“strappado Extreme form of TORTURE which was widely employed during the interrogation of witches on the Continent of Europe.
“. . . The procedure was to tie the prisoner’s arms behind his or her back and then to hoist the suspect to the ceiling by means of a pulley and a rope attached to the hands. This method had the advantage of dislocating the prisoner’s shoulders without leaving obvious marks of physical abuse. Heavy weights suspended from the victim’s limbs increased the agony.
“The torture might be repeated many times if a prisoner refused to answer the interrogators’ questions in the desired fashion. Records exist of a twenty-year-old German woman, interrogated in Tettwang, near Constance, in 1608, being hoisted in strappado eleven times in a single day, with a fifty-pound weight suspended from her legs; she was tortured for a further ten weeks before fears that she would die led to a halt.” (Pickering, 463-464)
“Torture was justified on the grounds that witchcraft was a unique crime against God and not subject to the usual legal safeguards and considerations.” (Pickering, 473)
According to Cassell’s Dictionary of Witchcraft, “by the time the hysteria finally petered out tens of thousands of accused persons had been put to death on charges of witchcraft throughout Europe and colonial America. Historical estimates of the number of dead went as high as nine million, but . . . modern estimates have suggested a total of between twenty thousand and one hundred thousand victims (a figure of around fifty thousand is cautiously accepted by many authorities).” (Pickering, 20) The last witchcraft trials in Europe were held in the later part of the 18th century. (Pickering, 20)
David Pickering, Cassell’s Dictionary of Witchcraft (London: Cassell, 1996.
“. . . The procedure was to tie the prisoner’s arms behind his or her back and then to hoist the suspect to the ceiling by means of a pulley and a rope attached to the hands. This method had the advantage of dislocating the prisoner’s shoulders without leaving obvious marks of physical abuse. Heavy weights suspended from the victim’s limbs increased the agony.
“The torture might be repeated many times if a prisoner refused to answer the interrogators’ questions in the desired fashion. Records exist of a twenty-year-old German woman, interrogated in Tettwang, near Constance, in 1608, being hoisted in strappado eleven times in a single day, with a fifty-pound weight suspended from her legs; she was tortured for a further ten weeks before fears that she would die led to a halt.” (Pickering, 463-464)
“Torture was justified on the grounds that witchcraft was a unique crime against God and not subject to the usual legal safeguards and considerations.” (Pickering, 473)
According to Cassell’s Dictionary of Witchcraft, “by the time the hysteria finally petered out tens of thousands of accused persons had been put to death on charges of witchcraft throughout Europe and colonial America. Historical estimates of the number of dead went as high as nine million, but . . . modern estimates have suggested a total of between twenty thousand and one hundred thousand victims (a figure of around fifty thousand is cautiously accepted by many authorities).” (Pickering, 20) The last witchcraft trials in Europe were held in the later part of the 18th century. (Pickering, 20)
David Pickering, Cassell’s Dictionary of Witchcraft (London: Cassell, 1996.
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