10 Worst Ways People Have Been Tortured To Death
1. Sawing
It's one thing to kill a person by slamming an axe down upon their neck to remove their head, but it's an entirely different affair to slowly saw them in half. That's exactly what death by sawing entailed and it was a horrific and brutal means of execution.
Like all tortures, there were various methods employed against victims depending on the severity of their crimes. Sawing the head off was the quickest means of execution, but hardly the only one. In most cases, a person was sawn in half along the torso, but for the most serious infractions, a person was bisected in a far more horrific way.
A victim was suspended upside-down with their legs splayed apart along a series of posts or within a frame. A saw was then placed upon the genitals and slowly passed back and forth as the blade descended through the groin and into the torso.
Because the person was upside-down, the blood loss was relatively limited with most of it flowing into the head. The person would therefore remain alive far longer than they otherwise should have or wanted to. Eventually, death came when the saw found their vital organs high in their torso, but shock and blood loss could also result in death prior to that point.