So you said some things that made somebody
else mad- no big deal, that’s pretty much
just an average afternoon on Twitter.
But you don’t live in the age of Twitter,
you live in the 1200s and the people you made
mad are really upset by what you said.
So upset, that the authorities believe you
should never say anything again.
Now, a man in a leather apron and a black
hood approaches you as you sit strapped to
a chair, unable to move.
He yanks your mouth open and brings a set
of red-hot pliers to your mouth…
If you've watched the news or read the opinions
section of any newspaper, you're probably
aware that people are very protective of their
free speech.
But, while in modern America, the right to
free speech is protected by the first amendment,
other societies throughout history haven't
been so lucky.
While these days, making off-colour comments
might run you the risk of getting “cancelled”
on twitter, in less enlightened times, crimes
such as blasphemy, speaking out against the
state, or even just gossiping too much could
result in you having your ability to speak
permanently cancelled in real life.
In other words, we're back with another one
of the worst punishments imaginable, and this
time, we're going to show you all about the
history of tongue torture.
Lick your lips real quick – trust us, you’ll
be grateful for it later.
Ritual tongue mutilation has been around seemingly
as long as people have had tongues.
In Mayan culture, the tongue was a common
place to draw blood for use in rituals.
Mayan tongue mutilation was usually self-inflicted
and practiced by community leaders or other
members of the upper class.
The ritual involved piercing the tongue and
pulling a barbed cord through the resulting
hole.
This tongue-twistingly painful act may sound
like a form of torture, but amazingly, this
was most commonly practiced as a form of minor
human sacrifice to commemorate the birth of
a child or the completion of a construction
project.
That's right, instead of cutting the ribbon
at the dedication ceremony of a new library
or block of apartments, a Mayan town mayor
would have sliced his own tongue open.
The Code of Hammurabi, which was written in
1754 BCE, making it the earliest known set
of written laws, mentions tongue removal as
a punishment for a number of crimes.
As we mentioned in our episode on scaphism,
many ancient justice systems operated on a
principal known as Lex Tallonis, or, 'an eye
for an eye', and Hammurabi's code is the prime
example of that.
Among other gruesome punishments, the code
stated that under Babylonian law, spies would
have their eyes removed, those who stole another
man's slaves would be branded, and doctors
who caused their patient undue loss of life
or limb would have their hands severed.
Basically, Hammurabi's law took 'let the punishment
fit the crime' to its logical extreme- and,
in his defence, it'd be hard to be a repeat
offender for theft or surgical malpractice
when you don't have any hands to steal things
or do surgery with.
So, naturally, instances of tongue mutilation
mentioned in the code were punishment for
crimes that involved speaking.
The complete removal of the tongue at the
base was called for in cases of perjury, as
well as in cases of adopted children publicly
rejecting their foster parents.
You might be thinking that tongue removal
isn't such a bad deal, especially when compared
to removal of the hands or eyes.
Sure, you wouldn't be able to communicate
with anyone without carrying around a stone
tablet and chisel, and you wouldn't ever be
able to enjoy the taste of your favourite
Babylonian-style kebab ever again, but other
than that, you'd still be able to live a full
life, right?
Well, you have to remember that understanding
of medicine back then was hardly what it is
today.
While the Babylonians understood the importance
of sterilisation to stop the risk of infection
during surgery, and their surgical techniques
were relatively advanced for the time period,
they still hadn't quite nailed the recipe
for a fool proof antiseptic.
Even though you would survive the initial
tongue amputation, there was still a high
chance of dying later from an infection.
Tough break.
The story of tongue mutilation doesn't stop
there, because as time went on, it remained
a popular form of torture, and torturers only
got more creative with the ways they chose
to go about it.
Torturers throughout history kept the theme
of Lex Tallonis going, more often than not
preferring to go for the tongue in cases of
blasphemy or heresy.
Cutting out a prisoner's tongue was the preferred
form of lingual mutilation in the middle ages,
and torturers used a variety of grisly tools
to get the job done.
