Model of the Prison and Holy Office of the Inquisition in Portugal.

£1,250 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

Rare. OCLC/COPAC records copies at the BL and Penn only. A shocking pamphlet designed to accompany an exhibition in London of a scale model of a notorious Portuguese prison showing various gruesome methods of torture. The author, William Young, went to Portugal in 1808 and settled in the city of Leiria with his Portuguese wife. He was later imprisoned on suspicion of being a spy and held in various prisons before his release was secured by the Earl of Aberdeen. Young published his account of his time in Portugal in 1828 as Portgal in 1828…with a Narrative of the Author’s Residence There, and of his Persecution and Confinement as a State Prisoner. The present pamphlet was designed to accompany an exhibition in London of models of various Portuguese prisons designed from careful measurements and sketches taken by Young and from his conversations with other prisoners. The newspapers advertisements at the time state that Young himself would often be present at the exhibition and help to show around visitors and explain the displays. The plates are very striking and give a powerful sense of what the exhibition must have looked like, they include a tribunal scene and various methods of torture including a man strapped to a bed with a funnel in his mouth while two deeply sinister figures pour water down the funnel. Another plate shows a man having fire drawn towards his feet and a torture method referred to as “Degradation” in which the prisoners are chained by an iron loop at the n

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