11. The Scavenger’s Daughter would squeeze blood from your anus, ears, and nostrils
As well as instituting the punishment of being boiled alive, Henry VIII’s reign also oversaw the invention of the Scavenger’s Daughter. The Scavenger’s Daughter, a demonic squashing device, was intended to be used to extract confessions, and was especially effective when used alternately with the Torture Rack (see below), which did the very opposite by stretching people horribly. Its rather confusing name comes from its vicious creator, Sir Leonard Skevington, the Lieutenant of the Tower of London, and is a bastardization of its original name, ‘Skevington’s Daughter’. Though rarely used, the device was truly the stuff of nightmares.
Essentially, the Scavenger’s Daughter was a series of iron rings hinged together in two parts. The suspect was first forced into a kneeling position, as if praying, then told to compress themselves as tightly as possible. One of the rings was passed around the feet, then the torturer would kneel on the victim’s back until the other ring could pass around the small of their back and, eventually, neck. Locked in this position for up to 90 minutes, blood would fill the lungs, and eventually spurt violently from the ears, nostrils, and anus. Few lasted that long before confessing something.