The mouth would be held open and the tongue
would be clamped in the rough iron grip of
a device simply known as the “tongue tearer”
(use this image: https://tinyurl.com/yb6tgjd2),
which would then be tightened with a screw
to ensure a vice-like hold on the victim's
tongue.
Sometimes the tongue was merely held in place
and stretched out so that it could be severed
using a sharp knife, other times it was used
on its own to roughly yank the tongue out
of the prisoner's head.
Another version of the tongue tearer had interlocking
zig-zag teeth on the clamp, like pinking shears,
which would shred the tongue to ribbons as
it was being pulled out.
Other methods of tongue torture included boring
a hole through the organ with a red-hot iron.
This method was used on a Quaker man named
James Nayler who, after re-enacting parts
of Jesus' arrival in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday,
was arrested for blasphemy in 1656.
Part of Nayler's punishment was to not only
have a hole bored through his tongue, but
also to be branded with the letter B for,
as you can probably guess, 'blashphemer'.
Nailing a prisoner's tongue to a table was
another practice from around the same time.
If you think that sounds a lot worse than
the way it was done in the days of Hammurabi
and his code, you'd be right.
For as little as the Babylonians knew about
preventing infection, the people of medieval
Europe knew even less, not even bothering
to clean their tongue clamps between uses.
The risk of infection was extremely high,
but if you were lucky, your torturers might
kill you themselves, saving you from a long
and painful death from infection.
While removal of the tongue was the go-to
punishment for blasphemy, there were other,
less fatal forms of tongue torture for crimes
that were considered less serious in nature.
The scold's bridle, also known as the gossip's
bridle or the branks, was a supposedly more
soft-core form of punishment saved for British
women who had committed the unforgivable crimes
of cursing, nagging, or gossiping to a degree
that members of the community considered 'riotous'
or 'troublesome'.
It was also sometimes used on suspected witches,
to stop them from being able to recite spells
or curses.
The scold's bridle was first recorded as being
used for legal punishment in Scotland in 1567,
and while it may or may not have ever been
legal in England, its use was also recorded
there around the same time period.
The device was a large metal cage placed around
the head, with an iron plate attached to the
inside that would be forced into the wearer's
mouth, sort of like a low-tech version of
Saw's infamous reverse bear trap device.
The iron plate, known as a 'curb plate', was
spiked and studded on the bottom in a way
that would cause minimum pain if the wearer
kept their mouth completely still, but would
shred the tongue if the wearer attempted to
speak.
Once the device was applied, the 'scold' would
be paraded around and often beaten in public
as both a form of humiliation and an example
to other women.
To add insult to injury, the outside of the
mask was sometimes decorated with features
like donkey's ears or pig noses, personalised
to fit the exact kind of troublesome woman
who was forced to wear it.
An eavesdropping busybody might get a scold's
bridle made to resemble a rabbit, while a
lazy woman might get one that looked like
a cow.
Who would have guessed that the 16th Century
was a little backwards in its views on women’s
free speech?
In the English town of Walton on Thames, there
is still a scold's bridle on display in the
vestry of the church.
It's dated to 1633 and accompanied by the
following inscription - "Chester presents
Walton with a bridle, To curb women's tongues
that talk too idle."
According to the local story, a man named
Chester lost his fortune due to a local woman's
gossip, and out of spite, he donated a scold's
bridle to the town jail, specifically so that
it could be used on her.
The scold's bridle remained used as a form
of official punishment in England until as
late as 1856.
While it wasn't nearly as common in the New
World, African-American scholar and abolitionist
Olaudah Equiano described seeing a similar
device used as a way to control slaves in
18th century Virginia.
Elsewhere outside of Europe, tongue removal
was also used as punishment in parts of Asia,
and the practice features in a story about
Khana, a medieval astronomer, poet and folk
hero from Bengal.
When she presented her research to the king,
he was so impressed that he requested her
presence in the royal court the following
day.
