The Big Book of Pain: Torture & Punishment Through History (2 page)

T
he word torture is used so often and so inappropriately that it seems necessary to define exactly what it means before entering into any serious investigation of its uses; or more specifically to extricate the term from the confused jumble of multiple definitions in order to determine precisely what
we
mean by ‘torture’. Contrary to popular belief all forms of punishment, even when it involves physical abuse, do not qualify as torture. The thirteenth edition of the
Encyclopedia Britannica
describes torture as follows: ‘Torture (from Latin “torquere”, to twist), the general name for innumerable modes of inflicting pain which have been from time to time devised by the perverted ingenuity of man, and especially for those employed in a legal aspect by the civilised nations of antiquity and modern Europe.’ From this point of view, torture was always inflicted for one of two purposes:

    (1)   as a means of eliciting evidence from a witness or from an accused person either before or after condemnation;

    (2)   as a part of punishment.

The second was the earlier use, its functions as a means of evidence arising when rules were gradually formulated by the experience of legal experts. Webster’s
New Collegiate Dictionary
describes it more briefly, but more succinctly, in this manner:

1. The infliction of intense pain (as from burning, crushing or wounding) to punish, coerce or afford sadistic pleasure.

2. An anguish of body or mind.

3. To punish or coerce by inflicting excruciating pain.

4. To cause intense suffering, to torment.

Using these basic premises as a starting point, we can immediately say that before physical brutality can qualify as torture it must be inflicted with very specific goals in mind. If a street gang attacks, beats and systematically abuses someone they are not, strictly speaking, torturing their victim. They are certainly assaulting them and may cause grievous bodily harm, but because they are not acting under any kind of governmental, military or judicial authority the assault is not technically torture. On the other hand, a gang of revolutionary guerrilla fighters who commit the same atrocities are, in fact, committing torture. The main difference then between a simple act of barbarism and full-blown torture is the influence of a higher, sanctioning authority. Inherent, but seldom stated, in this definition is the implication that when torture is carried out at the behest of governmental authority it is somehow justified. By bringing a legal sanction into the equation those involved in ordering or administering torture provide themselves with the advantage of removing the taint of personal guilt: ‘I was only following orders’.

As we shall see time and time again, those governments that have sanctioned the use of torture tend to be either weak and fearful (as in the case of most early, primitive societies and modern, third world dictatorships), or paranoid. In the later case there is almost always the belief, either sincerely held or merely a cynical ploy to keep the masses in line, that there is some massive conspiracy at work which is bent on the destruction of the ‘system’ and that it must be stopped before society is overthrown. Such claims of imminent destruction are always a good way to keep the population in a constant state of fear and thereby make them easier to control. It also provides a convenient means to make the leader popular; first he institutes a climate of fear by describing this vague, often nameless threat, and then sets out to destroy that threat by arresting, torturing and executing as many of the ‘conspirators’ as possible. Naturally the threat can never truly be eliminated; either because it never existed in the first place or because if the ‘enemy’ ceased to exist the leader might lose his grip on power.

In its earliest form, however, torture – in some greater or lesser form, as befits the crime – was usually practiced as a means of punishing actual wrongdoers. In a primitive world, where all life was short, brutish and cruel, we could hardly expect legal or penal punishment to be any different. When a criminal, or transgressor against the prevailing moral code, was publicly whipped, crucified, or otherwise horribly killed or maimed, it provided a graphic example that the law was being upheld, society was being kept safe and that good, law abiding people could sleep safe in their beds. Such graphic examples of the law taking its due course always pleased the mob, giving them a nice comforting sense as to the ‘rightness’ of things. It also provided a form of cheap entertainment and, unless the leader was unusually stupid, offered a convenient way of doing away with political enemies in a way that sent out a clear message to anyone else who might decide to voice opposition to the powers that be.

Over the millennia, thousands of civilisations have risen and fallen, but the use of torture and the reasoning behind it, remain pretty much constant. The earliest use of torture, that of punishment, tended to be psychologically unsophisticated. The party in question, or the conquered group, was adjudged guilty and then taken out and punished. But as time went on, and as the motive behind torture evolved from simple punishment to the need to extract information, the approach to the process of torture evolved. Victims were first taken to the torture chamber and shown the tools of their forthcoming anguish. To get the victim’s attention, the entire process was described in lurid detail. Then they were sent back to their cell and given some time to think things over. Unless the poor wretch had no more imagination than a cow, the mere contemplation of what was about to happen to them was often enough to make them spill everything they knew and a whole lot they didn’t know. Sometimes, however, the victim was unusually strong-willed or it had already been decided that they were going to be tortured no matter what they said.

In 1307 King Phillip IV of France (with the whole-hearted support of the Pope) ordered the mass arrest of the Knights Templar on charges of heresy. Did he really believe them to be heretics? Probably not. Did he owe them huge sums of money that he had no intention of repaying? Absolutely, but it would not have looked good if he had been honest about his motives. Instead, Phillip had thousands of Templars rounded up, thrown into prison, put to the rack, roped, starved and beaten to within an inch of their lives. Eventually they confessed to the most absurd charges imaginable. Once in possession of their confessions, Phillip was free to convict, sentence and burn them at the stake. Then he confiscated their land and property. The fact that nearly all of the Templars later refuted their forced confessions made no difference. This single example of confessions forced through pain is only one of hundreds we will examine in this book but it serves as a workable, introductory illustration to both the advantages and drawbacks of torture. Torture can always be used to extract a confession or other information – almost anyone will confess to nearly anything if they think it is going to make the pain stop. Conversely, torture cannot be used to establish innocence – possibly because it would be a sorry sort of torture master who mutilated his victims while repeatedly asking ‘Have you been a good boy?’

