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16th-century torture device
The Scavenger's daughter was a type of torture device invented during the reign of King Henry VIII of England.
Scavenger's daughter. Inquisition Exhibition at the Palacio de los Olvidados in Granada.
The Scavenger's Daughter (or Skevington's Daughter) was invented as an instrument of torture in the reign of Henry VIII by Sir Leonard Skevington, Lieutenant of the Tower of London,[1] a son of Sir William Skeffington (died 1535), Lord Deputy of Ireland, and of his first wife, Margaret Digby.[2] The device consisted of a metal rack shaped into an A-frame; the victim's head was strapped to the top point of the A, the hands at the midpoint, and the legs at the lower spread ends. The frame could fold, swinging the head down and forcing the knees up into a sitting position, compressing the body so as to force blood from the nose and ears.
The Scavenger's Daughter was conceived[citation needed] as the perfect complement to the Duke of Exeter's Daughter (the rack) because it worked according to the opposite principle - by compressing the body rather than stretching it.
The best-documented use is that on the Irishman Thomas Miagh, charged with being in contact with rebels in Ireland. It may be in connection with the Scavenger's Daughter that Miagh carved on the wall of the Beauchamp Tower in the Tower of London, "By torture straynge my truth was tried, yet of my libertie denied. 1581. Thomas Miagh."
Another victim of the Scavenger's Daughter was Thomas Cottam, an English Catholic priest and martyr from Lancashire, who suffered it twice in the 1580s before being released.[3][need quotation to verify] Cottam would eventually be executed in 1582 during the reign (1558-1603) of Henry's daughter, Elizabeth I. Likewise, on 10 December 1580, the priest Luke Kirby was subjected to it.[4]
The Scavenger's Daughter is also known as Skevington's gyves, as iron shackle, as the Stork (as in Italian cicogna) or as the Spanish A-frame. Further it is known as Skevington's daughter, from which the more commonly known folk etymology using "Scavenger" is derived. There is a Scavenger's daughter on display in the Tower of London museum.
↑ Compare: Dunlop, Robert (1897). "Skeffington, William". Dictionary of National Biography. Vol.52. pp.323–325.; page 325; third para from end: - "[William] Skeffington married, first, Margaret, daughter of Sir Everard Digby of Drystoke, by whom he had a son Thomas, his heir, who married Margaret, daughter and heiress of Edmund Stanhope of West Markham, Nottinghamshire; and, secondly, Ann, daughter of Sir John Digby of Kettleby in Leicestershire, by whom he had apparently a son Leonard, 'sometime lieutenant of the Tower,' and the inventor of an instrument of torture, known as 'Skevington's irons' or 'Skevington's daughter,' by which the body of the victim was completely doubled up until the head and feet were drawn together, the invention of which has been erroneously ascribed to his father, Sir William."
↑ Selwood, Dominic, England's Salem, Catholic Herald, 31 October 2018
Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury, also called Margaret Pole as a result of her marriage to Sir Richard Pole, was the only surviving daughter of George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, a brother of Kings Edward IV and Richard III, by his wife Isabel Neville. Margaret was one of just two women in 16th-century England to be a peeress in her own right without a husband in the House of Lords. As one of the few members of the House of Plantagenet to have survived the Wars of the Roses, she was executed in 1541 at the command of King Henry VIII, the second monarch of the House of Tudor, who was the son of her first cousin, Elizabeth of York. Pope Leo XIII beatified her as a martyr for the Roman Catholic Church on 29 December 1886.
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Richard Topcliffe was a priest hunter and practitioner of torture during the reign of Elizabeth I of England. A landowner and Member of Parliament, he became notorious as the government's chief enforcer of the penal laws against the practice of Catholicism.
The rack is a torture device consisting of a rectangular, usually wooden frame, slightly raised from the ground, with a roller at one or both ends. The victim's ankles are fastened to one roller and the wrists are chained to the other. 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. By means of pulleys and levers, this roller could be rotated on its own axis, thus straining the ropes until the sufferer's joints were dislocated and eventually separated. Additionally, if muscle fibres are stretched excessively, they lose their ability to contract, rendering them ineffective.
Catherine Carey, after her marriage Catherine Knollys and later known as both Lady Knollys and Dame Catherine Knollys,, was chief Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Elizabeth I, who was her first cousin.
Sir William Skeffington was an English knight who served as Lord Deputy of Ireland.
John Gerard was a priest of the Society of Jesus who operated a secret ministry of the illegal and underground Catholic Church in England during the Elizabethan era. He was born into the English nobility as the second son of Sir Thomas Gerard at Old Bryn Hall, near Ashton-in-Makerfield, Lancashire.
Luke Kirby was an English Catholic priest and martyr from the North of England, executed during the reign of Elizabeth I. He was is one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.
Thomas Cottam was an English Catholic priest and martyr from Lancashire, who was executed during the reign of Elizabeth I.
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Sir George Throckmorton of Coughton Court in Warwickshire, England, was a Member of Parliament during the reign of King Henry VIII.
Skeffington is a village and civil parish in the Harborough district of Leicestershire, England. It lies 11 miles/18 km east of Leicester on the A47 Uppingham road, between Billesdon and Tugby and Keythorpe. The population at the 2011 census was 223.
Sir William Askew was a gentleman at the court of Henry VIII of England. He has gone down in history as one of the jurors in the trial of Anne Boleyn and as the father of Anne Askew, one of only two women to be tortured at the Tower of London, alongside Margaret Cheyne.
Sir Nicholas Arnold (1507–1580) was an English courtier and politician, who held office as lord justice of Ireland.
Sir Henry Wyatt KB (1460–1537) was an English nobleman, knight, courtier, and politician.
Sir John Digby of Eye Kettleby, near Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, was Knight Marshal for King Henry VIII.
Thomas Skevington was an English Cistercian monk, abbot of Waverley Abbey and Beaulieu Abbey, and bishop of Bangor from 1509.
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