Khana's father-in-law, a fellow astronomer
by the name of Varahamihira, was so jealous
that he ordered his son to sever Khana's tongue.
In many versions of the story, Khana's husband
refuses to go through with it, and the tongue-removal
is done by either Varahamihira himself or
a hired hand.
In others, Khana cuts off her own tongue to
save her husband from having to hurt her.
Regardless, all versions end with Khana being
rendered tongueless.
Her story is still told today, and has been
frequently discussed by feminist thinkers
in modern Bengal.
In fact, many examples of historical tongue
trouble have a gendered element to them.
Backtracking a little bit to ancient Greece,
stories of women suffering acts of tongue
terrorism are a common theme.
Philomela, an Athenian princess, was sexually
assaulted by her brother-in-law, Tereus, who
later butchered her tongue when she threatened
to name him for his crime.
According to legend, however, Philomela still
got her revenge, as she was able to embroider
Tereus's name into a tapestry that she then
gave as a gift to her sister, Procne.
Procne, realising that her husband was the
one responsible for attacking her sister,
got revenge by killing her son and serving
him to Tereus for dinner.
If this story sounds familiar, it might be
because it served as inspiration for a plot
point in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus.
Another Greek story of tongue mutilation is
that of Timycha, a Greek soldier's wife in
the 6th century BCE, who, when captured and
faced with interrogation by enemy forces,
chewed off her own tongue to ensure she would
be unable to give up any information.
According to the version of events recounted
in Iamblichus’s Life of Pythagoras, once
Timycha had sufficiently mangled her own tongue,
she spat it out at her would-be interrogator.
While this wasn't an example of tongue mutilation
being used as punishment, we still felt we
had to give Timycha a shout out, since she
sounds like she was tough enough in the face
of danger to make Die Hard’s John McClane
look like Paul Blart: Mall Cop in comparison.
Fast-forward to modern times and you might
think that the days of tongue mutilation as
a form of punishment are long gone.
Unfortunately, due to tongue mutilation's
unparalleled effectiveness at stopping people
from talking, the practice has survived in
some isolated pockets well into the 20th and
21st centuries.
Survivors of Canada's infamously barbaric
Residential School System, an initiative designed
to forcibly assimilate Aboriginal children
into western culture, recount that a common
punishment for being caught speaking their
native languages was to have their tongues
pierced with needles and, in extreme cases,
shocked with electricity.
These punishments happened as late as the
1950's, when the Residential School System
was finally disbanded.
Possibly the most notorious example of modern-day
tongue violence is the Colombian Necktie,
an execution method that was invented by political
terrorists during the Colombian civil war
of the 1950's, but made famous worldwide by
drug kingpin Pablo Escobar in the 70's and
80's.
The name refers to the practice of cutting
a large, deep, horizontal slit in the victim's
throat, then pulling their tongue through
the resulting gap – like a flesh, bloodstained
necktie.
It's a horrifying way to go with a gruesome
aftermath, making it a highly effective intimidation
tactic.
Even more recently, in 2007, Iraqi insurgent
Muhammed Sulaiman was taken from his house
and had his tongue cut off when his superiors
caught wind of his plans to defect.
Sulaiman was taken to the nearest hospital
by his attackers, who told doctors he'd been
in an accident.
Three days after returning home, Sulaiman
found a package on his doorstep which contained
both his severed tongue and a note warning
him against ever trying to speak up about
insurgent activity again.
So, next time you’re doing anything from
voicing your opinions to licking stamps to
enjoying your favourite flavour of ice cream,
be grateful you weren’t around in any of
these times of places.
Cause if you were, well, you probably wouldn’t
have much to say about it…
Don't let this video leave you tongue-tied,
tell us what you thought in the comments.
Then go check out “The Blood Eagle - Worst
Punishments in the History of Mankind” and
“The Catherine Wheel - Worst Punishments
In The History of Mankind.”
