Torturer

“ The tortured one thinks he is having a rest because the torturer has to stop and take breath; you breathe again, like a drowning man in the waves, when the whirlpool that is sucking him down, throws him up again, only to lay hold of him afresh. ”

“ But still fell the horrid lash; still strip after strip peeled off from the skin; gash after gash was cut in her living flesh, until it became a livid and bloody mass of raw and quivering muscle. It was with the greatest difficulty I refrained from springing upon the torturer, and arresting his lash; but, alas! what could I do, but turn aside to hide my tears for the sufferer, and my blushes for humanity? This was in a public and regularly-organized prison; the punishment was one recognized and authorized by the law. ”

“ Plunder and murder you would think are bad enough, but plunder and murder are almost venial by the side of the work of the ravisher and the work of the torturer, as it is described in these pages, and as it is now fully and authentically known to be going on. ”

“ They lived like wild beasts, with the lash ceaselessly raised over their backs. Those torturers would have liked to kill the poor man—Oh, no; it can never be forgotten; it is impossible! Such sufferings will some day claim vengeance. ”

“ On the contrary, with wonderful cheerfulness and courage they gave thanks to their torturers, and sometimes told them that the torture had been slight; at others, that they should find some other and more cruel torment, so that their desire to suffer for Christ might be further fulfilled. ”

“ 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 ”

“ What words could describe their courage and manliness under every torture? For as liberty to abuse them was given to all that wished, some beat them with clubs, others with rods, others with scourges, yet others with thongs, and others with ropes.
5. And the spectacle of the outrages was varied and exhibited great malignity. For some, with their hands bound behind them, were suspended on the stocks, and every member stretched by certain machines. Then the torturers, as commanded, lacerated with instruments [4] their entire bodies ”

“ If robbers after confession made do wail before man, let the faithful after confessing before God rejoice. If a man be judge, the torturer and his fear exact from a robber a confession: yea sometimes fear wringeth out confession, pain extorteth it: and he that waileth in tortures, but feareth to be killed if he confess, supporteth tortures as far as he is able: and if he shall have been overcome by pain, he giveth his voice for death. ”

“ “But I've still better things about children. I've collected a great, great deal about Russian children, Alyosha. There was a little girl of five who was hated by her father and mother, ‘most worthy and respectable people, of good education and breeding.’ You see, I must repeat again, it is a peculiar characteristic of many people, [pg 265] this love of torturing children, and children only. To all other types of humanity these torturers behave mildly and benevolently, like cultivated and humane Europeans; ”

“ If it be true, that the number of those, who from fear or virtue, respect the laws, is greater than of those by whom they are violated, the risk of torturing an innocent person is greater, as there is a greater probability that, cæteris paribus, an individual hath observed, than that he hath infringed the laws. There is another ridiculous motive for torture, namely, to purge a man from infamy. Ought such an abuse to be tolerated in the eighteenth century? Can pain, which is a sensation, have any connection with a moral sentiment, a matter of opinion? ”

“ Torture will suggest to a robust villain an obstinate silence, that he may exchange a greater punishment for a less; and to a feeble man confession, to relieve him from the present pain, which affects him more than the apprehension of the future. If a special interrogation be contrary to the right of nature, as it obliges a man to accuse himself, torture will certainly do it more effectually. ”

“ The great point that he makes is the unfair incidence of torture, as persons minds and bodies differ in strength. Moreover, it is, says he, to con found all relations to expect that a man should be both accuser and accused, and that pain should be the test of truth, as though truth resided in the muscles and fibres of a wretch under torture. The result of the torture is simply a matter of calculation. Given the force of the muscles and the sensibility of the nerves of an innocent person, it is required to find the degree of pain necessary to make him confess himself guilty of a given crime. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When we come to consider those years of torture which cruel nature holds in store for some, no one blames the sight of the moral wreck it is apt to make of the sufferer. On the other hand, there is nothing I ever see in my profession so splendid as the way in which a few, a rare few, triumph over pain, which we know must often rise to the grade of anguish, and from which scarce a day is ever free.
I recall well one woman who for years, under my eyes, was the subject of what, with due sense of the force of the word, I call torture. ”

“ Were there three or five grades in torture? Julius Clarus of Alessandria was a member of the council of Philip II. [121] To a great extent he follows Farinaccius. He puts the questions for the consideration of the judge with great clear ness. They are whether (1) a crime has been committed, (2) the charge is one in which torture is admissible, (3) the fact can be proved otherwise, (4) the crime was secret or open, (5) the object of the torture is to elicit confession of crime or discovery of accomplices. ”

“ Under the Torture Convention, no person may be subjected to torture. Torture is defined as an act specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering and that mental or suffering refers to prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from (1) the international infliction or threadtened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering; (2) the administration or application, or threatened application, of mind altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality; (3) the threat of imminent death ”

