Iron maiden and the trade in torture displays
The iron maiden is familiar as a cabinet large enough to enclose a person, with spikes lining its interior. Its fame extends beyond stories of torture: an English heavy metal band carries the same name. Yet there is no evidence that these cabinets existed before the nineteenth century, or that any was ever used as a real torture device. The story began as a hoax in the late eighteenth century. Its setting belongs to a wider commercial trade in frightening objects, as showmen presented elaborate devices as relics of medieval cruelty and charged visitors to see them.
An early claim about an iron maiden appeared in a guidebook to Nuremberg by the German philosopher Johann Philipp Siebenkees, who lived from 1759 to 1796. He said the device had first been used in 1515 to execute a coin forger. That claim is known to have been fraudulent. By 1802, a hoax cabinet was on display in Nuremberg, turning the story into something visitors could inspect.
Other showmen and con artists made phony examples in the early nineteenth century, seeking commercial profit by shocking the public. They displayed the cabinets as medieval torture devices and charged admission. An alleged iron maiden reached the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893. No surviving example can be dated earlier than the early 1800s. A museum photograph shows one in the Lubuska Land Museum in Zielona Gora, Poland. A further visual representation comes from the Austrian artist Vinzenz Katzler, whose 1868 illustration depicts a man being forced into such a cabinet.
A vaguely similar story predates the iron maiden, but concerns a different device. Tertullian, in To the Martyrs, and Augustine of Hippo, in The City of God, said the Roman general Marcus Atilius Regulus was captured and tortured by the Carthaginians around 250 BC. Their story involved a wooden box with nails projecting inward. The box was intended to force its occupant to remain upright, rather than kill him. Both writers lived centuries after the alleged events, and earlier historians mention no such box. That long separation between the event and its tellers leaves the device's existence doubtful as well.
The iron maiden is not the only dramatic device assigned to medieval history despite a different chronology. The brazen bull belongs to ancient Greek legend. Perillos of Athens supposedly made a hollow bronze bull for Phalaris, tyrant of Akragas, with a door for enclosing a victim and an acoustic apparatus that turned screams into bellowing. There is no physical evidence for it. Pindaros of Thebes mentioned it in his First Pythian Ode, but was born about a generation after Phalaris died. A detailed telling came much later from Diodoros Sikeliotes in Universal History. Even the legend places the bull outside the Middle Ages.
The pear of anguish presents another problem: its alleged operation would probably be impossible. The object has metal leaves that expand when a screw turns. Tales portray it as being inserted into a bodily opening and expanded to cause pain. The earliest reports come from the late eighteenth century and concern alleged criminal use in Paris. No reliable contemporary testimony establishes its use as a torture implement. Surviving examples appear too mechanically weak for the alleged operation, while the screw's design would likely prevent opening the device inside anything. Museum examples include objects in Salzburg and Zielona Gora.
The scold's bridle has a different status. It was a real instrument of punishment, though its earliest documented mention comes from Scotland in 1567, about a century after the Middle Ages ended. An iron muzzle enclosed the head, with a bit inserted into the mouth to compress the tongue or press it against the palate. It prevented speech, could induce excess salivation and mouth fatigue, and publicly humiliated its wearer. Women perceived as gossipy or excessively talkative seem to have been its main targets. Its use continued in parts of England and Scotland into the nineteenth century.
The Spanish tickler took shape much more recently. On 15 December 2005, a Wikipedia editor using the name Andyok created a hoax page presenting a claw-shaped instrument, also called the cat's paw, as a medieval device for tearing flesh. The story spread into popular culture, including a Coloring Book of Torture and an iPad case offered for $45. Wikipedia editors discovered the hoax on 2 March 2018 and deleted the page. An archived version remained available.