Real tickle torture

[Nate6]

Has anyone heard of any instances throughout history that involve tickle torture? I've heard rumors of instances but I know there must be more examples out there. I know it would probably work on me! 😛




plz add me🙂

 

[rhiannon]

There is a report from an incident in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany that could be real. Apart of that, no, there are none which could be considered credible.

 

[APFlondon]

wheres this report? intrigued

 

[hammertyme]

Its about a guy getting tickled, so if your not into that then now you know. I wish it was a female! Just google tickle torture and bowse through that.

 

[TickleMyFancy]

I heard about ancient Chinese tickle torture as a kid, where they tied up the person and rubbed salt on their feet and had goats lick it off. Tickled like hell for a few minutes, until their tongues started to rip through the skin 0.o

Not sure if that's real or not, but it's kiiiiinda the reason I first started thinking about tickling.

Kinda sick, really lol

 

[TklNat]

For a list of nearly all the reported incidents, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tickle_torture.

Please note that of these, the only one that has any credibility beyond face value is the incident at the Flossenbürg concentration camp - the rest may as well have been made up for sensationalist reasons.

There is also an account of a mercenary band employing a modified form of the "goat torture" by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, who was a contemporary witness of the Thirty Years War, in his work "Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch". Then again, the book is a work of fiction, so this may or may not have occurred as written.

Finally, the famous "goat torture" consisted of having goats lick the flesh from your soles, so any tickling sensation in the beginning was really just a side-effect.

Long story short: Tickle torture, as in "institutionalized torture by order of an authority", is a myth. Abuse involving tickling may and will have happened (history is a big place...), but that was individual initiative. Sorry to be the party pooper.

@APFlondon:

wheres this report? intrigued

Spare yourself the read, it's about the humiliation of a homosexual inmate at a concentration camp. I'd not call it "intriguing", but YMMV.

 

[rhiannon]

Its about a guy getting tickled, so if your not into that then now you know. I wish it was a female!

It happened in a concentration camp, for God's sake!!

Not sure if that's real or not

It's not. The reliability of goats gets overestimated by far!

 

[TklNat]

It's not. The reliability of goats gets overestimated by far!

Not entirely correct. I wouldn't know about China, but it was practised in Europe.

Paolo Zacchia's "quaestiones medico-legales" is as reliable a primary source as it gets.

 

[rhiannon]

Paolo Zacchia's "quaestiones medico-legales" is as reliable a primary source as it gets

This is the first time I hear about that. What does it say exactly in that book?

 

[TklNat]

If you speak Latin, have a look at it yourself on Google Books, the relevant part is at Lib. VI. Tit. II. Quaest. I. Quite fascinating stuff if you're into legal and/or medical history.

To paraphrase it: While Zacchia is explaining torture (in accordance with Canonical Church Law), he lists various methods and their effects on the subjects. A single paragraph deals with the "torture with salt and goat", where the subject is bound, the feet are rubbed with salt and/or salty plants and a goat is made to lick it off. It's described as easily tolerable in the beginning, but the pain sets in as the soles are worn off to the bone. And that's already it.

This found its way into some conversational lexicon of the 19th century, the name escapes me right now, but somehow the difference between Zacchia being the "surgeon general" of the Holy See IN Rome and being a "Roman" doctor wasn't really made clear or misunderstood altogether, and *BAM*, there's your urban legend of ancient Roman tickle torture.

 

[TiickleNiicole]

I've also heard of the chinese tickle torture but yeah...not sure if it's legit or not. I'm sure tickling could be used as an actual form of torture (assuming the victim was actually ticklish lol.)

 

[rhiannon]

To paraphrase it: While Zacchia is explaining torture (in accordance with Canonical Church Law), he lists various methods and their effects on the subjects. A single paragraph deals with the "torture with salt and goat", where the subject is bound, the feet are rubbed with salt and/or salty plants and a goat is made to lick it off. It's described as easily tolerable in the beginning, but the pain sets in as the soles are worn off to the bone. And that's already it.

I still doubt it was a common practice since you can't be sure the goats will do it long enough. They probably wouldn't, it would take a very long time for a goat to lick feet to the bone. 🙂 And it is not included as a practice of torture and punishment in any historical law books like the witch hammer or others of that kind.

 

[CuteJill143]

Maybe they starved the goat for a week 🙂

 

[rhiannon]

Then it would probably start biting, not licking. Unless they pulled it's teeth, too!

 

[CuteJill143]

lmfao hahaha. Why get a goat when you can tickle someone yourself?

 

[Libertine]

And it is not included as a practice of torture and punishment in any historical law books like the witch hammer or others of that kind.

For those of you who somehow have never heard of those madcap old monks, Fr. Heinrich Kramer and Fr. Jacob Sprenger, these merry funsters co-authored a ghastly book called The Malleus Maleficarum (Latin), or "Der Hexenhammer", (German, as above). This was a 15th century manual, the title of which translates roughly as "The Hammer to Knock Down Witches" It's a how-to guide to finding witches and what to do with them. Between the years 1487 and 1520, it was published thirteen times, and between 1574 to 1669 it was again published sixteen times.

It is responsible for the rather painful and protracted deaths of some 17,324–26,000 'sorcerers' between c. 1580 and 1750 in the various principalities and kingdoms which in those days made up what is now Germany.

 

[TklNat]

I still doubt it was a common practice since you can't be sure the goats will do it long enough.

I never said it was common, just that it was real. 🙂

It doesn't seem very effective, we're probably on the same page on that, so if I had to speculate I'd say it was

1. not part of the investigative, but the poenal measures and
2. used for crimes in the vein of majesty insult, where the primary goal often seems to have been to inflict injuries that take long to heal, so the subject would long be reminded of the consequences of not keeping his mouth shut.