“ 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 long scene of torture in which the inhuman wretch kept the innocent object of her remorseless cruelty ere she completed the long premeditated murder, requires no comment, engaging as it did the interest, and exciting the horror of all ranks of people, and rousing the indignation of the populace more than the case of any criminal whose offences it is our duty to record, in the whole course of our melancholy narratives. ”

“ The forms of torture freely employed include, among others:—
1. The stripping, beating, kicking, flogging, and outraging of schoolgirls and young women.
2. Flogging schoolboys to death.
3. Burning—the burning of young girls by pressing lighted cigarettes against their tender parts, and the burning of men, women and children by searing their bodies with hot irons.
4. Stringing men up by their thumbs, beating them with bamboos and iron rods until unconscious, restoring them and repeating the process, sometimes several times in one day, sometimes until death. ”

“ Now I must tell you, that the place of torture is generally an underground and very dark room, to which one enters through several doors. There is a tribunal erected in it, where the Inquisitor, Inspector, and Secretary sit. When the candles are lighted, and the person to be tortured is brought in, the [Pg 246] executioner, who is waiting for him, makes an astonishing and dreadful appearance. He is covered all over with black linen garments down to his feet and tied close to his body. ”

“ Any two indications of heresy will justify the use of torture. If you sentence to torture, give him a written notice in the form prescribed; but other means be tried first. Nor is this an infallible means for bringing out the truth. Weak-hearted men, impatient at the first pain, will confess crimes they never committed, and criminate others at the same time. Bold and strong ones will bear the most severe torments. Those who have been on the rack before bear it with more courage, for they know how to adapt their limbs to it, and they resist powerfully. ”

“ But since most acts of this sort done under conditions that neither torture nor exasperate, point to an essential vileness in the perpetrator, I am inclined to think that even in these cases the men of the coming time will be far less disposed to torture than to kill. They will have another aspect to consider. The conscious infliction of pain for the sake of the pain is against the better nature of man, and it is unsafe and demoralizing for any one to undertake this duty. ”

“ Unheard by us, John had finished in the dining-room and had come to pay us a flying visit.
"People that were tortured by the Spanish Inquisition," I said.
"A lot they know about torture," said he. "They only did things to people that the same people could imagine doing back to them. Nothing is real torture if you can see your way to revenge it—if only in imagination. Torture is what you get through no fault of your own from somebody you'd not torture back for anything in the world. It's what sons do to mothers, husbands to wives, wives to husbands. Isn't that so, Lucy?" ”

“ His face was a livid and malignant blot in the thickening dusk. To torture her? What torture could equal his at this moment? She sought merely to move him by an affectation of self-renunciation. That, of course, called at once for extreme punishment. He must bite and strangle her to death. ”

“ The apologists of torture, even among jurists, are not numerous. In fact, theoretical objections to it are often urged by the authors of books of practice, as by Damhouder, Yon Rosbach, Von Boden, and Voet. It is worthy of note, however, as illustrative of the feeling of the time, that even Bacon [12] com pares experiment in nature to torture in civil matters as the best means of eliciting truth. Muyart de Vouglans [13] derives the origin of torture from the law of God. ”

“ In entering upon the subject of ancient modes of punishment, we must first speak of the torture, which, according to the received phrase, might be either previous or preparatory: previous, when it consisted of a torture which the condemned had to endure previous to capital punishment; and preparatory, when it was applied in order to elicit from the culprit an avowal of his crime, or of that of his accomplices. It was also called ordinary, or extraordinary, according to the duration or violence with which it was inflicted. In some cases the torture lasted five or six consecutive hours ”

“ 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. ”

“ They kept the sufferer standing, and relieved each other in their cruel work of pinching, pricking, twitching, pulling with ropes, burning, suffocating with offensive fumes, until after successive days and nights of torture the victim was driven to madness, and to promise any thing to escape from his tormentors. ”

“ The incessant torture, the menacing terrors aroused in her by the remembrance of outraged religion and family honour, these dreadful tortures are treated by man as ridiculous whims, as childish scruples, or the absurd influence of the confessional.
If the struggle is prolonged, if the unhappy woman passes her life in efforts to conceal a sorrow caused by her dishonour, and valiantly resists the commission of a second fault, the man is irritated, and revolts against these pruderies which wound his self-love and his eager and brutal passion to the quick ”

“ The naked, strong body has known death, and sits in utter dejection, finished, hulked, a weight of shame. And what remains of life is in the face, whose expression is sinister and gruesome, like that of an unrelenting criminal violated by torture. The criminal look of misery and hatred on the fixed, violated face and in the bloodshot eyes is almost impossible. ”