Iron chair
torture device
An iron chair is a torture device that has several different variations depending on its origin and use throughout history. It is also known as the Chinese torture chair or the torture chair. In all cases, the victim was seated on several strips or plates of brass and placed over an open flame and slowly roasted alive. In other variations, the victim was tied to an iron armchair and then slowly pushed nearer and nearer to a blazing fire." Other versions of the chair had the addition of small sharp spikes which lined the back, seat, armrests and leg rests. The number of spikes ranged from 500 to 1,500.
Origin
The iron chair originated from Europe's Middle Ages, though it was used around the world in different variations as well.
Lead
The iron chair was a torture device that was added to dungeons in the Middle Ages. It experienced its prime in popularity in Europe. The iron chair has many different variations depending on its location but they consisted of 500-1500 spikes covering the whole chair with a hole on the seat for fire and coal to be placed under.
The iron chair was used as punishment.
“Iron chair” enters the record as torture device. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Iron, chair and torture can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1807995. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1500.
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This entry incorporates text from “Iron chair” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.