Rack (torture)

As the interrogation progresses, a handle and ratchet mechanism attached to the top roller are used to very gradually retract the chains, slowly increasing the strain on the prisoner's shoulders, hips, knees, and elbows and causing excruciating pain.

[citation needed] The Greeks may have first used the rack as a means of torturing slaves and non-citizens, and later in special cases, as in 356 BC, when it was applied to gain a confession from Herostratus, an arsonist who was later executed for burning down the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

[3] According to Tacitus, the rack was used in a vain attempt to extract the names of the conspirators to assassinate Emperor Nero in the Pisonian conspiracy from the freedwoman Epicharis in 65 A.D.

[7] The Catholic martyr Nicholas Owen, a noted builder of priest holes, died under torture on the rack in the Tower of London in 1606.

In 1628 the question of its legality was raised in connection with a proposal in the Privy Council to rack John Felton, the assassin of George Villiers, the 1st Duke of Buckingham.