Name: Torture at the Tower exhibition
Start: 2023-07-04T12:00
End: 2033-07-04T12:00
Location: Tower of London

See terrifying instruments of pain in the Lower Wakefield Tower

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When

Open

Ticketing information

Included in palace admission (Members go free)

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Things to see

Learn about the methods of torture used at the Tower of London in this chilling space, complete with replicas of the instruments which inflicted such appalling pain.

In the 1500s and 1600s, during a period of extreme political and religious upheaval, royal authorities ordered torture to be used on prisoners at the Tower on multiple occasions.

Interrogators physically tortured prisoners to give up information and the names of their fellow conspirators. Many other prisoners were held in solitary confinement and subject to other psychological tortures.

Instruments of torture used at the Tower

The manacles

The Jesuit priest John Gerard was arrested, imprisoned and tortured in the 1590s when Catholic worship was outlawed in England.

He later wrote of his experience as a prisoner in the Tower, including a description of how the manacles were used:

"Then they put my wrists into iron gauntlets and ordered me to climb two or three wicker steps. My arms were then lifted up and an iron bar was passed through the rings of one gauntlet, then through the staple and rings of the second gauntlet.

This done, they fastened the bar with a pin to prevent it slipping and then, removing the wicker steps, they left me hanging by my hands and arms fastened above my head".

...they left me hanging by my hands and arms fastened above my head.

John Gerard, Jesuit priest

The rack

Anne Askew, a writer and Protestant preacher, was the only woman known to have been tortured at the Tower. She was charged with heresy and put on the rack to force her to reveal the names of those who shared her beliefs. The diary of her ordeal was smuggled out of the Tower:

"Because I lay still and did not cry, my Lord Chancellor and Master Rich took pains to rack me with their own hands till I was nigh dead…'"

Askew was unable to walk as a result of the torture, so had to be carried to her execution. She was burned at the stake on 16 July 1546.

It is thought that Guy Fawkes was also tortured on the rack during his interrogation at the Tower.

The scavenger's daughter

Using the opposite method to a rack, the scavenger’s daughter compressed or contorted the victim instead of stretching them.

Two versions exist: the replica in the Lower Wakefield Tower holds the body tight in a kneeling down position. This would become incredibly painful very quickly, and lead to the lungs filling with blood.

The other version, on display in the White Tower, is an elaborate set of handcuffs which also grasps the neck and ankles, twisting the victim into an excruciating position.