And I'll happily leave the question how many goats of which physical condition you need to perform this act to the goatherds. 😉

[...] Fr. Heinrich Kramer and Fr. Jacob Sprenger, [...] co-authored [...] The Malleus Maleficarum

Mind you, Fr. Sprenger's involvement has become so doubtful in the past 20 years that he isn't even named as a co-author any longer on recent print runs like Jerouschek/Behringer.

But I've gone so far off Topic that it isn't even funny anymore, so I'll finally shut up.

 

[C.A.B.]

For those of you who somehow have never heard of those madcap old monks, Fr. Heinrich Kramer and Fr. Jacob Sprenger, these merry funsters co-authored a ghastly book called The Malleus Maleficarum (Latin), or "Der Hexenhammer", (German, as above). This was a 15th century manual, the title of which translates roughly as "The Hammer to Knock Down Witches" It's a how-to guide to finding witches and what to do with them. Between the years 1487 and 1520, it was published thirteen times, and between 1574 to 1669 it was again published sixteen times.

It is responsible for the rather painful and protracted deaths of some 17,324–26,000 'sorcerers' between c. 1580 and 1750 in the various principalities and kingdoms which in those days made up what is now Germany.

Ach! die gute alte Zeiten! 🙂

 

[rhiannon]

2.used for crimes in the vein of majesty insult

Wouldn't majesty insult be treated as high treason in those times? I don't know about Germany, but at least England wasn't so nice to people who did that....they certainly didn't bother with a goat! 🙂

I still don't believe that that kind of torture was anywhere as a punishment written down in the books....this book seems to be the only one even mentioning it.

 

[TklNat]

Wouldn't majesty insult be treated as high treason in those times?

No, they are totally unrelated. High treason, in a nutshell, is conspiracy against the crown. The aim usually has to be damaging the crown's assets, revealing its secrets or attempting to overthrow its rule.

Majesty insult is... exactly what it says on the tin: "Oh my, fuck the duke, that bloke sucks." And off you go.

I still don't believe that that kind of torture was anywhere as a punishment written down in the books....

Which books? I really don't mean to come across as argumentative, but considering how few original works on these matters even exist, where would you expect to find it, apart from the already mentioned "malleus maleficarum"?

Under the CCC, the means, duration and number of repetitions of the torture were up to the judge, who would usually act on customary law. Naturally the practices in Saxony, Bohemia or the Palatinate diverged from what the church considered "customary" in canonical cases (at the time) - and that's what Zacchia compiled. Nothing you can find in his book will be as well-known through paintings or the occasional court act as the "local practices", which is hardly surprising considering that the secular cases vastly outnumber the canonical ones.

[...] they certainly didn't bother with a goat!

Why did the Argentinians bother with dogs in their practices (and no, they weren't biting their victims)? Why bother with the cicogna/Storch (Google says it's called the "scavenger's daughter" in the UK?) instead of manually inflicting twice the misery in half the time?

The answer is that torture is as much about humiliation as it is about mundane pain. Tormenting your enemy without even touching him or alternatively by using absurd contraptions (in this case, animals) is sending a message about the torturer's power. He can do whatever he wants, be it much or little, cross every line on the way, he has as much time as he wants, and you can't do a thing about it.

If you are sane, you won't be able to "get" that mindset, but unfortunately, its existence is a fact that has accompanied humanity since the beginning.


So much for me shutting up.

Anyway, rhiannon, I really don't want to "simply gain the upper hand" - you just seemed to be interested, and since this stuff is part of my profession, I took the rare opportunity for a discussion in that field. If you want to continue this, I politely suggest we take this to PMs or something before derailing the thread even further.

 

[The_Kev]

I heard about ancient Chinese tickle torture as a kid, where they tied up the person and rubbed salt on their feet and had goats lick it off. Tickled like hell for a few minutes, until their tongues started to rip through the skin 0.o

Not sure if that's real or not, but it's kiiiiinda the reason I first started thinking about tickling.

Kinda sick, really lol

Oh my god! That's the worst torture I can imagine! I never would have thought of that.

You're not sick btw, that's just a situational/scenario thing. Pretty cruel actually, there's nobody to even plead with!

 

[Libertine]

No, they are totally unrelated. High treason, in a nutshell, is conspiracy against the crown. The aim usually has to be damaging the crown's assets, revealing its secrets or attempting to overthrow its rule.

Strictly speaking, at least in the UK, treason also includes committing adultery with the sovereign's consort, with the sovereign's eldest unmarried daughter, or with the wife of the heir to the throne.

There was actually talk in more conservative circles of charging Princess Diana's lovers with High Treason but saner heads prevailed, if only to spare poor Charles any sceptre jokes.

 

[rhiannon]

There was actually talk in more conservative circles of charging Princess Diana's lovers with High Treason

Would they have been drawn, hanged and quartered? 😀

 

[Libertine]

Would they have been drawn, hanged and quartered? 😀

FIRST the hanging, THEN the disembowelment, and only AFTERWARDS the quartering. It's too messy otherwise.

However in upper class Britain, the modern equivalent is being politely cold-shouldered at your club, subtly avoided at the Hunt, not being invited to certain dinner parties, and receiving a gentle hint from your tailor that he would prefer you take your custom elsewhere and patronise some other establishment.

I assure you this is cruel enough.

 

[rhiannon]

FIRST the hanging, THEN the disembowelment, and only AFTERWARDS the quartering

So the "drawing" is actually referring to the disembowelment. Last thing I read was people still discussing whether it was that or the delinquent being "drawn" from horses to the location of execution.

I assure you this is cruel enough.

I just love people from England. 😀