the iron maiden

An iron maiden is an iron cabinet allegedly built to torture or kill a person by piercing the body with sharp objects (such as knives, spikes, or nails), while the victim is forced to remain standing. The victim bleeds profusely and is weakened slowly, eventually dying because of blood loss, or perhaps asphyxiation.

The most famous, and probably the first, device was the iron maiden of Nuremberg. Some claim Johann Philipp Siebenkees created the history of it as a hoax in 1793. According to Siebenkees' colportage, it was first used on August 14, 1515 to execute a coin forger. Critics claim the iron maiden was actually built in the 19th century as a misinterpretation of a medieval "Schandmantel" (infamy cloak), which was made of wood and tin but without spikes. The infamy cloak did not harm the body, but was used as a chastisement for poachers and prostitutes, who were made to wear it in public for a certain time.

The iron maiden of Nuremberg was anthropomorphic. It was probably styled after Mary, the mother of Jesus, with a carved likeness of her on the face. The maiden was about 7 feet (2.1m) tall and 3 feet (0.9m) wide, had double doors, and was big enough to contain an adult man. Inside the tomb-sized container, the iron maiden was fitted with dozens of sharp spikes. Supposedly, they were designed so that when the doors were shut, the spikes skewered the victim, missing vital organs and permitting the victim to remain alive and upright. The spikes were also movable in order to accommodate each victim.

The condemned person was kept in an extremely confined space to maximize his level of suffering by claustrophobia. Mobility was nearly impossible, and if the victim was weakened by the ordeal, the piercing objects would remain in place and tear into the body even further, causing even more intense pain.

The doors of the maiden could be opened and closed one at a time, without giving the victim opportunity to escape. Supposedly, this was helpful when checking on the victim.

Supposed operation

Purportedly, the condemned prisoner had to pass through seven rooms with seven doors before his scheduled execution. At the end of a long corridor he found himself looking into the face of an iron wardrobe that vaguely resembled a female form.^{citation needed]} On the outside, the maiden appeared harmless and non-threatening, while inside were hidden spikes of iron that were designed to torture slowly rather than kill.

The doors of the maiden were shut slowly, so that the very sharp points penetrated a man’s arms, and his legs in several places, along with his belly and chest, bladder, eyes, shoulders, and his buttocks, but not enough to kill him. Allegedly, the spikes were sometimes heated red hot as well to increase pain, or possibly cauterize the puncture wounds as to prolong suffering. Historical experts have theorized that the spikes on the inside of the doors may have been movable. They were thought to have been able to be repositioned and/or relocated depending on the individual requirements of the person’s body and their crime. The overall result would be more or less lethal and mutilating depending upon where the spikes were located.

The object was to inflict extreme pain and punish the victim – and also, like most instruments of torture, to intimidate the prisoner before actual use, so that he confessed.

Known usage

The existence of "real" iron maidens is a subject of much debate, and their actual use in judicial proceedings or executions is highly questionable. The few existing examples are replicas made after their supposed periods of historical use and it is unlikely that these have ever been used for the purposes attributed to "historical" iron maidens.

The iron maiden at Nuremberg Castle was destroyed in the air raids of 1944 near Nuremberg, Germany.

An iron maiden was found in HI near the building housing the Iraqi Football Association in which Uday Hussein had an office.^[1] Members of the Iraqi Olympic Team claim it was used against Uday's opponents and critics during Saddam Hussein's rule.

Iron maidens in fiction

• Kurt Vonnegut describes the iron maiden of Nuremberg in Slaughterhouse-Five.

• Bram Stoker wrote a short story about the iron maiden titled "The Squaw" (1893).

• Roald Dahl's novel Matilda contains a device similar to an iron maiden called "the Chokey."

• Alejandra Pizarnik wrote a short story about the Countess Bathory regarding Valentine Penrose's work which briefly details the countess' use of an iron maiden(1968). It has been reprinted in The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales, edited by Chris Baldick.

• An iron maiden appears in the Tim Burton movie Sleepy Hollow, in a dream by Johnny Depp's character, Ichabod Crane (1999).

• Several iron maidens are also featured in the Oogie Boogie part of Tim Burton's movie, The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993).

• In the 1975 movie version of Tommy by Ken Russell [link], Tina Turner as the Acid Queen morphs into a highly stylized iron maiden with, presumably, LSD-filled syringes instead of spikes.

• In Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, the protagonists of the story go back in time to medieval Europe and are sentenced to the iron maiden, which they associate with the heavy metal band Iron Maiden, screaming "Excellent!" and playing air guitar.

• In Batman Returns, another Tim Burton movie, an iron maiden in Bruce Wayne's collection has a secret trapdoor to the Batcave.

• A similar device is described by Franz Kafka in his short story "The Penal Colony" ("Die Strafkolonie"). The whole story is dedicated to witnessing the one final session of the torture device by the narrator. While Kafka's device does not envelop the whole body, the type of piercing described can well be compared to that of the iron maiden.

• In Angela Carter's short story, "The Bloody Chamber," (a re-telling of the Bluebeard story) one of the wives is killed by torture in an iron maiden for an unspecified amount of time.

• In the videogame Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, four iron maidens appear in the boss room of the PuppetMaster.

• Jen, the protagonist from the videogame Primal is locked into an Iron Maiden at one point.

• In the videogame Resident Evil Code: Veronica An iron maiden appears at one point with a hole for a sword to be driven through in addition to the internal spikes.

Sources

• Schild, Wolfgang (2000). Die eiserne Jungfrau. 
• Jürgen Scheffler. Der Folterstuhl - Metamorphosen eines Museumsobjektes. Zeitenblicke. Retrieved on January 25, 2006.
• Vortrag von Klaus Graf: Mordgeschichten und Hexenerinnerungen. Mondzauberin. Retrieved on January 25, 2006.