The Oubliette - History’s HORRIFIC Torture and Execution Method
One part of a castle which can normally be found inside of a fortifcation is a dungeon.
These were primarily used as places where high value targets and prisoners could be
held, and then after their incarceration they could be turned over. Prisoners were usually
tortured inside of dungeons too, for example in the Tower of London in the basement of
the white tower Torture was administered on people such as Guy Fawkes. Also in different
towers, prisoners would be chained up inside of dungeons. But there was one dungeon known
as an oubliette which can be considered one of the most brutal and horrific torture and
execution methods. This was a dungeon that once you were thrown into it, there was no
way you were getting out.
The word dungeon comes from the French Donjob, meaning to keep but the oubliette came from
the French to forget. The point of this dungeon was for someone to be thrown inside it and
to never emerge from it, being left to die being forgotten by society and everyone. The
oubliette was a very feared part of a castle, and one of the cells inside of Warwick castle
in England was so feared that during the 100 Years War, French soldiers heard about the
tiny cell. Many oubliettes were created in a bottle shape, which meant that it was impossible
for someone to climb out and escape, and there was normally no intention to get a prisoner
out of the oubliette.
They were incredible claustrophobic, and in some of these prisoners would not have enough
room to move or stand up. A prisoner would be thrown into it through a small hatch in
the roof of a floor, and often they would fall a significant distance and would break
bones on their landing. The claustrophobia meant they were forced in the same position for
24 hours, 7 days a week which would make a prisoner go mad with the psychological torture.
They were usually horizontal, long and narrow and could have jagged stones and spikes on
the floor which meant that a person would be stuck in immense pain because of the conditions.
Prisoners would lose their sanity in the claustrophobic conditions, and things would get worse. Often
the guards of a castle would throw all manner of things down the oubliette such as dead
animals or human excrement and waste. They did this to make sure that a prisoner would
succumb to their death a lot sooner, hopefully contracting an infection or disease from the
disgusting things thrown down the oubliette.
Sometimes also sewers and toilets would be linked to the dungeon, meaning the prisoner
had to content with a constant supply of human waste filling up their cell. Rats would be
found inside there too, and there were accounts of vermin such as rats feasting on the dead
bodies of the prisoners once they had died inside of the cell. Often people would be
thrown down with the decomposing remains of a former prisoner to content with too, with
skeletons found inside of other cells in history. The prisoner would not be given any food either,
and would be starved being given no water too meaning they would simply succumb to starvation.
It was a very slow and agonising death being left to succumb to your fate and impending
demise. One can also be found in Leap Castle (pronounced Lep) in Ireland, and when the
castle was built it was the scene of many different attacks between different Irish
feeding clans. Often captured members of the rival clan would be thrown into the oubliette
in the Medieval times, and at the bottom of this oubliette were a number of wooden spikes
which pierced up from the floor 8 feet below the trapdoor which would cause a prisoner
to be impaled on a spike. A number of skeletons were found inside of the oubliette here in
the 1920s and there were so many remains that it took 3 carts to transport them out of the
castle for reburial.
The oubliette was a sinister method of torture devised to slowly kill a prisoner. Imagine
being thrown into a room in complete darkness with no way out at all, the only way out being
death itself. All the horrors that were found inside of the oubliette would be enough for
someone to want to choose the easy way out, but they also had to wrestle with their own
mind knowing that they would never get out. The psychological and physical torture of
the oubliette made it one of the worst torture and execution methods in history.
Thanks for watching
To support please subscribe.