The Stomach-Churning Punishments Primarily Used On Witches

A chilling scream filled the air as townsfolk gathered to watch the pyre roar with flames. Ordained by the church, marks of the devil identified, the trial had passed and here was the sentence – a witch tied to a stake and now her soul was being purified. Witch Hunts throughout history have riddled communities with hysteria, paranoia, false accusation, and the most brutal degrading of individual rights.

Be it through imprisonment, exile, physical punishment, or shocking execution, a woman identified as a witch faced insurmountable odds to survive. Welcome to History on Fleek, today we examine the most horrific punishments used against witches. The Witch Hunts A phenomenon that spanned cultures and continents throughout history, Witch hunts had their most notorious epoch across Europe in the 16th century and North America in the 17th.

Typically, the hunts were conducted by secular and religious authorities who would dictate accusations and trials with most evidence being based on superstitious belief, gossip, and hearsay. It would not take much to stir the appetite for a trial, just an individual claiming to have been cursed or victim of a spell could lead to a full-blown investigation and identification of suspects.

A backbone of witch hunts was the widely held belief that witches were not only real but could carry out harm through supernatural means. While public shaming has hardly died a death, witch hunts today are viewed as a cautionary tale. An important article of history showing the dangers of mass hysteria and how individual rights and freedoms are always in need of protection.

Imprisonment Imprisonment was a dark strand of the treatment of witches. The accused would be imprisoned while awaiting trial and were commonly subject to punishment and interrogation. This, in many instances, resulted in confessions from innocents for crimes they did not commit. Throughout all this the conditions in which witches were kept imprisoned were wholly inhumane with many sites becoming famous for it.

The Salem Jail of 1692 was such a place; lice-ridden, dark, damp, and stinking of urine and dung. Iron bars covered the windows of a place miserably hot in summer and deathly cold in winter. Perhaps most astoundingly, the accused in question would be charged for room in the jail – and charged for their own shackles! Amazingly, a witch prison from 16th century England still stands to this day – well, kinda, it’s now a cottage, and er… the owners have had trouble selling by all accounts.

The site, once known as “The Cage” kept 13 witches (nothing like an unlucky number) awaiting trial. St Oysth cottage as it’s known today would go on to be jail of sorts up to 1908. There is even a walled courtyard outside that leads to a passageway known as Coffin Alley… the route the dead were carried on their way to the cemetery.

Needless to say, the owner has described living there as a “paranormal nightmare”… evidently, the witches and many others have been letting their injustice be known to the living since. Why witch hunts? Exactly why witch hunts became a phenomenon is a vital question. Ultimately, these persecutory events and societal moments would leave a lasting impact on the affected communities.

The instilling of fear, paranoia, and suspicion would lead to many innocents being accused and persecuted, many communities would be devastated and not the same for generations. So with such a high cost, why? Many historians have come around to the view that witch trials were likely affected by greater social and political factors in the Early Modern world.

Historians look to Southwestern Germany’s uptick in witch hunts and persecution in the early 1620s. Local communities of the region were facing the disastrous aftermath of war and famine at the time, likely exacerbated by crop failures. Yet one region of Germany isn’t alone in this socio-political trend, many historians look to the Little Ice Age as a major contributing factor to the barbarous treatment.

Lasting from around 1300 to 1850, the Little Ice Age would affect the climate to the point of damaging food production – and witches made for the perfect scapegoats. Aligning temperature data with witch trial data does show that as temperatures dropped off bringing crop failure, war, and disease, witch trials generally increased.

Yet this theory doesn’t hold up entirely, the 1630s saw witch hunts decline at a time of huge civic suffering. Essentially, witches could be blamed for just about any circumstance that society faced yet couldn’t control. From religious tensions to social unrest to unexpected weather and livestock problems, any man-made or natural disaster was believed to be caused by witches.

