An Ancient Instrument of Torture.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 107, 20 June 1885, Page 5

An Ancient Instrument of Torture.

The following description of the " Virgin's Kiss," an ancient modo of punishment, is taken from the Newcastle, Eng., M Chronicle." The "Baiser de la Vierge" was a mode of execution practised in olden days at Baden-Baden, during a time that a Vehmgericht held its ghastly court in the vaults beneath the (so-called) Nene Schloss. I extract the following account from "Murray's Hand-Book of Northern Germany." After describing the dungeon?, the writer says: "In one chamber, loftier than the rest, called tho raok chamber (Folter Kamraer) the instruments of torture stood ; a row of iron rings, forming part of the apparatus, still remains in the wall. In a passage adjoining there is a well or pit in the floor, now boarded over, originally covered with a trapdoor. The prisoner, upon whom doom had been passed, was led into this passage, and desired to kiss an image of the Virgin, placed at the opposite end ; but no sooner did his feet rest on tho trap-door than it gave beneath his weight and precipitated to a great depth below, upon a machine composed of wheels, armed with lancets, by which he was torn to pieces. This dreadful punishment was called the 'Baiser de la Vierge,' and tho fatal pit with its trap-door and oubliette — because those who were precipitated down it were oublies — never heard of any more. The secret of this terrible dungeon remained unknown until, as the story goes, an attempt to rescue a little dog which had fallen through the planking above the pit led to the discovery, at a depth of many yards, of fragments of ponderous whoels set round with rusty knives, with a portion of bones, rags, and torn garments adhering to them."