CRUEL DEATHS.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 362, 24 April 1889, Page 5

CRUEL DEATHS.

ff 1 } OR the most inhuman and „!lf rWffiT cruel deatjhs w © have to go | MM I to-day to Central Asia, ', II i| C 1 where the victim is buried in I if} 'lIE i the earth up to his shoulders, P ■ and there left miserably to 1 iP diG- « Ifti ' Still more barbaric in i cruolty were the executions of the past, done in the t( rture-rooms of the prisons, where judges /-ought to press avowals by the most inhuman means. One of the licst known of the medieval methods of execution, perhaps, is the socalled Iron Vircfin, a model of which may still be seen in the great museum atNurem- : berg. There were many forms of this dreadful invention. One was the figure of the Virgin which cla.sped its victims in arms furnished with poignards and then opening them dropped the body down a trap on a sorb of cradle of swords, arranged so as to cut it to pieces, a running stream below clearing all traces of it away. The model now pi*eservecl in Nuremberg, represents a Nuremberg maiden ot the sixteenth century, in the long mantle generally worn. The front of the figure is provided with opening: doors, and then it is seen that tho inside of the infernal thing is provided with sharp iron spikes, which, when the victim was placed within, pierced every portion of the poor wretch's body.