We have summarized for you in our worst punishments series despicable things men have done to
each other in the name of justice, often a very disconcerting kind of justice.
Many of the punishments we have discussed were used at different times in history and
in different countries, with each purveyor of pain putting its own spin on the punishment.
The Chinese for instance flayed the flesh of an enemy’s back in ancient times, but
might have just flayed a person’s face as a stern telling off, while a lèse majesté
crime in 14th century Europe could have gotten you flayed from head to toe, then castrated,
and then beheaded for good measure.
Yes, these shows might be hard to stomach, but we think the barbarity of the past shouldn’t
be ignored.
And so we will start this series with a torture that is often said to be the worst kind of
torture that has ever existed in recorded history.
We say that, but it’s hardly easy to invoke the superlative when you have people getting
their skin peeled off after being boiled in a pot.
Maybe burning at the stake was better than modern white torture, at least that was over
with quickly.
So, we won’t say what is the worst, and certainly won’t attempt to tell you what
was the best, but we’ll start with rat torture only because it is so darn outlandish.
With this kind of official devilment we have to separate the myth from the truth, or at
least try and back up the truth with substantial facts.
What we can say with assuredness is that one kind of rat torture was perhaps an incidental
kind of punishment.
That’s because you can find in the Tower of London something called the “Dungeon
of the Rats.”
Writers in the Elizabethan period said what would happen is that prisoners would be kept
in the dungeon and when the river Thames rolled in the water would spill into the cell.
Prisoners were less than fond of this time as the water would bring rats with it, and
those rats would occasionally gnaw on the prisoner’s flesh.
We assume the guards knew this was happening.
Maybe this was better than being locked into a tiny cell called Little Ease, because prisoners
in this place had to stay for a long time crouched in a painful position.
It could have been worse, after a stint with the rats you might have gotten sent to the
rack.
We are told in the 17th century though those bloodthirsty English elites cleaned up their
act a little bit.
Ok, now it gets even worse.
We will talk about the ultimate rat torture, or perhaps the ultimate rat tortures.
The book, “The Rise of the Dutch Republic: A History Volume One,” by John Lothrop Motley
is considered a classic book.
In this book it is written that during the Dutch Revolt against the Spanish Hapsburgs
in the 16th and 17th centuries, the master torturer and leader Diederik Sonay was fond
of doing the worst kind of thing imaginable with a pack of vermin.
This man, it’s said, would take a bunch of starving rats and place them on the sliced
belly of a prisoner.
They would be kept on the stomach with an upside down bowl.
So far so good, it was probably slightly ticklish and maybe a rat took a chance bite now and
then.
But then the fun started, for Sonay at least, when hot coals were placed on top of the bowl.
This not only burned the victim, but it made life inside that bowl unbearable for the rats.
Hmm, where to go when there is no escape?
We are told what would ensue is the rats trying to burrow into the man’s stomach to escape
the heat.
We are not sure, though, how far the rats got or if this was a torture until death or
if it was only a way of extracting information from a prisoner.
You can be sure the prisoner didn’t hold much back if that was the case.
The website The Torture Museum, which is hardly a barrel of laughs, tells us this, “This
method was very effective in terms of interrogation, and the offender would feel a powerful combination
of disgust, fear and pain.
Often he would confess without waiting for the rodents to dig their holes.”
A similar kind of torture appeared in season two of Game of Thrones, but the pottery bowl
was replaced with a metal bucket.
We are also told in many parts of Medieval Europe you might have found something similar,
but the rats would be placed in a cage on a prisoner’s stomach and the opening in
the belly would be easy enough for the rats to start eating away at the insides.
The problem with this is we cannot find any sources citing historical examples of when
this happened.
But if you consider that Europeans back then had head crushers, breaking wheels, knee splitters
and the utterly horrific Judas Cradle, it doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination
to believe someone might have said at one point in the past something similar to, “Hey
Everard, How’s about we make a load of hungry rats eat his insides?”
You might have heard his co-worker reply, “Oh Jeffery, that is a great idea.
Do you know where we can find a small cage and a bag of rats?”
As you well know, if you want to find creative kinds of tortures just read about ancient
Rome.
Oh, the things they did with animals there.
Imagine being sentenced to death by being sat on by an elephant, and to make it worse
in front of a cheering crowd.
Or what about being sown into a donkey?
But we are also told that Emperor Nero was particularly fond of having animals burrow
into people.
Some sources tell us that an animal, such as a cat, a dog (a small one we presume) or
indeed a rat or rats, would be placed in a cauldron.
That cauldron was heated until the crazed animal would do anything to get out.
Unfortunately for some people, the only way out was a person’s stomach that was placed
next to an opening in the pot.
We are told by other sources that there was another Roman spin on rat torture, and this
was simply emptying lots of starved rats into a barrel where a man was waiting.
The ravenous rats would get to work, and the more blood and flesh that came off the easier
it was to eat him.
When the rats were full, more starving rats would be poured into the barrel.
We imagine this would go on until there was nothing left of the poor man.
The torture museum tells us that later in India there was a similar interrogation technique
in which a man would be forced to wear rat pants.
These were pants with lots of space in the groin area but not much down the legs.
The hungry rats would feast on the crown jewels until the suspect was willing to talk.
While such torture we would like to hope is a thing of the past, it’s said that rat
torture was actually a thing not that long ago.
During Brazil’s military dictatorship days from 1964 to 1985 it’s said scores of people,
or dissidents, were subjected to horrific torture.
While dictators often seem to have a knack at making folks disappear, we are told in
Brazil in those days they were also brutally tortured.
The strange thing is, The Guardian wrote in 2014 that many of these Brazilian military
men went to the UK to learn better torture techniques!
But what they learned there was that psychological torture works best, because it can make a
prisoner slowly spill more beans.
But this wasn’t anywhere near as gruesome as the torture we have so far talked about,
in that the torturer would use rats, or snakes, or even crocodiles, just to scare prisoners.
We guess just being covered in rats, or having a croc for a cellmate, is scary enough.
Maybe those Brits were onto something.
Do you think this is the worst kind of torture imaginable?
Tell us in the comments.
Also, be sure to check out our other video Most Painful Things A Human Can Experience.
Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time.