Bizarre History (12 page)

Single woman in England during the Middle Ages? No problem! You could own property and sign your name to contracts. Married? Sorry, but you are now property of your husband. As one legal entity, as defined by a legal doctrine called
coverture,
you would be completely subordinated to your husband.

William Blackstone described it best in the late eighteenth century: “By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband: under whose wing, protection, and cover, she performs every thing.”

So … if you were the property of your husband, could he sell you? Of course! Toward the end of the 1600s all the way through the early twentieth century, there were numerous stories of men selling their wives at auction. Here’s one titillating glimpse gathered by
Ancestors
magazine: “Rodney Hall, a labouring man of idle and dissolute habits … led his wife into the town with a halter round her body … he led her twice round the market, where he was met by a man named Barlow, of the same class of life, who purchased her for eighteen pence and a quart of ale.”

The magazine goes on to report that in 1897, a shoemaker “on a drinking spree at Irthlingborough” ran out of money and sold his wife so he and his friends could keep drinking. Nice.

It was low in calories (not that the Romans were counting), it had a sweet taste, and it killed you. Yes, it seems that in ancient Rome, the perfect diet aid was also the perfect
dying
aid. A popular way to sweeten wine was to throw in some sugar of lead (lead acetate), which was made by boiling grape juice in lead pots. The resulting syrup, called
defrutum,
was then concentrated again into
sapa—
yummy, but deadly. Friends, Romans, and countrymen used sugar of lead in their wine or to preserve fruit. It probably didn’t help that wine was often served in lead cups.

Mercury is the only metal that’s liquid at “standard conditions,” which is why civilization has always been fascinated with its silvery awesomeness. So even though it’s extremely toxic, it has been used as a medicine for centuries. It has been found in Egyptian tombs dating back 3,500 years. In China, it was thought to prolong life, heal broken bones, and prevent pregnancy. (It prevented pregnancies the way it prevented long life.) Other cultures used it as a cosmetic and medicine. “Blue mass,” which was a pill with mercury as a main ingredient, was prescribed in the 1800s for constipation, depression, and toothaches. In the twentieth century, kids were given mercury as a laxative. As far as we know, the only thing mercury cures you of is life.

The mechanical flagellator, invented in the early eighteenth century in England, could service forty people at the same time. Talk about service!

Gossip much? During the 1500s, the British had a neat little device called the scold’s bridle or branks. It was a cage that locked around a woman’s head. The cage also had a spiked plate that was inserted in the mouth to curb the tongue, literally. If that wasn’t enough, the gabber was then sometimes led through the streets on a leash.

During the Middle Ages, if you were told to sit on the Judas Cradle, you were in big trouble. Basically, it was a stool with a wooden pyramid on the top. Guess where you had to sit.

Need a confession? Nothing was as effective during the Middle Ages as the rack. Place the guilty party (you know he’s guilty!) on the wooden frame, tie his arms to the ropes on the top and his legs to the ropes on the bottom. Turn the handle and wait for your captive to “stretch” the truth.

The brazen bull was used by the ancient Greeks. Basically, you threw your guilty party in a hollowed-out bronze statue of a bull, closed the trapdoor, lit a fire underneath the statue, and, well, that was about it. When that got boring, the Greeks invented a system of tubes so the victim’s screams sounded like an angry bull.

The Spanish tickler didn’t tickle. This simple device consisted of a pole and a metal claw, which was used to “dig” for the truth.

The chair of torture consisted of a chair covered with spikes. Need we say more?

Devices that need no explanation: the knee splitter, the head crusher, the breast ripper, rat torture, and thumbscrews.

Finally, good luck if you were a crook in the fourth century. A person accused of a crime would be forced to close his hand around a red-hot poker. However, this wasn’t the punishment. If his or her hands healed after three days, they were declared innocent.

SIDE NOTE:
In seventeenth-century France, the remains of executed murderers were considered good-luck charms. After a good hanging or burning at the stake, crowds would swarm over the remains looking for some luck.

The word “bedlam” means a place of confusion and uproar, and it’s derived from the name of England’s most infamous hospital: Bethlem Royal Hospital. It’s been around since the 1300s, and even though today it’s known for its humane psychiatric treatment, it’s renowned for its centuries of cruelty.

From the time it began accepting inmates … I mean, patients … with mental illnesses in the 1350s until the early twentieth century, the hospital was a veritable madhouse. Patients were often chained to the walls or floor, with one patient having been chained for fourteen years. “Treatment” also including whipping, dunking, and more. Refusing to take your medicine? No problem! The staff at Bethlem had specially designed metal keys they used to force your mouth open. For a time in the eighteenth century, the hospital charged a penny to visitors who could walk past the cells containing the chained patients and view the “freaks of Bethlem.” It was a popular tourist attraction, and many had fun “making sport and diversion of the miserable inhabitants.”