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The "Rats Dungeon", or "Dungeon of the Rats", was a feature of the Tower of London alleged by Catholic writers from the Elizabethan era. "A cell below high-water mark and totally dark" would draw in rats from the River Thames as the tide flowed in. Prisoners would have their "alarm excited" and in some instances, have "flesh ... torn from the arms and legs".
The punishment consisted of being sewn up in a leather sack, with an assortment of live animals including a dog, snake, monkey, and a chicken or rooster, and then being thrown into water. The punishment may have varied widely in its frequency and precise form during the Roman period. For example, the earliest fully documented case is from ca ...
The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals (1906) at the Internet Archive " 'The Law is an Ass: Reading E. P. Evans' The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals'" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-07-27. (1.18 MB), Society and Animals, Vol. 2, No. 1 (1994)
There were many variants, but the most common was to force a rat through a victim's body (usually the intestines) as a way to escape. The victim would be completely restrained and tied to the ground or a bed, and the torturer would cut slits into the victim's stomach.
The Tower of London and Traitor's Gate. In the Middle Ages and into the Tudor and Stuart periods, torture was carried out in its chambers. Throughout history, torture chambers have been used in a multiplicity of ways starting from Roman times. Torture chamber use during the Middle Ages was frequent.
Legal texts from the reign of King Athelstan (Lived: c. 894 – 27 October 939, Ruled: 924 – 939) provide some of the most elaborate royal regulations for the use of the ordeal in Anglo-Saxon England, though the period's fullest account of ordeal practices is found in an anonymous legal text written sometime in the 10th century. [12]
The execution of Hugh Despenser the Younger, as depicted in the Froissart of Louis of Gruuthuse. To be hanged, drawn and quartered was a method of torturous capital punishment used principally to execute men convicted of high treason in medieval and early modern Britain and Ireland.
The earliest report of rat kings comes from 1564. [1] Most extant examples are formed from black rats (Rattus rattus). [2] Specimens of purported rat kings are kept in some museums. The museum Mauritianum in Altenburg, Thuringia, shows the largest well-known mummified "rat king", which was found in 1828 in a miller's fireplace at Buchheim.