IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 227 offered for it was, that it was difficult to prevent the escape of prisoners, unless they were loaded with clanking irons, owing to the insecurity of the buildings in which they were confined. This cruelty was not only practised in the case of persons actually in gaol, but those who were on their way to it were subjected to the same hardship. There were no police vans or any other vehicles of the kind to convey no police them from Court to prison; they were marched through ^*"'*" the streets in gangs, handcuffed to one another, or linked to a long chain, men and women alike. Anyone who had money to pay for a vehicle might have one, provided the escort warder thought fit to make such a concession, or was honest enough to get the vehicle after receiving the money. Prison vans did not come into use until 1827, when " cara- vans,^' as they were called, wore introduced.* Flogging was a popular form of punishment from very Flogging, early times in England. It was freely administered to all kinds of petty offenders — thieves, prostitutes, street brawlers, rogues and vagabonds ; the punishment taking place some- times in public and sometimes in the gaols. When it took place in public the offender was tied to a cart's tail and flogged through the streets, or at the market-place. In the time of Elizabeth, the whipping-post was an established institution The whip- in every town and village. The municipal records contain frequent allusions to the practice. The fee paid to the officer of justice was usually fourpenco in each case. Some- times women were employed to whip offenders of their own sex. By an Act passed in the reign of Elizabeth, every vagabond was to be publicly whipped and then sent to the parish where he was born ; and the law remained in force till the reign of Anne. The poet Cowper, in one of his letters, describes the flogging of a young thief through the town of Olney. In London, the principal places for punish- BrideweU. ment of this description appear to have been. the Bridewells, or houses of correction. The spectacle was open to the public and was largely attended by sightseers. De Foe has • Griffiths, vol. i, p. 165. Digitized by Google
