Abstract
Abstract In 1874 Victor Hugo declared that torture had ‘ceased to exist’. Until about a century earlier, the practice of torture had been central to the administration of criminal justice in Europe. Suspects would be ‘put to the question’ on the basis that only confessions could establish truth, and only torture could produce valid confessions. From the early 18th century, however, European states began to enact legislation to abolish the use of torture. This reform had been urged by Voltaire, Montesquieu and perhaps most famously Cesare Beccaria, who wrote at length on the immorality and irrationality of treating torture as the ‘crucible of truth’.
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