TORTURE IN ENGLAND

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 May 1934, Page 3

TORTURE IN ENGLAND

“TYBURN PEW-OPENERS.” The prominent part which human torture has played in English history is made clear in a recently published book, “The History of Torture in England,” by Dr. L. A. Parry. Dr. Parry emphasizes that torture was never permitted by the Common Law of England, but from Norman times onwards, and particularly in the times of the Tudors and the Stuarts, it was very frequently used on prisoners. The rulers of the land claimed that by Royal prerogative they had the power to order torture at their discretion, and that this power overrode the Common Law'. The comparatively straightforward methods of torture of earlier times were subsequently subjected to innumerable refinements, much moie horrible and often unmentionable. Dr. Parry catalogues them with gruesome effect, and gives instances of the employment of the rack, the boots, the iness, and the thumbscrew. The author also treats of the many allied punishments, such as “peine forte et dure,” burning, boiling, drowning branding, mutilation, and the “Halifax Gibbet,” the forerunner of the guillotine, to mention only a tew. The book also deals with every kind cf punishment for crime in English history. For 600 years, from Henry 11. to George HI., there was a procession of unhappy wretches to the Tyburn Tree, just by the site of Marble Arch. A story which Dr. Parry tells about Mammy Douglas, one of the most notorious of the “Tyburn pewopeners/* is not witliout Immom. These “pew-openers” erected grandstands and sold the seats on the “festive’’ occasion of an execution. “In 1578 Dr. Henesy, adjudged guilty of treason, was bumped on a hurdle in the usual way to Tyburn, there to be swung off into eternity. The hanging of a doctor was not quite an everyday affair, and there was a rush for seats. Mammy Douglas observed that the demand was greater than tho supply, and promptly raised the tickets from 2/- to 2/6. There was much grumbling about this sordid piece of profiteering, but that grumbling was nothing compared with the uproar when the doctor was, at the last moment, ‘most provokingly reprieved’! In the ensuing riot the ‘pews’ were reduced to matchwood, and abortive efforts were made to hang .Mammy Douglas in the place of the reprieved doctor; but their praiseworthy efforts appear to have failed.”