The point we are making is that torture has only one conceivable end – to extract the information, or punishment, demanded by the system. In the case of obtaining information, the torture will continue until the victim has provided whatever information they are instructed to provide or dies. It does not take a genius to realise that this is an ultimately flawed process. Indeed, if what the inquisitors are really looking for is the truth, then torture is demonstrably counter-productive. The sad truth of this fact has been realised and admitted to by law-givers, philosophers and clerics since time immemorial and still, by and large, they approved of, and used, torture to extract confessions as well as inflict punishment. Why? Because the true object of torture is not to discover the truth but to secure a conviction; and therein lies its greatest limitation. A person under torture will, sooner or later, confess but this is no assurance that a) they actually committed the crime and b) if they did not, and an actual crime has been committed, then the real culprit is still at large. Occasionally, someone being subjected to torture has been able to overcome their terror and pain long enough to throw this fact back in the face of their persecutor.

During the height of the Spanish Inquisition in the sixteenth century, a Portuguese woman named Maria de Coceicao was arrested on charges of heresy and sent to the torture chamber where she was racked. To avoid having her arms and legs ripped from their sockets, Senora Coceicao immediately confessed but as soon as she was released from the rack she refuted her confession. A second turn on the rack brought an identical response. It was a familiar pattern: Confess anything to make the pain stop and then recant when released. In her case, Coceicao was both clever enough, and brave enough, to tell her tormentors: ‘As soon as I am released from the rack I shall deny whatever was extorted from me by pain.’ Maria de Coceicao was far more lucky than tens of thousands of other victims of the Spanish Inquisition. She was publicly flogged and sentenced to ten years in exile but the courage of her convictions had saved her from being burned at the stake. So, had she brought some revelation to the local inquisitor? Probably not. We can readily assume he already knew that torture did not discover the truth. So why did he and hundreds of others employ it over thousands of years of history? Because it was part of a workable system that kept the established powers securely in their place and the peasants safely in theirs.

Curiously, since the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, England has considered the use of torture for the purpose of extracting information or a confession to be illegal. We say ‘curiously’ because throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, England was as guilty of torturing its subjects as any other country in Europe – they simply never admitted this small fact to themselves. In 1583, Sir Thomas Smith, then serving as Secretary of State under Queen Elizabeth I, wrote:

    Torment or question, which is used by the order of the civil law and custom of other countries, to put a malefactor to excessive pain, to make him confess of himself, or of his fellows or accomplices, is not used in England … [as] the nature of our country is free … and beatings, servitude, servile torment and punishment it will not abide.

Sir Thomas wrote this – undoubtedly in all honesty – despite the fact that at no time, nor in any place, in history has torture been more commonly in use than in sixteenth-century England. So how did it come to pass that a long string of English monarchs, and their governments, tortured their subjects while steadfastly denying that they did so? Simple. Torture was only allowed when the reigning monarch approved of it and since monarchs were technically above the law, their word superseded any and all written laws. An interesting example of how one man tried to overcome this technical ‘glitch’ in English law, and at the same time foil his torturer, took place during the reign of King Charles I (1625–49).

In April, 1628, John Felton stabbed the Duke of Buckingham to death, was arrested and, as the English politely put it, ‘put to the question’. There was no doubt of Felton’s guilt; he committed the act in full view of a large crowd which subdued him after the murder and held him until he could be formally arrested. The question facing the court was whether or not Felton had acted alone or as part of a larger conspiracy. As was usual in such cases, the court assumed that while Felton had acted alone in carrying out the deed, he must have had help in the planning. During his initial questioning by the Earl of Dorset, Felton was threatened with the rack unless he named his accomplices. Felton then told the Earl: ‘I do not believe, my Lord, that it is the King’s wish for he is a just and gracious prince and will not have his subjects to be tortured against the law.’ Then, with more courage than most people could have mustered in his tenuous situation, he added: ‘Yet this I must tell you, by the way, that if I be put upon the rack, I will accuse you, my Lord Dorset, and none but yourself as my accomplice.’ Obviously Dorset was faced with a terrifying dilemma; confessions under torture were accepted as absolute truth and he had no desire to join Felton in his meeting with the executioner. Still, he approached King Charles who immediately grasped the situation and ordered Felton to be ‘tortured to the furthest extent allowed by law’. Since His Majesty had not specifically approved of torture, the matter was referred to a panel of twelve jurists who ruled: ‘Felton ought not by the law to be tortured on the rack, for no such punishment is known or allowed by our law’. Felton had pointed out one of the great fallacies of life in Merry Old England and saved himself from a horrible torture but it did not save his life. On 28 November 1628 he was hanged for his crime.

Despite the fact that it was useless in discovering the truth, torture nearly always loosened people’s tongues. The side effect this process may have had on a person accused of committing a criminal act, or even a perfectly innocent bystander who might have information concerning some crime, was completely irrelevant. It is results that count. What the ancient and medieval torture masters may have been unaware of is how the psychology behind the process of torture actually works. As we have already seen, one of the first steps in convincing a prospective victim to talk is to show them the instruments with which they will be tormented. This, along with the actual process of torture, and the fact that the presiding authority – be it a civil judge or a clergyman of the Inquisition – always remains one step removed from the application of torture, have become recognised as integral parts of what has become known as the ‘Stockholm Syndrome’. Named for a hostage situation which took place in Stockholm, Sweden in 1973, when two bank robbers held four people hostage for a period of six days, the Stockholm Syndrome has identified the process by which an individual’s will is broken down to the point whereby the victims come to cooperate with their captors. This process involves two distinct steps, the first of which rearranges the normal mind-set of the prisoner as follows: