A rolling example of economic sadism
June 11, 2017 5:36 AM   Subscribe

The tramp chair was a strange bit of fin de siecle sadism that made its way to your vacation postcard. Featured in Popular Mechanics and an inspiration to escape artists, it was on display in 2015(video) and will be so again this year.
posted by selfnoise (23 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
The chair resembles some of the ancient instruments of torture used by the Inquisition, in being only moderately formidable as to appearance, but a terror to those who are forced to spend only a few hours within its confines.

Compares his invention to torture devices of Inquisition, and is very proud of this.

One hopes his inhumanity was rewarded in a similar fashion as the inventor of the Brazen Bull was:

Perillos said to Phalaris: "His screams will come to you through the pipes as the tenderest, most pathetic, most melodious of bellowings." Perillos believed he would receive a reward for his invention. Instead, Phalaris, who was disgusted by these words, ordered its horn sound system to be tested on Perillos himself.
posted by leotrotsky at 5:58 AM on June 11, 2017 [12 favorites]


I am sure torturing the homeless was an effective solution to Gilded Age homelessness, really getting at, as it clearly does, the underlying causes. Oh, what a Superior Age! No wonder so many seem to long for those times!
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:03 AM on June 11, 2017 [21 favorites]


He steps in for his first ride in the chair with alacrity, finds it not unpleasant for the first ten minutes, then begins to feel uncomfortable, gets cramped and finds his bones aching, and before the end of an hour's ride he is yelling murder and dynamite and promising all kinds of reformation if only he can get out.

There's some low-hanging jokes about budget airlines here.

Tried to figure out what happened to the inventor, but the only bit of information I found was that he died less than 10 years after writing that article.
posted by effbot at 6:04 AM on June 11, 2017 [10 favorites]


Sorry, I forgot my dictum of "no snarky "reverse statements." This was horrible, and I'm endlessly appalled at the mindset (not remotely extinct today) that society can "fix" the behavior of poor and desperate people by deliberately making their lives worse.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:07 AM on June 11, 2017 [3 favorites]


Satanism.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:23 AM on June 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


That has the look of something many airlines would be interested in using to more efficiently fit in passengers and ensure compliance with crew instructions, assuming a lightweight version made from aluminum and carbon fiber. You would be strapped into the chair at check-in, providing TSA with an easy to manage conveyor belt of inert passengers for screening and groping, and then be wheeled onto the plane and stacked like folding chairs. A small funnel on top would allow the flight crew to pour in water and peanuts on longer flights. Experienced travelers will remember to wear an astronaut diaper on long flights or where delays are expected.

But joking aside, this perfectly encapsulates a certain attitude towards the poor, where you want them not just out of sight, but also out of the county and with no access to the benefits and company of society. It doesn't sound like it actually gained wide usage, which is good, but I am sure there are plenty of people today who would welcome this as a proposal for reducing visible homelessness and vagrancy.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:27 AM on June 11, 2017 [7 favorites]


Other fin de siecle sadism in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave included, of course, torturing people to death in the public spectacles of lynchings, which you could also get postcards of.
posted by XMLicious at 6:35 AM on June 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


Short Baader Meinhoff aside: I'm reading Stephen King's It and just passed the section where he spends s couple pages describing the Tramp Chair. Looks as bad as it sounded, thanks for the links!
posted by midmarch snowman at 6:37 AM on June 11, 2017 [8 favorites]


Is there any evidence that it was ever used? A letter from 1909 in The Strand mentions that the Maine Legislature had a highly amusing debate about the chair, and that it was not adopted by law enforcement. I think Baker's tone is right in line with the humor of the period (his original letter is from 1899) and while he may have been semi-serious about his invention, the whole thing seems more like a put-on or novelty. The Popular Mechanics story is from 1912.
The Wikipedia entry is from 1 source and there are no actual accounts of anyone being locked up in it.
posted by Ideefixe at 7:04 AM on June 11, 2017 [8 favorites]


We're still using the Tramp Chair. It's been dismantled but its component parts are doing its work in hiding.

You get arrested for a vagrancy-related offense or for using substances to escape your suffering and your mugshot goes up on an official local government Facebook page for public humiliation, or a private corporation displays it on their site until you pay an extortive fee to have it removed.

In a politician's bid to utilize the public's disgust for you in the service of tax cuts for the wealthy, you are refused access to medical care and the rest of our evaporating social safety net. If you get cancer, it won't be detected until it's mostly eaten you up. Your minor and easily fixable but visually humiliating medical condition will never be treated.

