July 9, 2013 • 34 mins
Warning: This episode on instruments designed solely to produce extreme human suffering during the Middle Ages in Europe is very graphic in nature. Seriously, if you're squeamish, maybe pass on this one.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you Stuff you should Know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clarkinner's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and um. Chuck thinks
we should include a warning on this one. I think
we probably should. This is gonna be pretty gruesome at times. Warning. Kids,
(00:24):
maybe ask your parents if you should play that. Parents,
maybe don't play this for your kids. Done, pretty good warning.
And this is history, you know, it's pretty it's pretty
uh gruesome history though. Yeah. So the Middle Ages are
the Medieval period in Europe. Man, Yeah, they were very
gruesome time, starting about the fifth century after the fall
(00:46):
of the Roman Empire, uh and lasting until the Renaissance
the fifteenth century. It's many English years, a thousand years
of um, nasty, brutish and short life. Yeah, so that
the average life expectancy during the Medieval period. And all
historians don't like they call it the Middle Ages because
(01:08):
that implies that it's just basically this little bit of
time in between two really important ages, the Middle Period.
It's like the Jane Brady of history. Um. And they're saying, like, no,
there's some really great things came about during this time
and Um, you can't just call it that, so they
call it the Medieval period. I still think it's the
Middle Ages or the Dark Ages is another great way
(01:30):
to put it. Brutish behavior. There was a expectancy somewhere
in the forties. I didn't see specifically, but yeah, at
the very least it's yeah, average age, you could live
longer than that. I mean, like you, you know, if
you're a woman, the chances of you dying in childbirth
were pretty high. If you were a man, the chances
(01:52):
of you being killed by getting kicked by your horse,
we're probably pretty high. If you were a child making it,
I think you had a thirty three percent chance to
not make it past five. It was not good. It
was a violent time. Um. Nutrition was not very good,
it was a dirty time, and it was just it
(02:14):
was a bad time to be alive. I think we
can agree on that. Um, if you're time traveling, skip
the Middle Ages. One of the one of the one
of the I guess hallmarks of the Middle Ages, UM
was that after the fall of the Roman Empire, Rome
like owned Europe owned it outright, and under this control
(02:38):
also came things like Rhodes currency, government justice. Yeah, like
to the farthest reaches of the Roman Empire. It was
under controlled generally, and these areas had public service, right
public services. After the Roman Empire fell um there was
(02:58):
a power vacuum and for three hundred years the Franks
and the Saxons and the Anglo Saxons um all were fighting.
And finally in about eight hundred Charlemagne was crowned the
Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and the Church took
over basically, which good news, right you would think. The Church, however,
(03:20):
had a hatred of women in their fondness of torture,
and the Middle Ages was also characterized by a period
of really inventive thinking in how to produce human suffering. Yeah,
I think it is a great quote from L. A.
Parry's nineteen seventy book A History of Torture in England.
(03:41):
The first part of this really hits home on it
and hit home. But yeah, it brings up bad memories.
What strikes us most in considering the medieval tortures is
not so much their diabolical barbarity as the extraordinary variety
in what maybe term the artistic skill they displayed. So
they definitely delighted and especially reading these torture devices and
being very uh inventive and probably trying to outdo one another,
(04:06):
and how awful it was and the different mechanisms, you know,
because mechanics was new, so they were probably like, look,
you know this has five gears that will you know,
rip your toes off. How cool? But uh yeah, so
it was very ah, perversely inventive period. Yeah. Perry says
(04:27):
that they basically ruminated and considered how suffering occurs to
figure out how to produce it. That it was like
basically an art form by the end. Yeah, they would
in court sometimes they would um just do things like hey,
let me put your arm in boiling water, and we're
(04:49):
going to base our verdict on how long it takes
it to heal. Um. I know the old thing about
you know, does the witch float throw it? Throw in
the lake and let's see and if she drowns, hey
she was not a witch. That's sad. But if she lives,
then Berner at to stay exactly. Yeah, so either way
the lady dies, which is very sad. Um. And they
(05:11):
even had a thing when they would torture people for confessions,
but they wouldn't They would say basically that confession doesn't count.
So they would say, you know what, within that twenty
four hour period, we won't torture you, see if you
still confess, and if you don't, we'll just torch you again. Right.
That was to corroborate your own confession that was extracted
under torture. So even even back then, they realized, like, yeah,
(05:34):
you can't really rely on a confession under torture because
people say anything to get you to stop doing the
things that we're about to describe they were doing to them, right,
or they would torture you very publicly. That's a very
common thing with most of these dissuade criminal activity. Yeah,
humiliation shaming, scarlet letters, Yeah, that kind of thing, permanent
scarlet letters. Even so, we're talking about the torture advices,
(06:00):
some of the more famous, more diabolical ones that came
out of the Middle Ages. Yeah, and this is a
surprise for you. I told you I had a little
game we're gonna play. We're gonna as we go, we
will also find out, because I've done this research, which
of these torture devices are also the names of heavy
metal bands. Oh yeah, that's a great one because at
(06:21):
the very first one I saw The Brazen Bull, I
was like, surely that's a band. Yeah. When I was
researching this, I was thinking, like, I wonder how many
times Chuck's gonna be like, that's a great band name. Well,
the Brazen Bull is, in fact the band in Chicago,
three piece uh grinder core metal band. Give me another
example of grind core. So I I know, I don't
even know. I think it's just the stuff that's so
(06:42):
like fast and heavy and like I like that. Yeah,
so I've I found. I tweeted out this picture of
like the different characters from Lord of the Rings and
then based on like their looks, what kind of metal
they were into? Really yeah, like Golam was in the
new Metal New Metal. Yeah, and then I can't remember.
(07:03):
I think um Vigo Mortenson was into like, um, I
can't remember. It's it's worth checking out going too our
Twitter for you look like three weeks four weeks back. Yeah,
I'll find it, you'll love it. I'm sure I didn't
describe grind Cork correctly. That's cool. I'm not hip on
the metal scene, Chuck. The Brazen Bull. The Brazen Bull
(07:24):
is old. Indeed, they think that an ancient Greek name
Perillus invented it, yeah, for for a tyrant named Phalaris
of a grinchined him and so basically like, hey, let
me build you this torture device. You're gonna love it.
And the guy was like, I love it, get in it?
(07:47):
What And apparently that's how it went down, right. So
what is the Brazen Bull. Well, it's a brass bull,
which is why it's brazen. And the bowl yeah, um,
it's a large one, big enough for human to fit him,
and there is a locking mechanism on the outside once
the human is in. Because they built fires around the
(08:07):
brazen bowl, lit them and then waited for the brazen
bowl the heat up with the person inside, who would
then scream and move around. And the muted sounds because
it was brass because their tongue was often cut off.
Um made it look and sound like the the bull
was alive and making noise. Yeah, And we found through
(08:30):
all of these grab Sir wrote this. Of course at
Grabanowski it was usually followed with to the delight and
entertainment of the crowd. So apparently, you know the bull
started rocking and making noises. People were just like, oh,
I love it. It's great. Someone's getting seared alive inside
that hollow bowl. Yeah, because this thing you're not being
(08:50):
You're not being like charred, You're being seared to death. Ultimately, Ultimately,
I imagine you would pass out and die from the heat,
probably hopefully, but I mean being seared to death that's
pretty bad. Or even being steered in the meantime before
you pass out from the heat. Yeah. I think with
most of these, your best hope is to pass out
(09:11):
as soon as possible from pain, you know. So, thumb
screws is one that that are They're interesting in that
they aren't designed to kill you, like a lot of
these tortures are designed like to either kill you or
you could die from them. And if you do well
whatever with thumb screws, it's like, no, this is just
(09:33):
for inflicting pain on you. Yeah, band or not a band?
A band thumb screw out of Austin, Texas metal band.
Uh so Yeah, like you said, you're not gonna die.
It's basically a these upright metal bars, three upright metal
bars that you put your thumbs in and then a
(09:54):
wooden bar slides down and presses your thumbs down, and
then it has screws and they just crank it down,
like squeezing your thumbs until they're crushed and broken. I
would imagine, Yeah, if you want to just start to
get even the slightest bit of idea of it, just
just pressed down on your thumb a little bit about
within the top third of your thumb above the quick
(10:16):
Jerry's not doing it, She's just watching us, and it
just it starts as like a little throbbing pain. Now,
imagine like somebody's screwing a vice down on top of
that while you're screaming. That's what the thumb screws met for.
Apparently there was a tin finger version called a pilly wink.
And that's a cute name. Is that a metal band name? No?
(10:36):
I looked that up though, um, and it's supposedly originated
in the Russian army is punishment for bad soldiers. And
then a Scotsman said, this is great, let's bring it
back home to the UK. Yeah. A guy named Quotability
tam Delio who was a seventeenth century UH minister of
parliament um who liked to use them himself. Not on himself, no,
(11:00):
but he liked to use them on people. Okay, Number eight,
the rack band not a band band. No, I couldn't
find it. It's gotta be I think. Um, it's just
a little too like vague. That was my explanation. But
it is a workout device. Someone's actually named their little
workout machine the rack. No way. Yeah, it looks like
it looks like a walker, you know, like if you
(11:22):
can't walk, so great, but you can do like dips
and push ups and sit ups and stuff with it. Yeah.
So do you think they were like making a joke?
I have no idea, I hope so. Um. So the
rack is pretty self explanatory and you've all seen this before.
Um has many different forms, but generally it is a
person tied to a table with each limb um, you know,
(11:46):
tied to a corner, and then it is cranked and
you were pulled apart or at least dislocated, right, like
the wheel is cranked, or like an axle is cranked
or something that that that wines that coils the rope
that your limbs are tied to up And yeah, it's
either dislocated or if you really want to get down,
(12:07):
you can just keep going and pull the limbs right
off of the body. Yeah, I imagine there was a
about a four second period where it was great, you
know where your back just cracked just right, and they're like, oh,
that's fantastic. And then it was like no, no, no, no, no,
can we stop there? Oh no, yeah, I don't like
this anymore. Uh. And they called you you know, would
(12:30):
be called broken on the rack or racked or stretched
on the rack. And there was one type that apparently
looked like a horse even yeah, I get the impression
that was a little bit like a sawhorse, looking kind
of just a beam with legs, and um torque Mata,
who was the head of the Spanish inquisition, he preferred
one called the portoro, right, but again the inventiveness, like
(12:53):
they would make one look like a horse, or you know,
they would apply little artistry to it, which is even
more perverse I think. And there's another one. It's kind
of related to the rack. It's called the wheel. Virtually
the same principle, no man um the it's basically the
same principle as the wreck. Your your limbs are tied
to the wheel, or they're broken ahead of time in
(13:16):
two places with an iron bar and then threaded through
the spokes in the wheel, and then once you're secured
this wheel. They can do all sorts of stuff. They
can swing it like a pendulum and spikes that you're
you're grazed over or fire or the fire below you,
and just swing you slowly over that. Or they can
use the wheel as it was meant to be used
and tie you to it and send you down a
(13:38):
rocky hillside. You'll tell you on the outside of it. Yeah,
it's not to make you dizzy. Myself almost said that
was my favorite. The wheel is your favorite? Well, tying
them on the outside and rolling them down the hill.
When I read that, I was like, very inventive. Yeah,
that's off to you. What else you gonna do with
the wheel using as a pendulum? That's stupid. Yeah. The
one where they would break your arms was kind to
(14:00):
crucifixion because, like you said, basically they would thread you
through it and then put it high on a steak
and just let you bake out in the sun until
you died with four broken limbs. Alright, the rack in
the wheel, the steak burning at the steak not a
band name, no, and it was usually a form of execution,
but it was so painful that it's also considered a
(14:21):
form of torture. How long would it take, Josh, So
it's just a poll that somebody's tied to with some
dry kindling around it, like kindling and um. Depending on
the conditions, it could take thirty minutes for you to
finally go unconscious from the pain of the fire. Thirty
(14:42):
minutes of being burned before you finally feigned. Now, if
it was windy out and the fire is blowing away
from you a little bit, you could be during that
for up to two hours, unbelievable of being burned to death.
Two hours of being burn to death at the steak. Yeah.
And the Netherlands they got a little more creative with it.
(15:04):
They would um a lot of times. They would remove
the tongue or do something to the tongue I think,
to just muffle the screams and make it a little
more palatable. Uh. And in the Netherlands they would apparently um,
sandwich your tongue between two hot iron plates and uh.
Of course you couldn't do a lot with that except
you know, make weird muffled screaming noises. Right. I don't
(15:24):
know if it was to make it more palatable or
people during the Dark Ages thought it was hilarious where
people couldn't talk. Yeah, maybe so you know, you're right
like that was like Jerry Lewis of periods, the Jam
Brady and the Jerry Lewis of periods. Wow, that's pretty
exciting time. Um, are we onto the Pillory? Oh well,
(15:47):
we should say probably that there was a modicum of
mercy with the steak where the church would strangle you
if you confess to being a heretic, they would strangle
you to death first before burning you at mistake, and
then it was just a symbolic burning. Right, you're being
consumed by fire. That's a very nice thing to do.
(16:08):
So Pillory band or not a band? I would say
they are a band out of Boston and they're a
hardcore band and actually listened to one of their songs.
You want to know the name of it is, what
hang nail in a Jeez? That's a metal band song title.
It sure is. So the pillory you've all seen. It's
(16:30):
um basically the two parallel wooden boards that are classed
together around your neck and arms and you're bent over
hanging through them. Your hands are your hands and your
head stick through these things. Yeah. I always thought that
was the stocks. Yeah, it's just like to restrain your ankles.
But the point is your immobile and you put on
(16:51):
a platform in a very public area to be shame
and humiliated and have rotten fruit thrown at you and
more than that, feces. And I imagine the worst case
scenario for this would be a group of like twelve
year old boys in the Middle Ages when you're in
the pillory. Yeah, twelve year old boys have like families
(17:11):
and kids by that, that's true, But I bet they
were the meanest of all. Like, some people would die
in the pillory because they would be you know, beaten
to death. Uh. Some people would be lauded though, if
they were like thumbing their nose at the government and
saying I didn't pay my taxes, some people would bring
them flowers and like food and stuff. Yeah, basically the
pillory was meant to just be left up to the
(17:32):
crowd what what was to be done with you. At
the very least, you were shame publicly just for being
up there for an hour or two. But if the
crowd decided that, you know, you needed more justice, Like
there was a four Englishmen who would um wrongfully accused
some people and send them to the gallows in order
to get the reward money. Those guys were beaten to
(17:52):
death when they were put into the pillory. That's no good.
