the galleys; women sent to the Tour de Constance; children carried off to the convents—such was the horrible ministry of torture in France. When Court heard of the re-inflictions of some old form of torture—"Alas," said he, "there is nothing new under the sun. In all times, the storm of persecution has cleansed the threshing-floor of the Lord." ”

“ It is no pleasure to follow the provost, his guards,166 and his prisoners to a certain tower, where in a lower vaulted room there are various iron and wooden instruments. We are given to understand that torture is a pretty usual part of criminal proceedings, unless the defendant is a noble whose alleged crime does not touch the safety of the state. It is true that wise men have discouraged the practice. ”

“ Neither the dismembering knife, nor the red, burning iron, nor the ripping pincers, nor the wedges which spread the joints, crack the articulations, or split the bones like pieces of wood, can work greater ravages on organs of living flesh and fill the brain with more horror than this sound of an invisible and immaterial bell, combining in itself all the known instruments of torture, infuriating all the sensitive and thinking parts of an individual at the same time, and fulfilling the office of more than a hundred executioners. ”

“ An electric shock from these high angels’ minds would throw them onto the ground again. O! the power of mind or soul! Every time they would hurt or abuse another, they were forced to stay another day in Purgatory. Men or women who had tortured or helped in any way to torture any prisoner or helpless child or insane person, or any one in their power on earth, were tortured seven-fold there; their innocent victims were permitted to come here and torture them. This is a just law and is followed out to the letter in the underworld. One cannot escape justice any more than they can escape life. ”

“ Models of the instruments of torture—the rack, thumb-screws, scavenger’s daughter, iron neck-collar, and so forth—are shown in this room, reminding us that though torture was never legal punishment in England, it was practised in Tower dungeons, especially in Tudor times, when, in the wisdom of those in power, occasion demanded it. ”

“ It is needless to relate that many died of these tortures. When they die, the soldiers cry: “Now let your Christ help you.”
One old priest was tortured so cruelly to extract a confession that, believing that the torture would cease and that he would be left alone if he did it, he cried out in his desperation: “We are revolutionists.” He expected his tortures to cease, but on the contrary the soldiers cried: “What further do we seek? We have it here from his own lips.” And instead of picking their victims as they did before, the officials had all the Armenians tortured without sparing a soul. ”

“ The house in the Catherine Square in which I was first in captivity afterwards became the Bolshevists’ House of Torture in which hundreds of victims were done to death. The shrieks of the people being tortured to death or having splinters of wood driven under the quick of their nails were so agonizing and appalling that personal friends of my own living more than a hundred yards away in the Vorontsoffsky Pereulok were obliged to fasten their double windows to prevent the cries of anguish penetrating into the house. ”

“ The tortures, which have so frequently been described that they need not here be detailed, are fiendish in their ingenuity, and are certainly effectual in securing to justice a victim, even though an innocent one, for every crime committed. The punishments meted out by the court in criminal cases include fines, imprisonment, and death by the cord, by the sword, or by torture. ”