Medieval Torture- The Rack

The rack is a torture device consisting of a rectangular, usually wooden frame, slightly raised from the ground, with a roller at one, or both, ends, having at one end a fixed bar to which the legs were fastened, and at the other a movable bar to which the hands were tied. The victim's feet are fastened to one roller, and the wrists are chained to the other.

As the interrogation progresses, a handle and ratchet attached to the top roller are used to very gradually stepwise increase the tension on the chains, inducing excruciating pain. By means of pulleys and levers this roller could be rotated on its own axis, thus straining the ropes until the sufferer's joints were dislocated and eventually separated.

Additionally, once muscle fibers have been stretched past a certain point they lose their ability to contract, thus victims who were released had ineffective muscles as well as problems arising from dislocation.

Because of its mechanically precise, graded operation, it was particularly suited for hard interrogation, as to extract a confession.

One gruesome aspect of being stretched too far on the rack is the loud popping noises made by snapping cartilage, ligaments or bones. Eventually, if the application of the rack is continued, the victim's limbs are completely separated from the body. One powerful method for putting pressure upon a prisoner was to merely force him to view someone else being subjected to the rack.
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In this scene court musician Mark Smeaton is racked in order to force him into conceding that he had an affair with the Queen (Anne Boleyn)

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Medieval Torture
• Tudors
• history
• Middle Ages

[ZyZy1234Windowslive]

what season and what ep is this?

[LadyAmaltheaUnicorn]

@ZyZy1234Windowslive

I think it was the second...

[kristen2221]

what crimes do you have to commit to get the rack?

[LadyAmaltheaUnicorn]

@kristen2221

It was mainly used as a tool to force confessions so I'd imagine it was used for all sorts of reasons concerning that.

Although I imagine many people died while being tortured on it, such as having a heart attack

[METALLICARULES11]

what happened to his eye?

[LadyAmaltheaUnicorn]

@METALLICARULES11

Watched my video "Medieval Torture- Knotted Rope" it explains his eye

[aquahottie503]

I find most of these comments maddeningly childish. There is no such thing as good and evil; that is a line drawn by fools to feel safe. Real people, all people, have good and bad inside them. It is pure chance which choices they make in life. I'd like to remind you that if you treat a person like an animal, you become one yourself.

[xaviagrade]

@patel136 You are so fucked up.

[TheRockabillycowboy]

Bit of a noisey bugger at the end.

[Peopleisgta]

@san39730 There is no such thing as good or evil, it is what we decide to make of things that makes it so. We could call a murderer evil but it is only what we think about it. Good and evil are only things that exist in our minds, we relate them with actions, words and items but only when we think about them. Do you look upon a wolf hunting another animal and call it evil? No, yet we look upon a man killing anything and call him evil. They do not naturally exist in this world. Only in our minds.

[catburner]

i imagined being smothered by a huge rack :(

[dmb1892]

@kristen2221 you just had to say the wrong word i suppose

[antidisastablish333]

usually you had to commit blasphemy, heressy, murder, but sometimes they could just use the rack on you for not telling them what they wanted to hear.

[ZyZy1234Windowslive]

omg I have remaind shocked of you fuck you...

The rope i think is the most shocking of all.

Is that real, or fake??

[NintendoDrunkie]

@iheartslashers Well, he did get is shoulders forcefully dislocated. And then there is the assumption that muscles aren't being stretched, just torn. I don't want to meet the person who sits there and laughs yelling out "Take the left one, I don't use that arm a lot anyway".

[METALLICARULES11]

@guitardrumskate what the fuck? if your gonna leave a comment about my username leave it on my channel not some random video about a guy getting tortured /:(