That's what they call English justice. Yeah, and can you
imagine that being able to move and just have someone
like beating you about the head that brings up a
not be able to bring her hands up at least
guard your face. That still goes on today as public execution.
There are some countries out there that use stoning. Iran
(18:15):
is a very prominent one where you are sentenced to
death by stoning. Yeah. They bury you up to your
neck and your head is just exposed so you can't
move and people throw rocks at you until you die.
Usually they cover you with the sheets that they can't
see you, but they judge that you're you're done when
you stop moaning and you're bleeding through the sheet. But
(18:37):
there's a really interesting article I think you should read.
I wrote this blog post, Chuck. It's called five most
entertaining academic papers of all time, and one of them
and entertaining I use this in a strange way. But
one of them is called the possible pain experience during
execution by different Methods is by Harold Hillman, was written
in the I think the early nineties, and one of
(18:58):
the ones he covers is stone. But he goes through
and takes like all of this like, um, He's like,
there's no there's no body of work on how much
pain stoning causes. So he compares it to pain reported
from like a car crash or something like that, and
then makes assumptions that are you know, pretty good educated
guesses of what pain a person experiences, and basically rates
(19:20):
methods of execution from hanging to stoning to the gas chamber,
um in in so far as how much pain and
suffering they produce. Entertaining, Yes, the other ones are much
more entertaining that one had to be in there. It's
just the Originally I call them the five greatest academic
(19:41):
papers of all time. But you know s e o
um okay, so we're done with the Pillory and the Stocks. Correct? Yeah?
Were the Stocks a band name? No? Uh? And actually
have the Iron Maiden band or not a band? Uh?
You know they have their own beer Iron Maiden Beer
trooper Ale. Really yeah, it's got Eddie on the cover
(20:04):
and everything. Oh wow, it's pretty neat. I'll try that
around the label. I should say, can you get it
like here in the States? No, you're gonna only get
in the EU. I tried. It's probably sixty announces too.
It looks good, like it's well made. It's not just
like I'll put her name on this crap. Like it's
clearly like a kind of craft beer. That's awesome. Yeah,
you know, Bruce Dickinson's like a full on pilot, like
(20:25):
seven pilot. I don't know, Like he flies there big
jumbo jet that the band travels on. That's cool. Um.
So the Iron Maiden um. At one point they didn't
even believe this was real because it sounded so diabolical,
but then they found one in uh Nuremberg, Germany and
uh sometimes it's called the Iron Maiden of Nuremberg for
(20:47):
that reason. But it's a sarcophagus, you've seen it before,
like King Tutt was buried in. But it's got little
double doors and very strategically play spikes on the inside
done well. When you shut these double doors, including one
over the door, including one over the face that has
two spikes that are designed to take your eyes out.
(21:09):
These spikes go into your vital organs. They're arranged in
such a way so that your heart gets it, your kidneys,
your liver just a bit right. Yeah, The spikes aren't
so long that they just go right through you and
kill you. They're short enough that they're gonna puncture these
organs and you're gonna die. But it's gonna take many hours,
and the the lord of the castle in Nuremberg gets
(21:30):
to sit there and listen to you moan and die. Wow.
And they had one apparently that was even shaped like
the Virgin Mary and her arms so when he got
in she would hug you. Yeah, when you like turn
to crank, the arms would draw you closer into the
spikes again very fiendish. Uh. Scavenger's Daughter band or not
(21:51):
a band? I know that as a band. I ran
across it during my research to four bands. From what
I saw it was one of the UK, one in St. Louis,
in Shanghai and when in Poland? Cool? Did they really
spread out? Maybe it's all the affiliate to the same band.
They're also city are he's a scavenger's daughter co well?
Hell see uh? The original name for the Scavenger's daughter
(22:13):
Skeffington's Jeeves or Geeves. I don't know how you would
pronounce that g y v E s. That's a band too,
Is it from Tallahassee? I can believe that so um.
It was named after the inventor Skevington and Todd Skevington.
This the best way I'm gonna describe this is um.
(22:34):
It looks sort of like an arch. Imagine the St.
Louis arch shrunk down two about two ft and attached
to a bass plate, and you would get down in
like the tornado crowds position and get inside of this thing,
and then they would crank it down on the back
of your neck and back at the top of the arch,
the top of the center of the archers screw that
(22:55):
they can crank to crank the whole arch down on
top of your Yeah, so you're in like a crowd's position.
They just further crouch you until your spine cracks in
your breastbone breaks, and like it's the opposite of the
wreck where the rack tears you apart. The Skevington's gyre
dives is meant to compress you and like you will
bleed out of your fingertips and your eyes and your
(23:17):
ears because your body is being compressed into this tiny
balls like a car crusher. And yeah, and you're exactly
And there's actually one on display at the Tower of London. Yeah,
it's all on the on the internet. Was pretty cool
looking and again not delighting in this, but it's just insane.
Like I was looking at it on the internet today too,
and I was thinking, like human beings used to be
(23:40):
placed in that a few hundred years ago, like the
suffering that this machine, this contraption produced at the hands
of other people. Like if you just sit there and
like forced perspective on yourself, it's really it's really unnerving. Yeah,
well some people might say that putting someone in a
chair and sitting like Trusty through their body until they
(24:01):
dies the same thing. Oh yeah, you know for sure.
Have you ever seen that the Errol Morris documentary on
the inventor of the Electric Chair? No, what's it called
Mr Sparky? No, I think it's called Doctor Death. Uh.
And then Colin what his name is Lucher maybe or something.
I don't know. Really fascinating though, because he Yeah, just
(24:22):
just read it and it's Errol Morris, that's all you
need to know. Uh. These last two are really pretty Uh,
brutal and brutal against women. Yeah, and it's pretty gross.
So if you're not into hearing about that, maybe you
should turn off the podcast. Yeah, this to me is
like this is the worst. The other ones for um,
gender neutral, Yeah, you know, and I guess the last
(24:44):
one we're going to talk about is technically gender neutral,
but like the the idea of it being inflicted on
women to kind of, as Grabowski points out, to destroy
aspects of femininity. Yeah, is it makes everything even more disturbing,
you know. Yeah, agreed. And this is called the breast Ripper,
not a band. And not to make light of this,
but there was a Yahoo answer where a guy said, quote,
(25:07):
I need a brutal band name something like diseases or
disorders or something to do with babies being eaten. It
needs to be killer. And one of the people said,
you should call yourself the breast Ripper. Did he say awesome? No?
