by Catherine Lear

Created on: May 17, 2010   Last Updated: May 18, 2010

Medieval England was a bloodthirsty place to be living in, but not as bad as some of the other countries in Europe, England had at least some kind of law that the ordinary person living in England could live by.

We often think of torture as a way to get information out of someone; however, we tend to forget that the torturing of some one in England was quite far a most legitimate business. Moreover, it was not just a form of getting valuable information from someone it was also a way to punish someone for a crime.

More often than not though the crime would be against the state or the King or Queen of England.

Many women living in towns and cities of England would have lived in fear of one punishment, that of the Scolds Bridal, this was a form of punishment inflicted on any woman accused of talking out of place or nagging the husband to much or libelling men. The scold’s bridal consisted of an iron mask that they put over the head of the woman with a plate that went into the mouth of the woman and settled onto the tongue of the woman, that plate was spiked so that if the woman began to talk the spikes would dig in to the tongue and inflict great pain.

The pillory was another form of Punishment and torture, although it was a kind of mild form of torture it actually could be quite lethal, the pillory was also known as the stocks and they would be situated in the middle of the town market or the city centre and the victim would be placed in them for all the town folk to throw anything from rotten fruit and vegetables to stones. The pillory consisted of one large piece of wood planted into the ground and one more piece of wood placed on top so that it would have looked like a cross. The wood on top would have been split in two, holes for the arms of the victim and a hole for the head of the victim would be hollowed out, and the victim placed into them. This meant that he or she would not have any control over where the rotten vegetables or stones hit. Moreover, in some cases people would even mutilate the person. If you were placed in to the stocks or pillory it would have been only for an hour or two.

 The ducking stool was one more way of punishing people, although in this case the victim would perish, it was used to find if the victim was innocent   or guilty of witchcraft, the person would be tied to a stool with a rope attached to the stool and thrown into a deep river, if the person floated he or she was innocent, if the person sank and

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