  Usually a castle's dungeon was not down below, but in the castle's largest tower. This tower, called the 'keep', was originally used as a safe home for the lord of the castle and his family. Quite often, however, it eventually became a handy storage spot, and a useful place to keep prisoners. Located near the gatehouse, the prisoners in the keep could be watched closely by the gate guards. Nevertheless, some castles did have lower rooms, or a 'pit', set aside for the containment of prisoners. Sometimes the whole castle itself became a prison. Of these, the Tower of London is probably the best known, having confined some of England's most famous persons. The treatment of prisoners was not uniform or consistent anywhere in Europe or the Middle East; it largely depended on the nature of the person in charge. Needless to say, it was usually dreadful (and still is today in some countries). Prisoners were often put to death, using such techniques as the gallows (hanging), the guillotine, the chopping block, or by being 'drawn and quartered' (pulled apart by four horses). 
While confined to the keep or dungeon, prisoners could be kept in chains. Sometimes the dungeon itself provided the immobilization. The oubliette was a very brutal type of prison. Used throughout Europe and the Middle East, these early castle prisons were shaped like cylinders. The only entrance into the windowless oubliette was through a trap door in the ceiling, which opened into the floor of the guardroom above, and was too high for the prisoners to reach; the room was escape-proof. Prisoners were tied to a rope and then lowered into the oubliette; they received food the same way. Sometimes the oubliette was located below ground level, so that occasionally the pit filled with water that seeped up from the earthen floor, drowning the prisoner. Some oubliette dungeons in Scotland were shaped like a bottle, so that the prisoner could never lie down. Many unusual methods for torturing prisoners were devised over the centuries, some as simple as burning with hot coals, others requiring complicated devices. Find out more about torture devices ... if you have the stomach for it! |