WOODEN HORSE/SPANISH DONKEY

One of the torment gadgets amid the Spanish Inquisition and medieval ages, this is presumably a standout amongst the most frightful of all of them. The casualty is put on the back of, stripped, on a jackass like device, which is really a vertical wooden board with a sharp V-wedge on top of it. After that, the torturer would add fluctuating weights to the casualty's feet until at long last the wedge cut through the casualty's body.The first variation of the wooden horse is a triangular device with one end of the triangle pointing upward, mounted on a saw-horse like support. The victim is made to straddle the triangular "horse." Weights or additional restraints were often added to keep the victim from falling off. A punishment similar to this called "riding the rail" was used during the American colonial period and later. The victim was often carried through town in this predicament, often in conjunction with the punishment of tarring and feathering. The crotch can be injured and the victim could be left unable to walk without pain.
While the device was designed for women, there are accounts of male victims as well. The Jesuit Relations say that in 1646, a man "was sentenced to make reparation, by the Civil authority, and to mount the Chevalet," and "a public blasphemer, was put on the Chevalet. He acknowledged his fault, saying that he had well deserved punishment, and came of his own accord to confess, that evening or the next day," and that another man "acted at the fort as such a glutton, that he was put on the Chevalet, on which he was ruptured.