Iron maiden (torture device)
An iron maiden is any cabinet (usually in iron) built to torture or kill a person by piercing his body superficially with sharp objects (such as knives, spikes, or nails) but with excruciating pain, while the victim is forced to remain standing. The victim bleeds profusely and is weakened slowly and dies of a combination of shock and blood loss, if not asphyxiation. One of the best known examples of such a device once used in Nuremberg, Germany; the first person allegedly executed by it was a coin forger, on August 14, 1515.
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Exterior
The Iron Maiden of Nuremberg was anthropomorphic. It was most likely styled after the Madonna, with a carved likeness of her on the face. The Maiden was about 7 feet (2.1m) tall and 3 feet (0.9m) wide, had double doors, and was big enough to contain a full grown man. The condemned prisoner had to pass through seven rooms with seven doors before his scheduled execution. At the end of a long corridor he found himself looking into the face of an iron wardrobe that vaguely resembled a female form. On the outside, the Maiden appeared harmless and unthreatening, yet inside were hidden spikes of iron that were not designed to kill quickly, only to torture slowly. The point of this deadly object was to impale the victim and inflict extreme pain and punishment - and also, like most instruments of torture, to intimidate the prisoner before actual use, so that he confessed.
Features of the Iron Maiden
Spikes
Inside the tomb-sized container, the Iron Maiden was fitted with dozens of sharp spikes. They were designed so that when the doors were shut, the spikes skewered the victim, missing vital organs and permitting the victim to remain alive and upright. The spikes were also movable to accommodate each victim.
Confined space and immobility
Secondly, the condemned person was kept in an extremely confined space to maximize his level of suffering by claustrophobia. Mobility was nearly impossible, and if the victim ever were weakened by the ordeal, the piercing objects would remain in place and tear into the body even further, causing even more intense pain.
Doors
The third aspect of the torture device was that the iron doors of the Maiden could be opened and closed one at a time, without letting the victim get away. This was always helpful when checking on the injured party to be sure that he was sufficiently suffering or was willing to comply with the demands of his tormenter.
Operation
The doors of the Maiden were shut slowly, so that the very sharp points penetrated a man’s arms, and his legs in several places, along with his belly and chest, bladder, eyes, shoulders, and his buttocks, but not enough to kill him; and so he remained making great cry and lament for two days, after which he died. Although this has not been proven, historical experts have theorized that the spikes on the inside of the doors were probably moveable. They were thought to have been able to be repositioned and/or relocated depending on the individual requirements of the person’s crime. Also, the overall result would be more or less lethal and mutilating depending upon where the spikes were currently located.
It is possible that the Iron Maiden was also used as a torture device to render a victim willing to confess to crimes or to expose other participants in crimes of which the victim was accused. The Iron Maiden needed not even kill its confined victim to achieve its desired ends.
Fate of the Iron Maiden
The number of Iron Maidens ever built, let alone used in judicial proceedings or executions, is much in doubt. Replicas may have been made, even if never used for the macabre purpose. As torture became less accepted as either a means of extracting information and less-brutal methods of capital punishment became the norm during the Enlightenment, the Iron Maidens all went into disuse.
The supposed original existed in Nuremberg Castle and was a popular execution method during the 1600s; it was destroyed in the air raids of 1944 near Nuremberg, Germany.
Alleged use elsewhere
At least one Iron Maiden was in supposed use in Ba'athist Iraq during the dictatorial rule of Saddam Hussein, and members of the Iraqi Olympic team during Hussein's regime claim that it was used against persons who ran afoul of Saddam Hussein's elder son Uday Hussein. [1]