Giles Corey, an elderly farmer with a bad reputation was crushed to death
The Most Famous Pressing Happened During The Salem Witch Trials Europeans were creative when it came to torture. They developed some of the most excruciating and slowest methods of torture in history, including the horrific blood eagle torture method. But one of the worst forms of torture was not even considered torture by the court. It was an official sentence: pressing to death. The men and women who were sent to death by crushing in Britain had not been found guilty of any crime. In fact, they refused to plead innocent or guilty, and pressing was supposed to coerce them to enter a plea so they could go to trial. The victims could end their torment at any time if they simply cried out "not guilty." The most famous case of pressing to death comes from the Salem witch trials. During the panic over witches that swept the village of Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, nearly 200 people were accused of witchcraft. A special court was created to hear the cases, and 18 people were ...