The Big Book of Pain Quotes

“Many early cultures, including the ancient Hebrews, used crucifixion as a means of executing their criminals,”
― Mark P. Donnelly, The Big Book of Pain: Torture and Punishment Through History

“In worst case scenarios, such as one case where a Frenchman was found guilty of murdering his infant child, the condemned party had the body of the child chained to his back and was forced to walk all the way to Rome under the strict supervision of a priest and armed guards. Whether or not the man survived is unknown.”
― Mark P. Donnelly, The Big Book of Pain: Torture and Punishment Through History

“Manchu flogging masters were taught how to use their whip by flogging a block of Tofu (bean curd) until they could strike it without breaking the surface.”
― Mark P. Donnelly, The Big Book of Pain: Torture and Punishment Through History

“variation of branding practiced in the American Colonies was the custom of having transgressors wear a sign, or placard, that made their shameful behaviour evident”
― Mark P. Donnelly, The Big Book of Pain: Torture and Punishment Through History

“In the words of the day, it was: ‘a seat of infamy where strumpets and scolds, with bared feet and head, are condemned to abide the jibes of those who pass by’. The chucking stool itself was no more than a wooden arm-chair mounted on two poles, much like an open sedan chair of the eighteenth century. A hole was cut in the bottom of the chair and the victim’s skirts were hoisted up, leaving her exposed rump visible for all to see while she was paraded through the streets of town.”
― Mark P. Donnelly, The Big Book of Pain: Torture and Punishment Through History

“They were used to punish those who, by their words, had transgressed against the prevailing conventions. In the course of four centuries, countless women decried as ‘scolds’ and ‘shrews’ because domestic slavery and incessant pregnancy reduced them to neurasthenia and frenzy were thus humiliated and tortured; political power thus held up to public ridicule the petty disobedient and the nonconformists; ecclesiastical power thus punished a long list of lesser infractions. The overwhelming majority of victims were always women, and the operative principle was mulier taceat in ecclesia, ‘Let the woman be silent in church’ – ‘church’ here meaning the ruling ecclesiastical and secular hierarchies, both constitutionally gynaecophobic. The sense was thus: ‘Let the woman be silent in the presence of the male’. The victims, locked into the masks and staked out in the town square, were also treated roughly by the crowd. Painful beatings, besmearing with faeces and urine, and serious, sometimes fatal wounding (especially in the breasts, anus and vagina) was their lot.”
― Mark P. Donnelly, The Big Book of Pain: Torture and Punishment Through History

“BRANKS – MASKS OF SHAME OR INFAMY”
― Mark P. Donnelly, The Big Book of Pain: Torture and Punishment Through History

“one can assume that many such hell-holes existed in the Middle Ages and well into the eighteenth or nineteenth century.”
― Mark P. Donnelly, The Big Book of Pain: Torture and Punishment Through History