You're a homeless drug user. The vacant house you've been trying to escape this world in is raided. A cameraman from COPS is with them and your squalor and sorrow are captured under the suddenly bright lights. It's broadcast around the world in endless syndication and people ten thousand miles away watch you for entertainment. Bad boy, whatcha gonna do?

You've been here since before you could walk and talk but the government doesn't think you belong here. Arrests are up but deportations are down: someone wants to get paid for you to be locked up in a prison camp simply because you're the wrong kind of poor, and it pleases so many millions of citizens that they're getting em' out.

A sizable portion of the country is in the Tramp Chair. If you don't feel the iron around you, you're either lucky or you haven't noticed it yet.
posted by Rust Moranis at 7:19 AM on June 11, 2017 [62 favorites]


Wasn't this mentioned in Stephen King's IT?
posted by jonmc at 7:32 AM on June 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


With minor alteration* it could be utilized as the Trump Chair.

*a little more room for his fat ass
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:16 AM on June 11, 2017


Well, I did read it as Trump Chair first time through. Sounds like something he wouldn't mind slapping his name onto, if he were paid a small fee.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 9:27 AM on June 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


I have seen tramp chairs (well, pics and descriptions) before, but they were different than this. They weren't a cage, but a chair with straps that was studded with knobs all over it. This design is interesting.
posted by Samizdata at 9:30 AM on June 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


jonmc, thank you, I think it was. As soon as I saw the words "tramp chair" I had this memory of reading about a child being strapped into this chair and kept there for just a minute too long, but I couldn't place it. I think you're right. If memory serves, it was Mike.
posted by Night_owl at 9:44 AM on June 11, 2017 [2 favorites]


Whoops, sorry midmarch, I missed your comment.
posted by Night_owl at 9:46 AM on June 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


The letter to the editor from Walter C Steadman in the first link criticizing the device and its inventor is worth the click.
posted by notyou at 10:37 AM on June 11, 2017 [4 favorites]


This delightful artifact of Maine barbarity should adorn the state seal, visible above the head of Paul LePage as he seats himself behind his desk in Governor's office each morning.

LePage on penal reform for drug traffickers: "What I think we ought to do is bring the guillotine back. We could have public executions."

LePage on drug dealers from urban areas: "These type of guys that come from Connecticut, New York . . . Half the time they impregnate a young, white girl before they leave, which is the real sad thing because then we have another issue we gotta deal with down the road."

LePage on global warming: "Everybody looks at the negative effects of global warming, but with the ice melting, the Northern Passage has opened up."

If you have the stomach, these and similar quotes can be found here.
posted by Gordion Knott at 12:04 PM on June 11, 2017 [6 favorites]


It's a strange thing that some people are willing to put others in agonizing pain or oppress them, but just shooting them is evil. Reminds me of Kritzinger's opposition to the Final Solution. Deportation, pauperization, sterilization, slave labor, concentration camps, that's fine. Can't just shoot them though. That'd be evil.
You have to really go out of your way to be a sadist.
posted by Smedleyman at 3:38 PM on June 11, 2017 [5 favorites]


When I first looked at the photo, I thought it was just a weird chair with holes in it that would be uncomfortable to sit on. Then I realized the victim sits inside it, and egad man.
posted by 4ster at 5:25 PM on June 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


I cannot for the life of me understand the mind that creates torture devices.

I cannot for the life of me understand the mind that proudly boasts of having created torture devices.

If I were the company of a person with such a mind, I would surely feel a sense of danger and would take pains to avoid that person.

Now I wonder how this guy died. Maybe his neighbors didn't take too kindly to his "creativity".
posted by vignettist at 7:44 PM on June 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


I too am skeptical that this was regularly used. There would be more of a historical trail.
posted by LarryC at 7:54 AM on June 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


Given the treatment of convicts and abuse of people at most levels of society in the U.S., the homeless being tortured as a reprisal for "vagrancy" or something like that is certainly believable, but the illustrated device publicized in 1899 doesn't seem practical in a few ways—it seems pointlessly expensive to make it out of iron rather than wood or something like that, much less slightly modify a normal chair to make it more uncomfortable, and the design looks as though it would be difficult to adjust for people of different sizes.

This journal article: “The Technology of the Gibbet” , International Journal of Historical Archaeology 2014; 18(4): 668–699. doi: 10.1007/s10761-014-0275-0, PMCID: PMC4372825, about the gibbeting of executed prisoners in England and Wales before the mid-19th-century, mentions the expense and one-off nature of gibbeting irons and cages, showing much less substantial constructions in the illustrations made of only a few iron bands (though, iron would have been relatively less expensive by the early 20th century in the U.S.), and mentions similar problems with designing them for adjustability.
posted by XMLicious at 8:53 AM on June 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


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