Thethumbscrew, (also known asdevils handshake) is atorture instrument which was first used inearly modernEurope. It is a simplevise, sometimes with protruding studs on the interior surfaces. Victims' fingers or toes were placed in the vice and slowly crushed. The crushing bars were sometimes lined with sharp metal points to puncture the nails. While the most common design operated upon a single thumb or big toe, variants could accommodate both big toes, all five fingers of one hand, or all ten toes.[1]
The thumbscrew was also referred to asthumbkin orthumbikin (1675–1685), "kin" being a diminutive suffix of nouns.[2] An alternate spelling wasthumbikens.[3] The termspillywinks andpilnie-winks[4] were also in use.
Historians James Cochrane and John McCrone wrote in 1833,
Thus we read, that in 1596, the son and daughter ofAleson Balfour, who was accused of witchcraft were tortured before her to make her confess her crime in the manner following: Her son was put in thebuits where he suffered fifty seven strokes; and her daughter about seven years old, was put in thepilniewinks. In the same case, mention was made, besidespilniewinks,pinniewinks orpilliwinks, ofcaspitanos orcaspicaws, and oftosots, as instruments of torture. Lord Royston in his manuscript notes upon Mackenzie's criminal law conjectures that these may have been only other names for thebuits andthumbikens; thus much seems certain, that in those times there was some torturing device applied to the fingers which bore the name of pilniewinks; but it will immediately appear, that the most authentic accounts assign the introduction and use of the instrument known by the name ofthumbikens to a much later period.[3]
Cochrane and McCrone argue that the thumbscrew entered Britain later than the invasion of theSpanish Armada in the 16th century:
"It has been very generally asserted," says Dr. Jamieson, "that part of the cargo of the invincible Armada was a large assortment ofthumbikens, which it was meant should be employed as powerful arguments for convincing the heretics." The country of theinquisition was certainly a fit quarter from whence to derive so congenial an instrument; but other accounts, as we have said, and these apparently unquestionable, assign it a later introduction... In the torturing of [William] Spence,Lord Fountainhall mentions the origin of thethumbikens, stating that this instrument "was a new invention used among the colliers upon transgressors, and discovered by GeneralsDalyell and Drummond, they having seen them used inMuscovy." The account which BishopBurnet gives of the torturing of Spence confirms the then recent use of thethumbikens. ... This point we think is put beyond all doubt by the following act of theprivy council in 1684, quoted in Wodrow's invaluable history: "Whereas there is nowa new invention and engine called the thumbikens ... the Lords of His Majesty's Council do therefore ordain, that when any person shall be put to the torture, that the boots and the thumbikens both be applied to them..."[3]
In 1612 the Baroque painterOrazio Gentileschi accused his colleague,Agostino Tassi, of raping his daughter, the painterArtemisia Gentileschi. During the five-month long trial, Artemisia was cross-examined under thumb-screw torture.[5][6]
As late as the mid-18th century, the ex-slaveOlaudah Equiano, in his autobiographyThe Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, documented the use of thumbscrews to torture slaves.[7] During this period (mid-18th century),Thomas Clarkson carried thumbscrews with him to further his cause for theabolition of the slave trade and later emancipation of slaves in theBritish Empire. He hoped to, and did, inspireempathy with the display of this and other torture devices used on slaves.[8] They were used onslave ships, as witnessed and described by Equiano andOttobah Cugoano.[9]
TheThumbikens, as the name imports, was an instrument applied to the thumbs, in such a manner as to enable the executioner to squeeze them violently; and this was often done with so much force as to bruise the thumb-bones, and swell the arms of the sufferer up to his shoulders.
The iron muzzle, thumb-screws, &c. are so well known, as not to need a description, and were sometimes applied for the slightest faults.
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