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Foreign News
June 17, 1829
Event 2 of 2
The Massachusetts Spy, And Worcester County Advertiser
Worcester, Worcester County, Massachusetts
What is this article about?
British officer Mr. Young, imprisoned in Portugal under Don Miguel, built a detailed model of the Coimbra Inquisition's prison, showcasing torture methods like water, fire, and violent treatments, displayed in London.
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Full Text
This is Event 2 of 2. The full text below covers all events in this component.
MODEL OF THE INQUISITION.
The English papers give an account of a curious model of the prison and officers of the Inquisition, formerly situated at Coimbra, in Portugal. It was constructed by Mr. Young, a British Officer, lately confined for several months as a state prisoner of Don Miguel. The following is a description of it from a London paper.
When we visited the model, Mr. Young was in attendance, and pointed out the various departments and uses of the building. The model is on the scale of half an inch to a foot, and upon being taken to pieces exhibits the inmost recesses of the place, from the external roof down to the subterranean dungeons. The instruments of torture, and the mode of using them, are also displayed by very ingenious devices. Five varieties of treatment, as varieties in torture were mildly termed by the Holy Office, are exhibited: The water treatment, whereby the patient whose refractory disposition would not allow him to confess all he knew to the Grand Inquisition, was bound down with cords and obliged to swallow several gallons of water, administered through a tunnel, till on the point of suffocation, he was humanely released by being placed heels uppermost, so that the superfluous liquid might run out through his mouth and nose—the fire treatment, whereby an untoward temper was warned of the deference due the Inquisition by being fixed on an iron cradle, with the soles of his feet exposed to a brisk fire, without the power of withdrawing them a single inch from its scorching influence, a treatment which may be regarded as somewhat an approach to the Mahomedan's hell, pictured as a place where men are shod with boots of red hot iron, baking their brains boil like a cauldron. There are three species of the violent treatment by which men were repeatedly hauled up by ropes to the ceiling of a high room, and suddenly let drop, so as frequently to dislocate and break their limbs. By another device a man was tied down to a horse manger, with his hands fastened behind him, so as to be obliged to eat his food like a pig or an ox. This, however, as Mr. Young explained it, was not deemed a punishment, but only a degradation. The holes through which the monks were enabled to see what every prisoner was about, the knowledge of which was often used by the Grand Inquisitors to impress their victims with the belief of their possessing supernatural powers—the secret places where the bones of those who were murdered, or reduced to death by the lingering pangs of confinement, were deposited, until they were burnt; and many other "secrets of the prison house" equally interesting and instructive, will be found fully and intelligibly displayed in Mr. Young's model.
The English papers give an account of a curious model of the prison and officers of the Inquisition, formerly situated at Coimbra, in Portugal. It was constructed by Mr. Young, a British Officer, lately confined for several months as a state prisoner of Don Miguel. The following is a description of it from a London paper.
When we visited the model, Mr. Young was in attendance, and pointed out the various departments and uses of the building. The model is on the scale of half an inch to a foot, and upon being taken to pieces exhibits the inmost recesses of the place, from the external roof down to the subterranean dungeons. The instruments of torture, and the mode of using them, are also displayed by very ingenious devices. Five varieties of treatment, as varieties in torture were mildly termed by the Holy Office, are exhibited: The water treatment, whereby the patient whose refractory disposition would not allow him to confess all he knew to the Grand Inquisition, was bound down with cords and obliged to swallow several gallons of water, administered through a tunnel, till on the point of suffocation, he was humanely released by being placed heels uppermost, so that the superfluous liquid might run out through his mouth and nose—the fire treatment, whereby an untoward temper was warned of the deference due the Inquisition by being fixed on an iron cradle, with the soles of his feet exposed to a brisk fire, without the power of withdrawing them a single inch from its scorching influence, a treatment which may be regarded as somewhat an approach to the Mahomedan's hell, pictured as a place where men are shod with boots of red hot iron, baking their brains boil like a cauldron. There are three species of the violent treatment by which men were repeatedly hauled up by ropes to the ceiling of a high room, and suddenly let drop, so as frequently to dislocate and break their limbs. By another device a man was tied down to a horse manger, with his hands fastened behind him, so as to be obliged to eat his food like a pig or an ox. This, however, as Mr. Young explained it, was not deemed a punishment, but only a degradation. The holes through which the monks were enabled to see what every prisoner was about, the knowledge of which was often used by the Grand Inquisitors to impress their victims with the belief of their possessing supernatural powers—the secret places where the bones of those who were murdered, or reduced to death by the lingering pangs of confinement, were deposited, until they were burnt; and many other "secrets of the prison house" equally interesting and instructive, will be found fully and intelligibly displayed in Mr. Young's model.