History of Punishment & Torture

The history of punishment and torture makes for macabre and mesmerizing reading: retribution without mercy, medieval justice, hellish prisons, and ingenious methods of inflicting torment upon the body and mind. Trace a path from the days of harshest penalties to more modern methods of reforming wrongdoers. Images graphically capture the plight of prisoners forced to walk treadmills till they went insane; bodies nailed to crosses; suspects tied to ducking stools; and the courts of the Inquisition, which left no stone unturned in their efforts to exact a confession. Discussions of human sacrifice, ordeal by fire or water, the dark days of juvenile justice, the pillory, and capital punishment reveal the astonishing array of clever and cruel sentences devised by those determined to deliver the ultimate punishments.