New blog, hopefully interesting for users to read and look at some fine photo's from the past. Kicking off this week I will theme the photo's around Prison.
Here we can see inmates put through their paces on some kind of wooden structure called the 'Treadmill'.
The really interesting thing is that the treadmill is huge, a wheel similar to those seen in water mills. The major difference being the inmates turn the wheel not water. If they got tired and couldn't keep up with the pace they would have to hold on to the side groves or risky injury falling down.
In the early part of the century prisoners were put on the treadmill for up to six hours a day. It had no useful purpose. It was just monotonous hard work. In 1843 the Prison Inspectors' General Survey stated that the treadmill was 'an improper punishment for females and boys under 14 years of age'.
This photo is from Pentonville Prison in England 1895.