Physical punishment For those accused of witchcraft, physical punishment wasn’t seen as a such but a way to garner the truth. Though as punishments became normalized to guarantee confessions, it would be applied far more wantonly than the law would allow. While the law would prohibit repeated punishment sessions, interrogators would claim they were simply continuing an initial session.

Victims would be given a set of leading questions with scribes present to record the answers. Ongoing, extrajudicial punishment was an assured way to glean confession, even if ironically, it particularly affected innocent parties. What did the confessors get for their admissions? The most brutal of mercy; being strangled before being burned at the stake.

It was far from uncommon for victims to die as a result of their punishment before even going on trial. The accused and convicted of witchcraft face severe physical punishments, depending on the period and location. Perhaps the most common form of punishment across countries and epochs was the strappado.

This dastardly device would use gravity and torque to leave the victim suspended in the air. The result of this inevitably was physical duress that could last for hours on end. Banishment A lesser form of punishment in comparison to the physical brutality of many forms, banishment, and exile have been seen throughout witch-hunting societies.

Across 17th and 18th century Sweden, many trials of both men and women, did not result in death or physical punishment but in banishment. In 16th century Scotland, the same can be seen, with sentences delivered banishing witches from within 10 miles of Edinburgh. Seemingly, exile as punishment was handed down as a lesser sentence than physical punishment or death.

However, many accused witches would have been left as abject social outcasts, forced to live a non-life in exile. Hardly a redemption from a death sentence, is it? Execution While the punishments for witches varied and were frequently extreme, the most severe was execution. In Europe, a famous method of execution was burning at the stake, known for its highly public and gruesome ritualization.

Burning at the stake was a functional choice of these Christian, supernatural-fearing early modern societies. Chillingly, the burning was supposed to purify the souls of these victims, consuming them with flames made sure, that evil had been dispatched and could not return. In North America, hanging was the most provincially used method of execution, yet this wasn’t the only one.

Witches across continents faced several different methods of execution for their status as witches. There are many estimates and debates about just how many lives were lost by the witch hunts. Some commentators to this day have claimed “millions were executed”, however, the more grounded guesses base the figure significantly lower.

The total of witch trials across Europe ending in execution is believed to have been around 12,000. From the papal bull of 1484, which essentially declared “war on witches” to 1782, educated estimates state around 50,000-60,000 women were legally executed for witchcraft. Hot spots for witch executions around Europe include England, Scotland, and Germany alone may have executed as many as 26,000 accused witches.

Public shaming In some cases, those accused of witchcraft were subjected to public humiliation. Methods of public shaming were part and parcel of the persecutory lens on witchcraft. This would cover any possible matter, from the victim’s physicality to their reputation. One more simplistic method of shaming witches was to force them to wear a badge indicating their status as a witch.

Witches having pacts with the devil were widely believed at the time, with marks of the devil being sought from head to toe on their bodies as a sign. As you may have guessed, just about any scar or blemish on a woman’s body could be interpreted as a mark of the devil. Remarkably, any mole, wart, or bump could be presumed a satanic teat from which demonic pets could sup… yeah, this was believed… As if having any skin mark or blemish meaning you were in line with Satan wasn’t enough, inquisitors had the role of purposefully looking for them.

Yet… it gets better, they were also believed to sometimes be invisible. An inquisitor would be a professional “witch-pricker” hoping to find an area that would draw no blood. And now you can see the level of shaming – witch if you do have a blemish, witch if you don’t. Another ludicrous strand of shaming and degrading of the accused was Osculum infame.

This absolutely fantastical fiction was the idea that witches had a secret ritual greeting upon meeting the Devil, namely… kissing his posterior. Yup, the Kiss of Shame as it was known was the belief, that not only were witches in cahoots with the devil… they were kissing his ass. Supposedly taking place at witches’ secret Sabbats, confessions of this were really drawn from victims in the 17th century.

Then again, if you’re being set on fire and having limbs torn from their sockets… there’s likely very little one won’t admit to. This is History on Fleek and we’ll see you next time!