TORTURE 



5846 



TORY 



the body. There are three species of tortoise 

 in the United States, the most important of 

 which is the gopher tortoise, found from South 

 Carolina to Florida and as far west as Texas. 

 It is a clumsy, slow-moving creature, of a dull 

 brown color. An average specimen weighs 

 about nine pounds and has a carapace eleven 

 and one-half inches long and eight inches wide. 

 This tortoise frequents dry, sandy areas and 

 digs a long underground tunnel, which serves 

 as a retreat in bad weather. A race of giant 

 tortoises, now nearly extinct, formerly inhab- 

 ited the Galapagos Islands and other sea island 

 groups. See TURTLE. 



Tortoise Shell, a beautiful, partly transparent 

 substance used in inlay work and in making 

 combs, boxes, buttons, spectacle rims and va- 

 rious ornamental objects. Though the name 

 tortoise is properly applied only to land turtles, 

 tortoise shell is produced from the horny plates 

 of certain species of sea turtles, notably the 

 hawksbill. The plates are so thin that it is 

 necessary to weld a number together, and this 

 is accomplished by heating them in .oil or boil- 

 ing them in water. By this process they be- 

 come soft and can then be joined together 

 through heat and pressure, and molded into de- 

 sired forms. Genuine tortoise shell is very ex- 

 pensive, and is imitated in horn and celluloid. 

 It takes a high polish and is marketed in va- 

 rious shades of brown, variegated with patches 

 of clear, amber yellow. G.B.D. 



Consult Ditmars' Reptiles of the World. 



TORTURE, tawr'ture, the infliction of severe 

 physical pain by the use of the rack, scourge, 

 stake and other instruments and devices. The 

 American Indians and other primitive peoples 

 were accustomed to inflict torture on captured 

 enemies, but civilized nations, as well, have not 

 scrupled to make use of this practice, both in 

 religious and civil procedure. In Europe in the 

 Middle Ages torture was commonly resorted to 

 by Church and state to procure confessions of 

 guilt and to punish offenders, and among its 

 victims were such men as Savonarola and John 

 Huss. By the sixteenth century public senti- 

 ment had been generally aroused against the 

 practice, but it lingered in various sections of 

 Europe until the early part of the nineteenth 

 century, and even as late as the Russian revo- 

 lution of 1917 flogging was the lot of Siberian 

 exiles. The various devices and methods that 

 have been employed by torturers are numerous 

 and complicated, and it would seem that hu- 

 man ingenuity could have gone no further in 

 devising ways of inflicting bodily misery. For 



a peculiar method of deciding-the guilt or in- 

 nocence of an accused by torture, see ORDEAL 

 AND COMBAT, TRIAL BY. 



TORY, toh'ri, from the end of the seven- 

 teenth until the end of the nineteenth century, 

 the name of one of the two great political par- 

 ties in Great Britain. The word is derived from 

 the Irish Tar a Ri, "Come, oh king!", a call 

 familiar to the Irish loyalists who fought for 

 King Charles I. Under the Commonwealth 

 almost any kind of a bandit or outlaw was a 

 Tory, and after the revolution of 1688 the term 

 was freely applied to the Irishmen who waged 

 a guerilla warfare on behalf of King James II. 

 Tory was about the most offensive epithet in 

 the vocabulary of an English Protestant. 



Meanwhile the word was used in a political 

 sense, one which is more familiar. After the 

 Restoration there was a "country party" and a 

 "court party," but in 1679, when Charles II was 

 in the midst of his quarrels with Parliament, 

 these parties called each other the worst names 

 they could think of Whigs and Tories. To 

 call a man a Tory was to class him with the 

 Irish bandits, and the term was used in derision 

 of the members of the court party, who refused 

 to support the bill for the exclusion of the 

 Duke of York, later James II, from succession 

 to the throne because he was a Catholic. In 

 time the origin of these words was forgotten, 

 and they became the official party titles. 



During the eighteenth century the Tory 

 party included most of the small landowners 

 and the clergy, while the Whigs were the 

 landed aristocracy and the merchants and small 

 tradespeople. Under George III the Tories 

 managed to curb the power of the great Whig 

 landowners, who had controlled Parliament 

 through "rotten" or "pocket" boroughs. They 

 now naturally relied on the power of the Crown 

 and through the influence of the younger Pitt 

 added the principle of reliance on the people. 

 The French Revolution upset this arrangement. 

 The new democracy, which quickly spread to 

 England, was too bitter a pill for the landed 

 interests as well as the king, and the ranks of 

 the Tories soon included most of the former 

 Whig landlords. The Whigs now became the 

 party of progress, while the Tories, in spite 

 of Pitt's efforts, became identified in the minds 

 of the people with the general principle that 

 the existing state of affairs was satisfactory. 

 After the Whigs secured the passage of the 

 Reform Bill of 1832, the Tories ceased to be a 

 power, but their place is practically filled by 

 the Conservative party of the present time. 



