No. LXXXVI.
A chair made à-la-mode, and yet a stranger, being persuaded to sit down in it, shall have immediately his arms and thighs locked up, beyond his own power to loosen them.
NOTE.
Chairs of this description are stated to have been employed by the monks in the darker ages of Christianity; and were originally designed for the purpose of entrapping those who, possessing more courage, or less of prudence than their neighbours, ventured to penetrate the mysteries of papal seclusion. They were formed like a common arm-chair, and provided with two levers at the extremity of the arms; and the same number were fixed immediately below the seat. These, on pressing the cushion, were immediately discharged like a man-trap: four powerful springs acting on the levers for that purpose; and so firmly will the occupant of a chair of this description be fixed, that it will take the united force of four or five persons to free the prisoner. A similar chair was exhibited at the Villa Borghese, Rome, in 1644—"They shew'd us also a chayre wch catches any who sitts downe in it so as not to be able to stir out, by certaine springs concealed in the armes and back thereoff which at sitting downe surprizes a man on the suddaine, locking him in by the armes or thighs, after a true tretcherous Italian guise."—Vide Evelyn's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 107.