Using 800 Pounds To Press A Woman Made Her Ribs Burst Through Her Skin

Using 800 Pounds To Press A Woman Made Her Ribs Burst Through Her Skin

Dating back to the 13th century, England used pressing as a form of punishment, and it continued well into Britain's Enlightenment. Victims not only suffocated, but their bones were also crushed and sometimes even burst through their skin. And the most famous case occurred in the United States, when Giles Corey was pressed to death in the Salem witch trials. Shockingly, people who were pressed to death often had a very good reason for choosing their brutal executions. Margaret Clitherow, charged with harboring priests and practicing Catholicism, was taken to a public bridge on March 25, 1586, for refusing to enter a plea. First, she was stripped naked in front of everyone, which scholars Peter Lake and Michael Questier explained as an "obscene, virtually pornographic, shaming ritual." Her limbs were tied with ropes and stretched. A door was placed on her chest. And then the weights were slowly added. At any point during the extended torture, Margaret could have chosen to enter a plea of guilty or not guilty. She would have been put on trial and almost certainly found guilty and executed. But Margaret refused. The jailer began to pile more stones on the board, burying Margaret under 800 pounds of weights. Her spine snapped, and her ribs "burst forth of the skin." The grisly execution inspired a scene in the BBC series Gunpowder, in which an elderly woman was crushed to death for conspiring against the monarchy.

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