Did The Iron Maiden Actually Exist?

It's considered one of the most vicious medieval torture devices. The iron maiden was a box large enough to fit a human. The inside was lined with spikes. An unlucky person would be forced inside the chamber, and when his torturers closed the door, the spikes would pierce the body.

The iron maiden wasn't a quick death. The placement of the spikes guaranteed that. Instead, the victim would slowly bleed out from multiple wounds, none of which were enough for an instant end.

Except there's no evidence the iron maiden actually existed during the medieval period.

No references to the iron maiden exist during the medieval period. The first reference to the device dates to the late 18th century, followed by a growing number of mentions in the 1800s. 

It wasn't until the 19th century that iron maidens began appearing across Europe. The Chicago World's Fair in 1893 even featured one, spreading tales of gruesome medieval barbarians even wider. The first iron maiden was actually created by Victorian collector Matthew Peacock, who used medieval materials to construct the device. Peacock then donated it to a museum, where, not surprisingly, visitors believed it was real.

In the late 18th century, philosopher Johann Philipp Siebenkees recorded the first description of an iron maiden. Siebenkees wrote about the device in a guidebook about Nuremberg, Germany. According to Siebenkees, a 1515 execution used the iron maiden, described as an Egyptian mummy case lined on the inside with spikes.

"Slowly, so that the very sharp points penetrated his arms, and his legs in several places, and his belly and chest, and his bladder and the root of his member, and his eyes, and his shoulder, and his buttocks," Siebenkees wrote, "but not enough to kill him, and so he remained making great cry and lament for two days, after which he died."

The description was so vivid that many believed Siebenkees, and the myth of the iron maiden was born.

Actual iron maidens appear in multiple torture museums across Europe. If it wasn't a real device, where did all the iron maidens in museums come from?

Most of them were probably built in the 19th century - specifically for museums. That's what Matthew Peacock did with the first iron maiden, which he built himself. Similarly, the famous Iron Maiden of Nuremberg was built in the early 19th century, long after the medieval era. Rather than being used as torture devices, these iron maidens were built to terrify museum visitors.

During the Age of Enlightenment, many looked back on the medieval era as a barbaric time in human history. It's not surprising, then, that an 18th-century myth about a medieval torture device caught on.

The Middle Ages were an uncivilized, barbaric time, according to many Enlightened thinkers. As proof, they pointed to the iron maiden, a brutal device that only a medieval sadist could have invented. One of the popularizers of the iron maiden in the 19th century reportedly said the device was meant to "show the dark spirit of the Middle Ages in contrast to the progress of humanity." 

Except the iron maiden was actually created by an 18th-century historian, who was so convinced of his own era's superiority that he invented a hoax about the past.

Stories about the iron maiden continued to circulate in the 19th century, sometimes growing quite elaborate. One rumor claimed the Catholic Church used iron maidens during the Inquisition as a way to torment non-believers. The woman's head atop the device was meant to be the Virgin Mary, according to the story. Targets of the iron maiden would see the Virgin Mary as their last sight before being sealed inside the device.

The Virgin Mary might seem an unusual reference on a torture device, but her presence was meant to symbolize the victory of religion over heresy. The woman's head on the iron maiden earned it several other names, including the Virgin and Jungfer - German for spinster.