Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/294

274 his whip, away goes the cart, and there swings my gentleman kicking in the air. The hangman does not give himself the trouble to put them out of their pain; but some of their friends or relations do it for them."

But if such accounts as these are gruesome, more gruesome still are those which describe the terrible prisons in which many eighteenth-century debtors languished till they died.

"A prison is the grave of the living, where they are shut up from the world, and the worms that gnaw upon them, their own thoughts, the gaoler and their creditors." Horrible, indeed, were the dungeons into which our forefathers were thrown for debt; heavily laden with chains, with no regular allowance of food, their beds of straw only, with bad smells and dirt indescribable, they lingered in agony, till death relieved their sufferings.

Of lesser punishments there were divers sorts all over the country. By the side of many a duck pond on the village green stood the stocks, wherein vagrants, drunkards and others were securely fastened by the heels until they had repented of their sins. Near by was the ducking-stool, wherein bakers who served underweight bread, witches, or scolding women were seated and