Crushing: Doors And Boulders

What would you be willing to endure to keep your family from losing everything you own, even if the price was being slowly crushed to death?

In this episode of Torture: A Dark History, Kevin Young and Dan Hourigan, along with their macabre brand of humor, travel back to medieval and early modern England to explore peine forte et dure, or “strong and hard punishment,” one of the most brutal methods ever used to force a prisoner to enter a plea. Refusing to plead could mean protecting your family's property from being seized by the Crown, but it could also mean being stripped naked, tied to the floor, and slowly crushed beneath increasingly heavy weights until you finally gave in—or died.

We look at how the practice developed, the horrific conditions prisoners were subjected to, and the people who chose to remain silent rather than submit to the courts. We follow the stories of St. Margaret Clitherow, who was pressed to death in 1586 after refusing to enter a plea, Giles Corey, who famously chose pressing over submitting to the Salem witch trials, and other prisoners who endured days of starvation, thirst, and crushing weight in the hope of protecting their lives, property, or families.

But pressing wasn't limited to famous martyrs and witch trials. We'll also look at Major Strangways, William Spiggot, Thomas Phillips, and John Weekes, whose cases show just how bizarre and brutal the process could become—including a prisoner who finally gave in after hundreds of pounds had been piled onto his body, and another who was publicly crushed to death in a marketplace.

And because this is Torture: A Dark History, we're going well beyond England. We'll trace the much older history of crushing executions, from the legendary death of Tarpeia in ancient Rome to the use of trained elephants to crush condemned prisoners in South and Southeast Asia. Some methods were designed to kill quickly. Others were designed to make the victim wait for death.

From peine forte et dure and judicial torture to St. Margaret Clitherow, Giles Corey, and the Salem witch trials, this is the horrifying history of what happened when refusing to speak could get you crushed beneath the weight of the law.

If you love dark history, torture history, medieval history, true crime, the Salem witch trials, historical executions, judicial torture, and the disturbing laws people once lived and died under, this is one episode where keeping your mouth shut could literally get you killed.

Please like, subscribe, and follow where ever you listen.

Buy Us A Coffee

YouTube

Instagram

Twitter

Tiktok

The Sassholes Insta!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crushing_(execution)

https://allthatsinteresting.com/pressed-to-death

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Crushing_by_elephant

https://www.britannica.com/topic/peine-forte-et-dure

http://legalhistorysources.com/Law508/PeineForte.htm

Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!):

https://uppbeat.io/t/all-good-folks/curiosity

License code: 7QU9IW0B2IJBFZJY

Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!):

https://uppbeat.io/t/christian-larssen/suburban-honeymoon

License code: 1OKNVEXYPW8QAYSH

Please give us a 5 star rating and review!!

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy