Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Picton was a decorated soldier of the British army, once
called by the Duke of Wellington “a rough foul-mouthed devil as ever lived.”
He was also a cruel man, a tyrant of the highest order.
After being made governor of the island of Trinidad in 1797, his rulership came with
brutality.
He tortured and killed slaves, and he made a fortune from selling slaves.
His cruelty knew no end, but it’s what he did in 1801 that made him infamous.
That was the torture of a 14-year old girl, Miss Luisa Calderón.
She was subjected to the picquet, one of the most devilish tortures ever devised.
Let’s stick with the Picton story for now and what happened to that poor girl, Luisa.
She had a rough start in life, sold by her mother for 2,750 joes to an old man named
Pedro Ruiz.
She was just 12 at the time, but Ruiz promised he’d marry the girl when she reached the
age of 16.
Her mother owned a coffee shop in Puerto de Espana, although historians point out that
many of these places doubled as brothels.
Ruiz was a repeat customer at the mother’s place, which is how he first met Luisa.
Women’s rights were unheard of back then.
Just to give you an example, one time an English soldier fell madly in love with a young slave
girl, and the two tried to elope.
They were both caught, and on the orders of Picton, she was summarily hanged.
The soldier was taken to Marine Square and whipped until the flesh fell from his bones.
Luisa was pretty much a slave herself, although a sex slave.
When Ruiz wasn’t home, she had to stay in the house waiting for him.
During one of her lonesome days, another man, Carlos Gonzalez, made advances on her.
What happened next has been debated, but it seems Ruiz arrived home one day to find he’d
been robbed of most of his gold.
He blamed his young concubine for the crime, who he said was complicit.
Still, he might have concocted that story because he’d found out about Luisa’s infidelity.
Other accounts say Gonzales stole the gold, and Luisa knew nothing about it.
Ruiz was known to Picton, so after he claimed a robbery had taken place, he visited him.
Luisa was subsequently taken to the royal jail, where shackles were placed around her
ankle with the torture chamber awaiting her.
The magistrate said, “Inflict the Torture upon Louisa Calderon.”
We found an official document from back then, which we think adequately illustrates the
brutality of the times.
Here is a snippet: “The girl was informed in the jail that
if she did not confess she would be subjected to the torture; that under the process she
might probably lose her limbs or her life, but the calamity would be on her own head,
for if she would confess she would not be required to endure it.
While her mind was in the state of agitation this notice produced, her fears were aggravated
by the introduction of two or three negresses into her prison, who were to suffer under
the same experiment as a means of extorting confession of witchcraft.”
Luisa pleaded her innocence on many occasions, but her words fell on deaf ears.
Picton signed off on the torture and she was later taken to the torture room.
The jailer, the magistrate, a man named Francisco de Castro, and the executioner were in the
room.
They tied her left wrist with a rope and attached it to a pulley system connected to the ceiling.
As she was pulled up, her foot was positioned on a piece of wood in a peg shape.
Her other arm and leg were both tied, and she was left there balancing on the peg.
She was only pulled up enough so she remained steady on the peg, so her full bodyweight
was driven against it.
This caused excruciating pain.
At first, she was left in that position for about 50 minutes, and would not confess to
the crime.
She was taken down only after almost passing out, but she spent another 22 minutes on the
peg when she came around.
Again, she didn’t confess to the crime.
Nonetheless, she had her leg put in irons when she was finally taken down.
She stayed fastened to a wall in a cell for the next eight months.
Not once did she falter from her position of innocence.
Word got out about the torture, and petitions were sent from Trinidad to the King of England.
It turned out that what Picton had signed off on was not part of English law.
He was ordered to return to England to stand trial.
A newspaper ran the headline, “The Trial of Governor T Picton for inflicting the torture
on Louisa Calderon, a free mulatto, and one of his Britannic Majesty’s Subjects, in
the Island of Trinidad.”
Picton was eventually acquitted after the defense argued that the torture was acceptable
under Spanish Law, which had previously been the law of the island.
This was a retrial, however, after he’d been found guilty at first.
It was a lengthy trial, but he could afford the court costs.
His slave-owning buddies and military friends helped him foot the bill.
He died a few years later at the now-famous Battle of Waterloo, when the English kicked
Napoleon Bonaparte’s hind.
