Throughout history there have been many brutal execution methods which were used to take
the life of a condemned person.
Some of these were aimed to strike fear into the hearts of people in the lands in which
they were used.
For example the Oubliette was a tiny prison cell in which a victim was simply left to
rot and was forgotten, and they could not sit down or stand up properly.
They were usually locked into one position and because of this it was very painful.
The people held in the oubliette would also rarely get fed and they would have to contend
with rats and other vermin who would slowly eat their flesh.
The oubliette was horror, but there was another execution method which was known as immurement
in which someone was walled in and was then also forgotten about.
But one of the most harrowing methods emerged from Mongolia, and it was rather straightforward
In its use, but it was completely horrific and it earned the title ‘The Box of Death.’
But what is the story of this?
Join us today as we look at the Mongolian Coffin, and as always to support our channel,
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Imprisoning someone inside of a tiny cage or cell is today considered inhumane but it
was used for centuries, and the Nazis would even use it during the Second World War introducing
standing cells to concentration camps such as Dachau and Auschwitz.
But in Mongolia there was a prison known as Urga which became infamous for its levels
of brutality, and the prisoners were given torture known as ‘The box of death.’
Behind a fenced wooden enclosure in the prison was a small group of houses.
Each of these was pitch black and nothing could be seen, and the houses were often freezings
but they did keep the inmates away from the blustery winds.
But these houses inside of them had a number of wooden boxes or coffins that measured 4
feet long by two feet wide and they were one and a half feet tall.
Around them were 15 feet high sharp timber palisades, and the boxes were so small that
an inmate could not fit in them normally, but prisoners were forced into them and were
locked inside these tight boxes and they could not sit up or lie properly, almost like the
oubliette.
For this reason they were said to be coffin prisons.
Visitors to Mongolia and travellers would see these, and one American explorer said
there was only one small hole in each box that hardly got any light in.
Men would lose their eyesight, and also their sanity inside the boxes.
The six inch holes in the boxes would feed the prisoner once a day, and their human excrement
would be cleaned out every 2 or 3 weeks, and often the men would suffer from disease and
dysentry as well as burns from their waste.
Some of the men who were considered escapees were chained around their necks to a pair
of manacles that were put around their hands making their ordeal even worse.
Imprisoned in this small box would be hell, and prisoners would hope things would come
to an end very soon.
For those inmates who committed a less serious offence the punishment of the prison cells
and boxes would last a few weeks.
But one serious prisoners would spend their whole prison stays inside of the boxes.
As they were kept in this way for so long, their limbs would shrink and get smaller and
they would waste away.
Lots of these men were sentenced to death, and many would die inside of the coffins before
their execution date came around and many coffins were left in the freezing cold to
bring about death sooner and many froze.
The majority of those who were locked inside the death coffins were Chinese, as qt the
time the Chinese had invaded Mongolia, and had occupied a number of regions.
One report would state, ‘..the prisons and dungeons of the Far Eastern country contain
a number of refined Chinese shut up for life in heavy iron-bound coffins, which do not
permit them to sit upright or lie down.
These prisoners see daylight for only a few minutes daily when the food is thrown into
their coffins through a small hole”.
One of the most infamous uses of the death coffin was noted when Albert Kahn and Stephane
Passet visited Mongolia.
They would take a photograph of a woman who was condemned to a slow and painful starvation
inside of the wooden crate.
She was left in a remote desert and was simply dumped, but the box became her tomb.
Around her were a number of bowls that were around her and to begin with they had water
in them, but they were not refilled and the person inside had to beg for food which only
made her suffering much worse.
The photographers had to leave the suffering woman to her death, as they would have been
guilty of getting involved in the law and order of a different country and could have
been punished for it.
But the woman was clearly suffering, and some claimed that the woman inside the box was
sentenced to death for adultery, but this has been disputed.
The Death coffins of Mongolia were horrific and brutal execution and torture methods that
were outlawed in 1920.
Still today Mongolian prisons are known for their harsh and brutal punishments as prisoners
are still often subjected to torture and they are forgotten about.
But the death coffin was an execution method similar to the oubliette and immurement but
it was completely evil and barbaric, and being locked in the tiny box for a significant amount
of time would be harrowing.
The people inside would want death to take them as quickly as possible for the ordeal
to be over.
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