1 magg 1640 anni - Abolishment of Torture

Descrizione:

- This torture was not based on the inquisitorial system prevailing in Continental Europe.
- At this time, England had a 2-tier legal system: the common law, and a system under the Royal prerogative, which allowed torture and enabled the king to do as he saw fit. Its court was held in the Start Chamber (today a by-word for injustice and oppression, but in the beginning it was the opposite).

Torture was abolished as a method of proof after the this case.

Until the mid-17th Century someone accused of a crime could find themselves facing another terrifying ordeal: torture.

In the century after 1540, 81 torture warrants were issued in England. To extract information, criminal suspects were suspended from manacles or stretched on the notorious rack. Things changed after the trial of John Archer in May 1640. Accused of high treason after his arrest during a riot, Archer, a glove-maker, was tortured on the rack. But his torturers learned nothing and his was the last recorded warrant for judicial torture.

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