I didn't like to follow up and like look to
see if that's what he chose. But the guy had
listed it like a bunch of names, you know that
were mainly torture devices. I mean, if you're a metal
(25:30):
band searching torture devices, medieval torture devices, it's going to
yield nine D or two exactly. So uh, extending back
to the Roman times and probably before, females have had
a rough time of things, um when it comes to torture,
being marched through the streets, naked, public humiliation, uh, forced rape,
(25:54):
sexual mutilation. Um all like just terrible, terrible things, specifically
geared towards women. And the breast ripper was probably the
worst thing I've ever heard. Yeah, so basically wants to
describe it. I thought it was very bad too. Back
to you, go ahead, um, after you a woman was
it would be tied to a wall or basically forced
(26:16):
to be a mobile. And then this, um, the breast ripper,
which was basically a claw of spikes that could be
open and then placed on the breast and then shut
clamped down onto the breast, but then we pull away,
basically just mangling the breasts and like the thumb screws,
it was not intended to kill. As a matter of fact,
(26:40):
I get the impression from this article that it was
used very frequently, um to basically say, hey, everybody, look
at this person, like like the scarlet letter, right exactly.
It was it was meant to label somebody. Yeah, in England,
I know they were fond of branding women on the
face to shame them. Yeah, and apparently if you're in
the stock case or the pillory, one of the things
(27:02):
that may also a company that was to be branded
by having your nose slit or an ear cut off. Maybe. Yeah.
What was wrong with people back then? I don't know.
And what changed? I wonder that's like that the most
peaceful period in history? What right after the Middle Ages? Well,
that's what we were talking about, like remember Stephen Pink
(27:23):
Like the Middle Ages were particularly bad. I don't know
what it was that that changed, but the I think
the idea that government came in and created a monopoly
on violence, that's fairly That's that's what we're talking about here.
That doesn't really account for it because the government had
not necessarily a monopoly. It was supposed to. But it
(27:45):
was pretty violent itself. Yeah, And it's not like things
got great, like you said, they're still stoning people and
they use the electric chair in this very country. But
it definitely wasn't the Middle Ages. No. And also when
you know, I mean you could get you could be
richards for all sorts of things like your neighbor could
be like you're a witch, and all of a sudden
you're tortured, right, you know, so I would be very
(28:07):
curious to know exactly what accounts for that change, because
something changed. Yeah, And they also point out in the
article I did that. UM. A lot of times these
were used to also get you too, uh sing about
your accomplices, and that was basically like you just say
whatever you want, like yeah, it was my my neighbor there,
and the neighbors like huh, and then all of a sudden,
(28:28):
it's in the pillory to you know, alright. Our final
one is the pair of Anguish band or not a band,
It's got to be a band. It's a band, pour
metal band from Roanoke, Virginia, man Roanoke, North Carolina. So
the pair of Anguish was, UM, I guess I'll do
this one since you had to did the breast ripper.
(28:51):
It is a pear shaped device and the pair is
actually four metal leaves um joined at the top by
a hinge with like a key crank. So just imagine
a pair that if you crank like where the stein
would be, the four leaves would open up and they
would use this on women in like the worst places
(29:11):
and on homosexual men in the worst places an orifice basically, yeah,
and open it up. And I showed Emily this morning.
She was like, so that looks like an early speculum
to me. And that's you know, kind of this along
those same lines, and that's the pair of Anguish. And
you can get pictures of all these and look at them,
(29:32):
not in use obviously, but actually some of them are
like they have drawings of like the rack and things
like that. Yeah, but luckily not of the pair of English.
There's a spoon from I think the Nuremberg Castle um
that has many iron maiden on the top of it. Yeah,
probably displayed. Wow, yeah you can. I mean there's there's
photos of these and and some of them are relics
(29:53):
in in museums around the world, like the Skevington's Jeeves
in the Tower of Lone. Then there's probably a torture
museum and that somewhere. There's there's the London Dungeon. That
one's awesome. I went with my dad my sister years
and years ago. I was like seventeen, maybe it was
(30:13):
like thirteen maybe perfect though, Yeah, well, yeah, anywhere from there,
but it's like they really did it up because they
use like whack dummies and it's like there's like a
head in the basket on the guillotine exhibit. Plus there's
a great Misfits song named that too, name what London Dungeon? Nice? Uh?
And one more thing I wanted to say. And two
thousand three, after the US invaded iraq Um, they found
(30:37):
you know, Udi Hussein Saddam's oldest son. He was the
Minister of Sports and he was very famous for like
torturing athletes that he didn't think we're performing well enough.
What they found an iron maiden at the Ministry of Sports,
his iron maiden that he used on people. Yeah, that
certainly doesn't encourage athleticism, you know. No, it encourages defection
(30:58):
and running away whenever you go somewhere to play somebody
in another country. Wow. Yeah, that's very sad. So that's
it for ten medieval torture devices. Yeah, very bizarre time
in this world's history for sure. Uh. If you want
to see pictures of these things read more about them.
You can type that in medieval m E D I
(31:19):
E v A L Torture devices in the search part
house stuff works, and I said search bars, its time
for messenge brick and now I listener mail Yes, all right,
thank you. So this from Matthew and Cook listened to
the Living Off of the Grid podcast and it reminded
him of his friend Michael's aunt. Uh. He and his
(31:41):
friend are very technically oriented and they've been wiring little
dude dads and things for years. His aunt bought a
house some years back which turned out to be a
long term witness protection house for local authorities. She called
us in because there were about a thousand little switches
and project boxes all over the house, tucked in the
nooks and crannies, automated everything from the window blinds to
(32:03):
the lights, to the door and window locks. It's very
reminiscent of something we've seen in old James Bond movie,
so this is not like a new thing, which is
why it was weird. She had no idea how to
operate any of them, or even what half of them did,
so we got to come and play in the house
basically for a while and figured out what we could.
We found the house had many defense measures, including motion
sensor alarms in the surrounding woods and driveway, and backup
(32:25):
power and water supplies, which included rainwater collection, solar panel panels,
a huge backup generator, and a wind turbine on a
telephone pole type thing that could be raised or lowered
and adjusted using a hand winch. What made the house
really cool is while many of the home automation and
power water conservation measures implemented are now things that can
(32:46):
be purchased and installed professionally, this was all done well
before this, as evidenced by all the project boxes and
very retro togcle switches and such. For us, it was
like seeing history as some clever guy or girl actually
had to think up these pieces and then design and
build them from scratch. I feel like I'm really not
doing this house justice and the engineer's justice, but that
could be the over excited geek and me. We're calling
(33:08):
this find Matthew and Cook. So that's pretty cool. It's
very cool, Thanks Matthew. Apparently the aunt wasn't too into it. Yeah,
she's like, I got a good deal on this house. Yeah,
Like once they figured out how to do like the
lights and stuff, she's like, all right, get out. Um,
I would be very curious to see photos of this house.
Send them along. Yeah. Um, we love cool photos of
(33:29):
very cool places, whether they're abandoned or unusual or whatever.
So if you have like a photo spread of a
cool house or a cool old asylum or whatever, send
us a link because if we want to see it.
You can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
you Should Know. You can send us an email to
Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and you can join
(33:53):
us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should
Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of
other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Hey, Netflix
(34:13):
streams TV shows and movies directly to your TV, computer,
wireless device, or game console. You can get a thirty
day free trial membership. Go to www dot Netflix dot
com slash stuff and sign up now.
