Simple
and very efficient, the crushing of the knuckles, phalanges and nails of fingers
and toes is among the oldest of tortures. The returns in terms of agony
inflicted in ratio to effort invested and time lost are, from the torture’s
point of view, highly satisfactory, particularly where complex and costly
equipment is wanting.
The Venetian instrument with three crossbars can accommodate two thumbs and four fingers, but it is a crude affair compared to the Austrian device that accompanies it in this collection.
A work of art within its species, this latter is made to very high technical standards, and conforms in all details to the specifications prescribed by the Constitutio Criminalis Theresiana, the anachronistic code for inquisitorial procedures and tortures promulgated by the empress Maria Theresia and published in Vienna in 1769, a time when torture had been abolished for decades in England, Prussia, Tuscany and several minor principalities (in Tuscany the death penalty, too, had been done away with, for the first time in European history). This manual required all the courts of the Austrian crown to subject everyone accused of any misdeed, and unwilling to confess freely, to the peinliche Fragen, the “painful questions” –that is, the extortion of confessions by means of a graduated series of torments that were described and illustrated with precision and scientific rationalism, down to the finest details, including the thicknesses of cords, the number of knots in a fetter, the lengths of nails and screws, the degrees of permanent mutilation permissible for various degrees of accusations.
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Thumbscrews were applied to prisoners as a means of obtaining confessions. In Austria, anyone accused of any misdeed who was unwilling to confess freely had to be put to the peinliche Fragen, or the painful/embarrassing questions. This comprised of " the extortion of confessions by means of a graduated series of torments that were described and illustrated with precision and scientific rationalism, down to the finest details, including the thickness of cords, the number of knots in a fetter, the lengths of nails and screws, the degrees of permanent mutilation permissible for various degrees of accusations"
Information and photographs in this virtual exhibition proceed from the book Torture instruments; a bilingual guide to the exhibition Torture Instruments form the Middle Ages to the Industrial Era presented in various cities in the world in 1983-2000.