Thumbscrew
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- This page is about the torture device. For the fastener, see Thumbscrew (fastener).
The thumbscrew or pilliwinks is an instrument of torture which was used in medieval Europe, notably by the Inquisition[citation needed]. It is a simple vise, sometimes with protruding studs on the interior surfaces. The tortured victim's thumbs or fingers were placed in the vise and slowly crushed. The thumbscrew was also applied to crush prisoners' toes, while larger, heavier devices based on the same design principle were applied to destroy knees and elbows.
As well as compression of fingers and toes, the opposite concept of distension was also employed in torture chambers. Tearing the nails out of the fingers and toes as slowly as possible was a particularly common method of torture. The most straightforward means employed a pliers—often heated red-hot—to tear out the nails at the root. However, the nail extraction could be accomplished even more slowly and cruelly by first driving wooden wedges, needles, or splinters of wood, metal, or bone under the nails to pry them loose. Splinters in particular were sometimes dipped in boiling sulfur to make the torture even more savage.
Pilliwinks or pyrwykes may also have been used to straighten girl's fingers in Medieval and Renaissance England similar to how we use braces to straighten teeth today or the ancient Chinese bound feet. The pyrwykes used for this purpose probably differed from thumbscrews by squeezing the fingers. According to the Tudor historian Eric Ives, Anne Boleyn sent a pair of pyrwykes to the nursemaid looking after her daughter, the future Elizabeth I. Presumably, this device was responsible for Elizabeth's elegant fingers.