Welcome to you Stuff you should Know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clarkinner's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and um. Chuck thinks
we should include a warning on this one. I think
we probably should. This is gonna be pretty gruesome at times. Warning. Kids,
(00:24):
maybe ask your parents if you should play that. Parents,
maybe don't play this for your kids. Done, pretty good warning.
And this is history, you know, it's pretty it's pretty
uh gruesome history though. Yeah. So the Middle Ages are
the Medieval period in Europe. Man, Yeah, they were very
gruesome time, starting about the fifth century after the fall
(00:46):
of the Roman Empire, uh and lasting until the Renaissance
the fifteenth century. It's many English years, a thousand years
of um, nasty, brutish and short life. Yeah, so that
the average life expectancy during the Medieval period. And all
historians don't like they call it the Middle Ages because
(01:08):
that implies that it's just basically this little bit of
time in between two really important ages, the Middle Period.
It's like the Jane Brady of history. Um. And they're saying, like, no,
there's some really great things came about during this time
and Um, you can't just call it that, so they
call it the Medieval period. I still think it's the
Middle Ages or the Dark Ages is another great way
(01:30):
to put it. Brutish behavior. There was a expectancy somewhere
in the forties. I didn't see specifically, but yeah, at
the very least it's yeah, average age, you could live
longer than that. I mean, like you, you know, if
you're a woman, the chances of you dying in childbirth
were pretty high. If you were a man, the chances
(01:52):
of you being killed by getting kicked by your horse,
we're probably pretty high. If you were a child making it,
I think you had a thirty three percent chance to
not make it past five. It was not good. It
was a violent time. Um. Nutrition was not very good,
it was a dirty time, and it was just it
(02:14):
was a bad time to be alive. I think we
can agree on that. Um, if you're time traveling, skip
the Middle Ages. One of the one of the one
of the I guess hallmarks of the Middle Ages, UM
was that after the fall of the Roman Empire, Rome
like owned Europe owned it outright, and under this control
(02:38):
also came things like Rhodes currency, government justice. Yeah, like
to the farthest reaches of the Roman Empire. It was
under controlled generally, and these areas had public service, right
public services. After the Roman Empire fell um there was
(02:58):
a power vacuum and for three hundred years the Franks
and the Saxons and the Anglo Saxons um all were fighting.
And finally in about eight hundred Charlemagne was crowned the
Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and the Church took
over basically, which good news, right you would think. The Church, however,
(03:20):
had a hatred of women in their fondness of torture,
and the Middle Ages was also characterized by a period
of really inventive thinking in how to produce human suffering. Yeah,
I think it is a great quote from L. A.
Parry's nineteen seventy book A History of Torture in England.
(03:41):
The first part of this really hits home on it
and hit home. But yeah, it brings up bad memories.
What strikes us most in considering the medieval tortures is
not so much their diabolical barbarity as the extraordinary variety
in what maybe term the artistic skill they displayed. So
they definitely delighted and especially reading these torture devices and
being very uh inventive and probably trying to outdo one another,
(04:06):
and how awful it was and the different mechanisms, you know,
because mechanics was new, so they were probably like, look,
you know this has five gears that will you know,
rip your toes off. How cool? But uh yeah, so
it was very ah, perversely inventive period. Yeah. Perry says
(04:27):
that they basically ruminated and considered how suffering occurs to
figure out how to produce it. That it was like
basically an art form by the end. Yeah, they would
in court sometimes they would um just do things like hey,
let me put your arm in boiling water, and we're
(04:49):
going to base our verdict on how long it takes
it to heal. Um. I know the old thing about
you know, does the witch float throw it? Throw in
the lake and let's see and if she drowns, hey
she was not a witch. That's sad. But if she lives,
then Berner at to stay exactly. Yeah, so either way
the lady dies, which is very sad. Um. And they
(05:11):
even had a thing when they would torture people for confessions,
but they wouldn't They would say basically that confession doesn't count.
So they would say, you know what, within that twenty
four hour period, we won't torture you, see if you
still confess, and if you don't, we'll just torch you again. Right.
That was to corroborate your own confession that was extracted
under torture. So even even back then, they realized, like, yeah,
(05:34):
you can't really rely on a confession under torture because
people say anything to get you to stop doing the
things that we're about to describe they were doing to them, right,
or they would torture you very publicly. That's a very
common thing with most of these dissuade criminal activity. Yeah,
humiliation shaming, scarlet letters, Yeah, that kind of thing, permanent
scarlet letters. Even so, we're talking about the torture advices,
(06:00):
some of the more famous, more diabolical ones that came
out of the Middle Ages. Yeah, and this is a
surprise for you. I told you I had a little
game we're gonna play. We're gonna as we go, we
will also find out, because I've done this research, which
of these torture devices are also the names of heavy
metal bands. Oh yeah, that's a great one because at
(06:21):
the very first one I saw The Brazen Bull, I
was like, surely that's a band. Yeah. When I was
researching this, I was thinking, like, I wonder how many
times Chuck's gonna be like, that's a great band name. Well,
the Brazen Bull is, in fact the band in Chicago,
three piece uh grinder core metal band. Give me another
example of grind core. So I I know, I don't
even know. I think it's just the stuff that's so
(06:42):
like fast and heavy and like I like that. Yeah,
so I've I found. I tweeted out this picture of
like the different characters from Lord of the Rings and
then based on like their looks, what kind of metal
they were into? Really yeah, like Golam was in the
new Metal New Metal. Yeah, and then I can't remember.
(07:03):
I think um Vigo Mortenson was into like, um, I
can't remember. It's it's worth checking out going too our
Twitter for you look like three weeks four weeks back. Yeah,
I'll find it, you'll love it. I'm sure I didn't
describe grind Cork correctly. That's cool. I'm not hip on
the metal scene, Chuck. The Brazen Bull. The Brazen Bull
(07:24):
is old. Indeed, they think that an ancient Greek name
Perillus invented it, yeah, for for a tyrant named Phalaris
of a grinchined him and so basically like, hey, let
me build you this torture device. You're gonna love it.
And the guy was like, I love it, get in it?
(07:47):
What And apparently that's how it went down, right. So
what is the Brazen Bull. Well, it's a brass bull,
which is why it's brazen. And the bowl yeah, um,
it's a large one, big enough for human to fit him,
and there is a locking mechanism on the outside once
the human is in. Because they built fires around the
(08:07):
brazen bowl, lit them and then waited for the brazen
bowl the heat up with the person inside, who would
then scream and move around. And the muted sounds because
it was brass because their tongue was often cut off.
