快猫短视频

In the early 19th century, a strange machine began to appear in Britain鈥檚 jails. It looked like a giant paddle wheel and was powered by prisoners who were forced to tread through their sentences one step at a time. For convicts, the prison treadmill meant long days of monotonous labour. For prison governors, it meant long strings of tedious calculations.

To ensure that prisoners were treated equally from one jail to the next鈥攅ach man (and sometimes woman) putting in as much effort as the next鈥攇overnors would set a target of so many 鈥渇eet ascent鈥� per day. Each inmate had to do their share, climbing the equivalent of almost half the height of Mount Everest.

How long a prisoner must toil to reach the target depended on the number of men on the wheel, how high each step was and how many steps they trod each minute. Fortunately for the less numerate governors, in 1824 Robert Bate, a London maker of mathematical instruments, invented this slide rule that gave them the answer in seconds.

We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones, We turned the dusty drill: We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns, And sweated on the mill: But in the heart of every man Terror was lying still

WHEN Oscar Wilde wrote the Ballad of Reading Gaol, he was all too familiar with the prison treadmill. In 1895, Wilde was convicted of gross indecency, sentenced to two years鈥� hard labour and sent to Pentonville Prison in London. For a month he sweated on the mill for six hours a day. The mindless and exhausting labour ruined his health and left him feeling so low his gaolers feared he would kill himself. Wilde was moved, first to Wandsworth, then to Reading. Wilde was also unlucky. He was one of the last prisoners to work a treadmill.

In the second half of the 18th century, Britain鈥檚 jails were due for a much-needed overhaul. Conditions were chaotic and squalid, and punishments varied from one jail to another. No attempt was made to rehabilitate prisoners until the 1770s, when prison reformers such as John Howard started campaigning for sweeping changes. Jailers were to be given salaries instead of living off what they could extort from prisoners.

Then came the Hard Labour Act of 1779, in which Parliament decreed that prisoners should be given useful work, a move intended in part to reform criminals by bringing order and discipline to their lives. The act specified that prisoners should be given 鈥渓abour of the hardest and most servile kind in which drudgery is chiefly required and where the work is little liable to be spoiled by ignorance, neglect or obstinacy鈥�.

Convicts were given a range of jobs, from turning capstans and crank handles to power mills, to cutting and polishing stones and weaving sacks. Although they needed little skill to perform such tasks, they were not especially enthusiastic about hard work, and productivity was low.

But the idea that the nation鈥檚 prison population might contribute something to society while learning to live useful lives encouraged one young man to invent a machine to improve their output. In 1818, William Cubitt鈥攚ho later became one of the most famous engineers of Victorian Britain鈥攄esigned the prison treadmill.

Cubitt鈥檚 first treadmill consisted of two interlocking wheels, each 5 feet in diameter and 20 feet long, with 24 stepping boards. It was installed in 1819 at the jail at Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, where it kept 28 prisoners busy for 10 hours a day鈥攚ith short rests鈥攊n summer, fewer hours in winter.

Cubitt鈥檚 notion was hardly new. Roman reliefs carved 2000 years ago show groups of slaves crawling around the bottom of what looks like a gigantic hamster wheel, unloading ships鈥� cargoes. The difference was that Cubitt鈥檚 wheel had steps on the outside, which made it impossible for any prisoner to avoid doing his share of the work. Once you were on the wheel, you had to keep going or fall off.

The treadmill caught on quickly. In 1821, Cubitt installed a 10-wheel treadmill at the new Brixton House of Correction. This huge device could accommodate 126 convicts at a time. By 1842, treadmills had been set up in 109 of Britain鈥檚 200 jails.

Cubitt imagined all this work would be put to good use. 鈥淭here would be no difficulty in establishing a mill or manufactory near the boundary wall of a prison through which only a single shaft or axle would have to pass to communicate the power and motion,鈥� he wrote. And to begin with, treadmills were harnessed to grind grain, crush rocks and drive looms.

But by the 1820s, with troops back from the Napoleonic Wars, the country had a surplus of cheap labour.

Still the Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline鈥攁 Quaker group that believed hard work was good for body and soul鈥攁ctively encouraged the use of treadmills. Stepping in silence hour after hour offered inmates a chance to reflect on their sins. There was evidence鈥攁nd the society had testimonials from doctors to prove it鈥攖hat the work improved the health of both men and women. Prisoners, not surprisingly, hated the machines, but that was all to the good if they acted as a deterrent against future crimes.

The wheel had become little more than a means of regulating and measuring the amount of work each prisoner did. New technology was introduced to make monitoring the work simpler. Brakes were fitted to slow the wheel to a manageable speed, and counters attached that rang a bell after so many turns of the wheel. And there was Robert Bate鈥檚 Sliding Scale for Tread Wheel Labour, designed to allow the work done to 鈥渂e rendered nearly uniform at every prison鈥攁n object of much importance to the prison discipline of the country鈥�.

Within a few decades, ideas about the sort of punishment meted out to prisoners changed again and pointless labour of this kind fell out of favour. In 1877, Parliament limited time on a treadmill to one month. By the time Wilde was jailed only 39 treadmills were left, and three years later the Prison Act of 1898 signalled their end.

Ironically, vast numbers of people now choose to do exactly what so many prisoners were forced to do. Anyone who has spent time on a stepping machine at the gym has an inkling of what it鈥檚 like to sweat on the mill. The difference is, they can get off when they鈥檝e had enough.