Cat's Paw: Oooooooh, The Claw

What happens when the thing being used to interrogate you looks less like a torture device and more like a garden tool?

In this episode of Torture: A Dark History, Kevin Young and Dan Hourigan explore the horrifying history of the Cat’s Paw, also known as the Iron Claw, a deceptively simple device designed to tear into the human body.

We’ll travel from the Roman Empire and the persecution of Christians to medieval and early modern Europe, following the claw through centuries of interrogation, punishment, and religious persecution. Along the way, we’ll meet St. Vincent of Saragossa, François Villon, and others who found themselves on the wrong end of one of history’s nastier pieces of ironwork.

We’ll also look at the different names and variations associated with the device, how it was used alongside other familiar torture methods, and the increasingly formalized rules surrounding judicial torture in places like France and the Holy Roman Empire.

However, the Cat’s Paw has accumulated quite a reputation over the centuries, and not everything said about it can actually be proven. We’ll separate the documented history from the stories that have grown around the device, including one particularly famous name that turns out to have a surprisingly modern origin.

And because this is Torture: A Dark History, Kevin and Dan bring their own particularly uncomfortable sense of humor to an episode about a device that proves sometimes the simplest tools can be the most horrifying.

If you’re interested in the Cat’s Paw, Iron Claw, Ungula, French torture, Roman persecution, François Villon, St. Vincent of Saragossa, judicial torture, medieval history, torture devices, and the strange myths that develop around them, this episode is going to get under your skin.

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