Um made it look and sound like the the bull
was alive and making noise. Yeah, And we found through
(08:30):
all of these grab Sir wrote this. Of course at
Grabanowski it was usually followed with to the delight and
entertainment of the crowd. So apparently, you know the bull
started rocking and making noises. People were just like, oh,
I love it. It's great. Someone's getting seared alive inside
that hollow bowl. Yeah, because this thing you're not being
(08:50):
You're not being like charred, You're being seared to death. Ultimately, Ultimately,
I imagine you would pass out and die from the heat,
probably hopefully, but I mean being seared to death that's
pretty bad. Or even being steered in the meantime before
you pass out from the heat. Yeah. I think with
most of these, your best hope is to pass out
(09:11):
as soon as possible from pain, you know. So, thumb
screws is one that that are They're interesting in that
they aren't designed to kill you, like a lot of
these tortures are designed like to either kill you or
you could die from them. And if you do well
whatever with thumb screws, it's like, no, this is just
(09:33):
for inflicting pain on you. Yeah, band or not a band?
A band thumb screw out of Austin, Texas metal band.
Uh so Yeah, like you said, you're not gonna die.
It's basically a these upright metal bars, three upright metal
bars that you put your thumbs in and then a
(09:54):
wooden bar slides down and presses your thumbs down, and
then it has screws and they just crank it down,
like squeezing your thumbs until they're crushed and broken. I
would imagine, Yeah, if you want to just start to
get even the slightest bit of idea of it, just
just pressed down on your thumb a little bit about
within the top third of your thumb above the quick
(10:16):
Jerry's not doing it, She's just watching us, and it
just it starts as like a little throbbing pain. Now,
imagine like somebody's screwing a vice down on top of
that while you're screaming. That's what the thumb screws met for.
Apparently there was a tin finger version called a pilly wink.
And that's a cute name. Is that a metal band name? No?
(10:36):
I looked that up though, um, and it's supposedly originated
in the Russian army is punishment for bad soldiers. And
then a Scotsman said, this is great, let's bring it
back home to the UK. Yeah. A guy named Quotability
tam Delio who was a seventeenth century UH minister of
parliament um who liked to use them himself. Not on himself, no,
(11:00):
but he liked to use them on people. Okay, Number eight,
the rack band not a band band. No, I couldn't
find it. It's gotta be I think. Um, it's just
a little too like vague. That was my explanation. But
it is a workout device. Someone's actually named their little
workout machine the rack. No way. Yeah, it looks like
it looks like a walker, you know, like if you
(11:22):
can't walk, so great, but you can do like dips
and push ups and sit ups and stuff with it. Yeah.
So do you think they were like making a joke?
I have no idea, I hope so. Um. So the
rack is pretty self explanatory and you've all seen this before.
Um has many different forms, but generally it is a
person tied to a table with each limb um, you know,
(11:46):
tied to a corner, and then it is cranked and
you were pulled apart or at least dislocated, right, like
the wheel is cranked, or like an axle is cranked
or something that that that wines that coils the rope
that your limbs are tied to up And yeah, it's
either dislocated or if you really want to get down,
(12:07):
you can just keep going and pull the limbs right
off of the body. Yeah, I imagine there was a
about a four second period where it was great, you
know where your back just cracked just right, and they're like, oh,
that's fantastic. And then it was like no, no, no, no, no,
can we stop there? Oh no, yeah, I don't like
this anymore. Uh. And they called you you know, would
(12:30):
be called broken on the rack or racked or stretched
on the rack. And there was one type that apparently
looked like a horse even yeah, I get the impression
that was a little bit like a sawhorse, looking kind
of just a beam with legs, and um torque Mata,
who was the head of the Spanish inquisition, he preferred
one called the portoro, right, but again the inventiveness, like
(12:53):
they would make one look like a horse, or you know,
they would apply little artistry to it, which is even
more perverse I think. And there's another one. It's kind
of related to the rack. It's called the wheel. Virtually
the same principle, no man um the it's basically the
same principle as the wreck. Your your limbs are tied
to the wheel, or they're broken ahead of time in
(13:16):
two places with an iron bar and then threaded through
the spokes in the wheel, and then once you're secured
this wheel. They can do all sorts of stuff. They
can swing it like a pendulum and spikes that you're
you're grazed over or fire or the fire below you,
and just swing you slowly over that. Or they can
use the wheel as it was meant to be used
and tie you to it and send you down a
(13:38):
rocky hillside. You'll tell you on the outside of it. Yeah,
it's not to make you dizzy. Myself almost said that
was my favorite. The wheel is your favorite? Well, tying
them on the outside and rolling them down the hill.
When I read that, I was like, very inventive. Yeah,
that's off to you. What else you gonna do with
the wheel using as a pendulum? That's stupid. Yeah. The
one where they would break your arms was kind to
(14:00):
crucifixion because, like you said, basically they would thread you
through it and then put it high on a steak
and just let you bake out in the sun until
you died with four broken limbs. Alright, the rack in
the wheel, the steak burning at the steak not a
band name, no, and it was usually a form of execution,
but it was so painful that it's also considered a
(14:21):
form of torture. How long would it take, Josh, So
it's just a poll that somebody's tied to with some
dry kindling around it, like kindling and um. Depending on
the conditions, it could take thirty minutes for you to
finally go unconscious from the pain of the fire. Thirty
(14:42):
minutes of being burned before you finally feigned. Now, if
it was windy out and the fire is blowing away
from you a little bit, you could be during that
for up to two hours, unbelievable of being burned to death.
Two hours of being burn to death at the steak. Yeah.
And the Netherlands they got a little more creative with it.
(15:04):
They would um a lot of times. They would remove
the tongue or do something to the tongue I think,
to just muffle the screams and make it a little
more palatable. Uh. And in the Netherlands they would apparently um,
sandwich your tongue between two hot iron plates and uh.
Of course you couldn't do a lot with that except
you know, make weird muffled screaming noises. Right. I don't
(15:24):
know if it was to make it more palatable or
people during the Dark Ages thought it was hilarious where
people couldn't talk. Yeah, maybe so you know, you're right
like that was like Jerry Lewis of periods, the Jam
Brady and the Jerry Lewis of periods. Wow, that's pretty
exciting time. Um, are we onto the Pillory? Oh well,
(15:47):
we should say probably that there was a modicum of
mercy with the steak where the church would strangle you
if you confess to being a heretic, they would strangle
you to death first before burning you at mistake, and
then it was just a symbolic burning. Right, you're being
consumed by fire. That's a very nice thing to do.
(16:08):
So Pillory band or not a band? I would say
they are a band out of Boston and they're a
hardcore band and actually listened to one of their songs.
You want to know the name of it is, what
hang nail in a Jeez? That's a metal band song title.
It sure is. So the pillory you've all seen. It's
(16:30):
um basically the two parallel wooden boards that are classed
together around your neck and arms and you're bent over
hanging through them. Your hands are your hands and your
head stick through these things. Yeah. I always thought that
was the stocks. Yeah, it's just like to restrain your ankles.
But the point is your immobile and you put on
(16:51):
a platform in a very public area to be shame
and humiliated and have rotten fruit thrown at you and
more than that, feces. And I imagine the worst case
scenario for this would be a group of like twelve
year old boys in the Middle Ages when you're in
the pillory. Yeah, twelve year old boys have like families
(17:11):
and kids by that, that's true, But I bet they
were the meanest of all. Like, some people would die
in the pillory because they would be you know, beaten
to death. Uh. Some people would be lauded though, if
they were like thumbing their nose at the government and
saying I didn't pay my taxes, some people would bring
them flowers and like food and stuff. Yeah, basically the
pillory was meant to just be left up to the
(17:32):
crowd what what was to be done with you. At
the very least, you were shame publicly just for being
up there for an hour or two. But if the
crowd decided that, you know, you needed more justice, Like
there was a four Englishmen who would um wrongfully accused
some people and send them to the gallows in order
to get the reward money. Those guys were beaten to
(17:52):
death when they were put into the pillory. That's no good.
That's what they call English justice. Yeah, and can you
imagine that being able to move and just have someone
like beating you about the head that brings up a
not be able to bring her hands up at least
guard your face. That still goes on today as public execution.
There are some countries out there that use stoning. Iran
(18:15):
is a very prominent one where you are sentenced to
death by stoning. Yeah. They bury you up to your
neck and your head is just exposed so you can't
move and people throw rocks at you until you die.
Usually they cover you with the sheets that they can't
see you, but they judge that you're you're done when
you stop moaning and you're bleeding through the sheet. But
(18:37):
there's a really interesting article I think you should read.
I wrote this blog post, Chuck. It's called five most
entertaining academic papers of all time, and one of them
and entertaining I use this in a strange way. But
one of them is called the possible pain experience during
execution by different Methods is by Harold Hillman, was written
in the I think the early nineties, and one of
(18:58):
the ones he covers is stone. But he goes through
and takes like all of this like, um, He's like,
there's no there's no body of work on how much
pain stoning causes. So he compares it to pain reported
from like a car crash or something like that, and
then makes assumptions that are you know, pretty good educated
guesses of what pain a person experiences, and basically rates
(19:20):
methods of execution from hanging to stoning to the gas chamber,
um in in so far as how much pain and
suffering they produce. Entertaining, Yes, the other ones are much
more entertaining that one had to be in there. It's
just the Originally I call them the five greatest academic
(19:41):
papers of all time. But you know s e o
um okay, so we're done with the Pillory and the Stocks. Correct? Yeah?
Were the Stocks a band name? No? Uh? And actually
have the Iron Maiden band or not a band? Uh?
You know they have their own beer Iron Maiden Beer
trooper Ale. Really yeah, it's got Eddie on the cover
(20:04):
and everything. Oh wow, it's pretty neat. I'll try that
around the label. I should say, can you get it
like here in the States? No, you're gonna only get
in the EU. I tried. It's probably sixty announces too.
It looks good, like it's well made. It's not just
like I'll put her name on this crap. Like it's
clearly like a kind of craft beer. That's awesome. Yeah,
you know, Bruce Dickinson's like a full on pilot, like
(20:25):
seven pilot. I don't know, Like he flies there big
jumbo jet that the band travels on. That's cool. Um.
So the Iron Maiden um. At one point they didn't
even believe this was real because it sounded so diabolical,
but then they found one in uh Nuremberg, Germany and
uh sometimes it's called the Iron Maiden of Nuremberg for
(20:47):
that reason. But it's a sarcophagus, you've seen it before,
like King Tutt was buried in. But it's got little
double doors and very strategically play spikes on the inside
done well. When you shut these double doors, including one
over the door, including one over the face that has
two spikes that are designed to take your eyes out.
(21:09):
These spikes go into your vital organs. They're arranged in
such a way so that your heart gets it, your kidneys,
your liver just a bit right. Yeah, The spikes aren't
so long that they just go right through you and
kill you. They're short enough that they're gonna puncture these
organs and you're gonna die. But it's gonna take many hours,
and the the lord of the castle in Nuremberg gets
(21:30):
to sit there and listen to you moan and die. Wow.
And they had one apparently that was even shaped like
the Virgin Mary and her arms so when he got
in she would hug you. Yeah, when you like turn
to crank, the arms would draw you closer into the
spikes again very fiendish. Uh. Scavenger's Daughter band or not
(21:51):
a band? I know that as a band. I ran
across it during my research to four bands. From what
I saw it was one of the UK, one in St. Louis,
in Shanghai and when in Poland? Cool? Did they really
spread out? Maybe it's all the affiliate to the same band.
They're also city are he's a scavenger's daughter co well?
Hell see uh? The original name for the Scavenger's daughter
(22:13):
Skeffington's Jeeves or Geeves. I don't know how you would
pronounce that g y v E s. That's a band too,
Is it from Tallahassee? I can believe that so um.
It was named after the inventor Skevington and Todd Skevington.
This the best way I'm gonna describe this is um.
(22:34):
It looks sort of like an arch. Imagine the St.
Louis arch shrunk down two about two ft and attached
to a bass plate, and you would get down in
like the tornado crowds position and get inside of this thing,
and then they would crank it down on the back
of your neck and back at the top of the arch,
the top of the center of the archers screw that
(22:55):
they can crank to crank the whole arch down on
top of your Yeah, so you're in like a crowd's position.
They just further crouch you until your spine cracks in
your breastbone breaks, and like it's the opposite of the
wreck where the rack tears you apart. The Skevington's gyre
dives is meant to compress you and like you will
bleed out of your fingertips and your eyes and your
(23:17):
ears because your body is being compressed into this tiny
balls like a car crusher. And yeah, and you're exactly
And there's actually one on display at the Tower of London. Yeah,
it's all on the on the internet. Was pretty cool
looking and again not delighting in this, but it's just insane.
Like I was looking at it on the internet today too,
and I was thinking, like human beings used to be
(23:40):
placed in that a few hundred years ago, like the
suffering that this machine, this contraption produced at the hands
of other people. Like if you just sit there and
like forced perspective on yourself, it's really it's really unnerving. Yeah,
well some people might say that putting someone in a
chair and sitting like Trusty through their body until they
(24:01):
dies the same thing. Oh yeah, you know for sure.
Have you ever seen that the Errol Morris documentary on
the inventor of the Electric Chair? No, what's it called
Mr Sparky? No, I think it's called Doctor Death. Uh.
And then Colin what his name is Lucher maybe or something.
I don't know. Really fascinating though, because he Yeah, just
(24:22):
just read it and it's Errol Morris, that's all you
need to know. Uh. These last two are really pretty Uh,
brutal and brutal against women. Yeah, and it's pretty gross.
So if you're not into hearing about that, maybe you
should turn off the podcast. Yeah, this to me is
like this is the worst. The other ones for um,
gender neutral, Yeah, you know, and I guess the last
(24:44):
one we're going to talk about is technically gender neutral,
but like the the idea of it being inflicted on
women to kind of, as Grabowski points out, to destroy
aspects of femininity. Yeah, is it makes everything even more disturbing,
you know. Yeah, agreed. And this is called the breast Ripper,
not a band. And not to make light of this,
but there was a Yahoo answer where a guy said, quote,
(25:07):
I need a brutal band name something like diseases or
disorders or something to do with babies being eaten. It
needs to be killer. And one of the people said,
you should call yourself the breast Ripper. Did he say awesome? No?
