Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/378

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NOTES AND QUERIES. u*> s. v. MAY 12, IDOO.

enumerated by Markham in his * Epistles of Warre,' 1622, such as gallows, gibbets, and scaffolds, which the Provost Marshal was bound to provide on occasion. The usual mode of inflicting this old punishment was as follows : the culprit, having had his legs tied together, was hoisted by means of a rope fastened to his arms behind his back, and was then given a rapid descent which was stopped so suddenly that the jerk often dis- located the joints of his arms and shoulders. This was repeated once or twice. In Callot's ' Miseres,' 1633, there is a sketch of a culprit thus suspended from a high beam, at the foot of which the executioner holds with both hands the end of one of four spokes which act like a wheel and lever for hoisting or lowering the culprit, while the exe- cutioner's right foot is pressing against a lower spoke, his left foot on the ground. Just about the date of Callot's publication this punishment was discontinued in the French army by order of Louis XIII., but Sir James Turner, writing in 1671, speaks of it as one of our modern and ordinary military punish- ments (' Pallas Armata,' p. 348) ; and Handle Holme, in his 'Academy of Armory,' 1688, writes as if it were still in use in our army at that date. He adds that the jerk thus given to a culprit

"not only breaketh his arms to pieces, but also shaketh all his joynts out of joint ; which punish- ment is better to be hanged, than for a man to undergo." Book iii. chap. vii. p. 310.

The Turkish form of capital punishment known as iheganche from the Italian gancio. a hook consisted in pushing the condemned man from the top of a high wall or tower, to fall on iron hooks and remain transfixed till he died. "Take him away, ganch him, impale him," says the Mufti Abdalla in Dryden's ' Don Sebastian,' 1690 (p. 63). But in carrying out this punishment the strap- pado apparatus was sometimes used, and we read in Pitton de Tournefort's 'Voyage du Levant,' Paris, 1717 :-

" Le Ganche est une esp^ce d'estrapade. dressed ordinairement & la porte des villes : le bourreau eleve les condamnez par le moyen d'une poulie ; et lachant ensuite la corde, il les laisse tomber sur des crochets de fer, ou ces malheureux demeurent acrochez tantdt par la poitrine, tantot par les aisselles, ou par quelque autre partie de leur corps : on les laisse mourir en cetetat : quelques-uns vivent encore deux ou trois jours." Vol. i. p. 93.

An interesting sketch illustrates this passage. The British soldier had not much experience of the strappado, but he was for long familiar with a punishment called neck and heels, which probably had its origin in an instru- ment devised by Leonard Skeffington, Lieu-

tenant of the Tower of London in the sixteenth century. It was a broad iron hoop for forcibly compressing a culprit's body, and the victim was kept in this state for about an hour at a time (Sir William Skeffington, 'Diet. Nat. Biog.'). The instrument came to be known as " Skevington's Irons " or " Skevington's Daughter," and afterwards, corruptly, as the "Scavenger's Daughter"; and some remarks upon it are to be found in ' Torture previous to the Commonwealth,' by David Jardine, 1837, p. 14, along with an ex- tract from Matthias Tanner's Societas Jesu Europsea,' Prague, 1694, which gives a short description of the punishment. Perhaps this instrument was alluded to in the words of Prospero: "I'll manacle thy neck and feet together " ( l Tempest,' I. ii.). The ' Tempest ' was written about the year 1610, and Mark- ham, in 1622, mentions " manacles " among the instruments of punishment which the Provost Marshal had in charge. But ropes and straps came into use instead of iron bands, and Sir Ashley Cooper tells us that at Dor- chester in 1646 two soldiers convicted of desertion were sentenced to be tied neck and heels (Christie's ' Life of Shaftesbury,' 1871, vol. i. p. 81, and appendix ii. p. 34). The punishment was in frequent use in our garrison at Tangiers soon after 1660, the culprit being sometimes ordered to undergo it one hour daily for three days ; and Handle Holme, writing in 1688, says it " is a punishment of decrepiting and benummine; the body, by drawing it all together, as it were into a round ball, by ropes or match-ropes ; that is the heel to the breech, and the head between the knees, and the arms tyed backwards ; and thus to lye tumbling for a certain time, according to the hainousness of the soldier's offence."

The St. Helena records of the year 1703 mention the case of a soldier who was tied neck and heels at the head of his company for an hour, and the records of the Plymouth division of marines show that in 1755 men were tied neck and heels on the Hoe, half an hour at a time, for absence from military exercise. An " old officer," writing in 1761, says that the punishment was often awarded without a court-martial, and he gives the following description of the mode of infliction as he himself had often seen it :

" The criminal sits down on the ground, when a firelock is poit under his hams, and another over his neck, which are forcibly brought almost together by means of a couple of cartouch-box straps. In this situation, with his chin between his knees, has many a man been kept till the blood gushed out of his nose, mouth, and ears, and ruptures have also too often been the fatal consequences."' Cautions and Advices.'

The practice of inflicting punishments in