NEW YORK — For sale: torture devices from the 16th century, including shame masks to enforce silence, a 14-foot table-like rack to stretch the victim’s body, and a tongue tearer to punish blasphemers and heretics. Even an executioner’s sword.
New York’s Guernsey’s auction house plans to auction the collection, with proceeds to go to Amnesty International and other organizations committed to preventing torture in today’s world, said Guernsey’s president, Arlan Ettinger.
He described the items as possibly the world’s most extensive collection of torture devices — some 252 items — plus rare books, documents and other artifacts.
Of German origin and acquired in the late 19th century by England’s earl of Shrewsbury, the torture collection has been in private American hands since last publicly shown in 1893 in New York and at the Chicago World’s Fair. Its owner for many years after that was Arne Coward, a survivor of the Holocaust. His descendants are the present owners, Ettinger said.
On Nov. 26, 1893, an article in The New York Times described what was then a 1,300-item collection, noting that “thousands of people have gazed upon these terrible relics of a semi-barbarous age,” all of which “have been in actual use.”
The devices include iron masks, boots, thumbscrews, foot squeezers, ropes, leg irons, chains, rings, manacles and “witch-catchers.”
Notably absent is the “justly-celebrated iron maiden,” a coffin-like case with deadly spikes on the inside. Ettinger said the fate of the iron maiden and other items is unknown, but they may have been lost in a fire that destroyed buildings at the end of the Chicago world’s fair.
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