I didn't like to follow up and like look to
see if that's what he chose. But the guy had
listed it like a bunch of names, you know that
were mainly torture devices. I mean, if you're a metal
(25:30):
band searching torture devices, medieval torture devices, it's going to
yield nine D or two exactly. So uh, extending back
to the Roman times and probably before, females have had
a rough time of things, um when it comes to torture,
being marched through the streets, naked, public humiliation, uh, forced rape,
(25:54):
sexual mutilation. Um all like just terrible, terrible things, specifically
geared towards women. And the breast ripper was probably the
worst thing I've ever heard. Yeah, so basically wants to
describe it. I thought it was very bad too. Back
to you, go ahead, um, after you a woman was
it would be tied to a wall or basically forced
(26:16):
to be a mobile. And then this, um, the breast ripper,
which was basically a claw of spikes that could be
open and then placed on the breast and then shut
clamped down onto the breast, but then we pull away,
basically just mangling the breasts and like the thumb screws,
it was not intended to kill. As a matter of fact,
(26:40):
I get the impression from this article that it was
used very frequently, um to basically say, hey, everybody, look
at this person, like like the scarlet letter, right exactly.
It was it was meant to label somebody. Yeah, in England,
I know they were fond of branding women on the
face to shame them. Yeah, and apparently if you're in
the stock case or the pillory, one of the things
(27:02):
that may also a company that was to be branded
by having your nose slit or an ear cut off. Maybe. Yeah.
What was wrong with people back then? I don't know.
And what changed? I wonder that's like that the most
peaceful period in history? What right after the Middle Ages? Well,
that's what we were talking about, like remember Stephen Pink
(27:23):
Like the Middle Ages were particularly bad. I don't know
what it was that that changed, but the I think
the idea that government came in and created a monopoly
on violence, that's fairly That's that's what we're talking about here.
That doesn't really account for it because the government had
not necessarily a monopoly. It was supposed to. But it
(27:45):
was pretty violent itself. Yeah, And it's not like things
got great, like you said, they're still stoning people and
they use the electric chair in this very country. But
it definitely wasn't the Middle Ages. No. And also when
you know, I mean you could get you could be
richards for all sorts of things like your neighbor could
be like you're a witch, and all of a sudden
you're tortured, right, you know, so I would be very
(28:07):
curious to know exactly what accounts for that change, because
something changed. Yeah, And they also point out in the
article I did that. UM. A lot of times these
were used to also get you too, uh sing about
your accomplices, and that was basically like you just say
whatever you want, like yeah, it was my my neighbor there,
and the neighbors like huh, and then all of a sudden,
(28:28):
it's in the pillory to you know, alright. Our final
one is the pair of Anguish band or not a band,
It's got to be a band. It's a band, pour
metal band from Roanoke, Virginia, man Roanoke, North Carolina. So
the pair of Anguish was, UM, I guess I'll do
this one since you had to did the breast ripper.
(28:51):
It is a pear shaped device and the pair is
actually four metal leaves um joined at the top by
a hinge with like a key crank. So just imagine
a pair that if you crank like where the stein
would be, the four leaves would open up and they
would use this on women in like the worst places
(29:11):
and on homosexual men in the worst places an orifice basically, yeah,
and open it up. And I showed Emily this morning.
She was like, so that looks like an early speculum
to me. And that's you know, kind of this along
those same lines, and that's the pair of Anguish. And
you can get pictures of all these and look at them,
(29:32):
not in use obviously, but actually some of them are
like they have drawings of like the rack and things
like that. Yeah, but luckily not of the pair of English.
There's a spoon from I think the Nuremberg Castle um
that has many iron maiden on the top of it. Yeah,
probably displayed. Wow, yeah you can. I mean there's there's
photos of these and and some of them are relics
(29:53):
in in museums around the world, like the Skevington's Jeeves
in the Tower of Lone. Then there's probably a torture
museum and that somewhere. There's there's the London Dungeon. That
one's awesome. I went with my dad my sister years
and years ago. I was like seventeen, maybe it was
(30:13):
like thirteen maybe perfect though, Yeah, well, yeah, anywhere from there,
but it's like they really did it up because they
use like whack dummies and it's like there's like a
head in the basket on the guillotine exhibit. Plus there's
a great Misfits song named that too, name what London Dungeon? Nice? Uh?
And one more thing I wanted to say. And two
thousand three, after the US invaded iraq Um, they found
(30:37):
you know, Udi Hussein Saddam's oldest son. He was the
Minister of Sports and he was very famous for like
torturing athletes that he didn't think we're performing well enough.
What they found an iron maiden at the Ministry of Sports,
his iron maiden that he used on people. Yeah, that
certainly doesn't encourage athleticism, you know. No, it encourages defection
(30:58):
and running away whenever you go somewhere to play somebody
in another country. Wow. Yeah, that's very sad. So that's
it for ten medieval torture devices. Yeah, very bizarre time
in this world's history for sure. Uh. If you want
to see pictures of these things read more about them.
You can type that in medieval m E D I
(31:19):
E v A L Torture devices in the search part
house stuff works, and I said search bars, its time
for messenge brick and now I listener mail Yes, all right,
thank you. So this from Matthew and Cook listened to
the Living Off of the Grid podcast and it reminded
him of his friend Michael's aunt. Uh. He and his
(31:41):
friend are very technically oriented and they've been wiring little
dude dads and things for years. His aunt bought a
house some years back which turned out to be a
long term witness protection house for local authorities. She called
us in because there were about a thousand little switches
and project boxes all over the house, tucked in the
nooks and crannies, automated everything from the window blinds to
(32:03):
the lights, to the door and window locks. It's very
reminiscent of something we've seen in old James Bond movie,
so this is not like a new thing, which is
why it was weird. She had no idea how to
operate any of them, or even what half of them did,
so we got to come and play in the house
basically for a while and figured out what we could.
We found the house had many defense measures, including motion
sensor alarms in the surrounding woods and driveway, and backup
(32:25):
power and water supplies, which included rainwater collection, solar panel panels,
a huge backup generator, and a wind turbine on a
telephone pole type thing that could be raised or lowered
and adjusted using a hand winch. What made the house
really cool is while many of the home automation and
power water conservation measures implemented are now things that can
(32:46):
be purchased and installed professionally, this was all done well
before this, as evidenced by all the project boxes and
very retro togcle switches and such. For us, it was
like seeing history as some clever guy or girl actually
had to think up these pieces and then design and
build them from scratch. I feel like I'm really not
doing this house justice and the engineer's justice, but that
could be the over excited geek and me. We're calling
(33:08):
this find Matthew and Cook. So that's pretty cool. It's
very cool, Thanks Matthew. Apparently the aunt wasn't too into it. Yeah,
she's like, I got a good deal on this house. Yeah,
Like once they figured out how to do like the
lights and stuff, she's like, all right, get out. Um,
I would be very curious to see photos of this house.
Send them along. Yeah. Um, we love cool photos of
(33:29):
very cool places, whether they're abandoned or unusual or whatever.
So if you have like a photo spread of a
cool house or a cool old asylum or whatever, send
us a link because if we want to see it.
You can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
you Should Know. You can send us an email to
Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and you can join
(33:53):
us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should
Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of
other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Hey, Netflix
(34:13):
streams TV shows and movies directly to your TV, computer,
wireless device, or game console. You can get a thirty
day free trial membership. Go to www dot Netflix dot
com slash stuff and sign up now.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.