In battle, Picton charged forward, shouting “Hurrah, hurrah” and took a musket ball
to the side of his head.
As for the English newspapers, as always, two stories emerged from various publications.
Picton was described as either a maniacal brute of a man who’d ruled with an iron
fist, or he was an upstanding citizen who’d had his unblemished reputation tarnished by
some “mulatto” girl who’d stolen his gold.
One newspaper wrote this: “No pains were spared to sully his character,
to ruin his fortunes, and to render him an object of public indignation.
A little strumpet, by name Louisa Calderon, who cohabited with a petty tradesman in the
capital of Trinidad, let another paramour into his house during his absence, who robbed
him, with her knowledge and privity, of all he was worth in the world.”
We don’t know what happened to Luisa.
She was in England for the trial, and it seems after she just disappeared into those dark
streets of London.
You might now be wondering why so many people called Picton out as a brute in such brutish
times, after all, back then, the English metered out obscene punishments on those accused of
various crimes.
In fact, not long before Picton took up his post in Trinidad, the English subjected a
man to the punishment of hanging, drawing, and quartering.
He was David Tyrie, accused of being a spy for the French.
This is how his execution went down: “His head was severed from his body, his
heart taken out and burnt, his privates cut off, and his body quartered.”
The 20,000 people in the crowd then fought over pieces of his body.
They wanted bits to use as trophies or souvenirs.
A few years later, a woman named Catherine Murphy was burned at the stake after being
found guilty of counterfeiting.
The public wasn’t impressed, though.
Times were changing, and many people said they were fed up with seeing women burned.
When Jeremiah Brandreth went to the chopping block, the executioner hacked at his neck
clumsily, after which the crowd turned away in disgust.
Some booed.
Soldiers got ready for a riot.
With that in mind, what Picton did was seen as a remnant of an old order, an order now
looked on by many progressive folks as savage.
England was about to clean up its act, more so because of public sentiment than the establishment
suddenly growing warm hearts.
Picton reminded people of another era.
The crime also upset many folks because the victim had been a young girl, very likely
an innocent girl whose lack of money and social standing gave her no chance to fight the men
that had oppressed her.
The original form of picketing which served as inspiration for Picton was used against
soldiers when they had defied orders.
This was quite common in the 16th and 17th centuries, so when Picton tried it at the
beginning of the 19th century it was seen as anachronistic savagery.
The soldier would generally be tied to the nearest tree, his wrist hanging from a branch.
His foot would be placed on a peg much like the peg used against Luisa.
As it did with her, it would cause considerable pain, but the peg wasn’t sharp enough to
draw blood and possibly result in an infection.
It just hurt a lot.
The soldier had nowhere to move.
He could pull himself up a little, but his wrist couldn’t hold him up for long, so
the pressure on his foot was intense.
It was unbearable after a while, which is why the military threatened soldiers with
it.
There is another use of the word picket when we’re talking about the military.
It means a group of soldiers posted in a forward line.
They’re the ones who will give the warning if the enemy looks like it’s about to attack.
This comes from the French word, piquet.
We use it these days when workers go on strike.
They join the picket line.
It seems after Picton did his picket redux, the punishment just vanished.
It seems strange that the military would consider it barbaric given that during the first world
war, a century later, 20,000 British soldiers were handed a death sentence for crimes.
In the end, most got hard labor or long prison sentences, but a firing squad gunned down
306 young men.
One guy was just 17 years old.
Another young man was accused of being a “coward”.
This was his excuse, “I haven't been the same since I scraped my best friend's brains
from my face.”
Most of those executions were for desertion, and quite a few were for murder, but many
were for lesser crimes.
18 men were executed for “cowardice”.
7 had their bodies filled with bullets for “quitting a post without authority.”
Six were executed for striking a superior officer and five were killed for just being
disobedient.
2 guys went to the firing line for falling asleep on duty.
Failing to perform on duty these days might get you a prison sentence of two years.
Hitting a superior officer could land you up to 10 years in prison, but we’re not
sure a posh moron these days would be shouting orders knowing they would lead to mass slaughter.
Whatever the case, it’s strange that the piquet was outed as being barbaric in the
past when worse was to come.
Now you need to watch, “Napoleon - The Deadly Emperor of Europe.”
Or, have a look at, “What Is Not Allowed In War?”