Today’s Repetitive Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
One of the punishments used by jails in England in the 19th century to keep the prisoners from getting into idle mischief was the crank, a drum filled with earth or sand, which the convict had to turn by a crank handle. Another was the shot-drill, which required prisoners to stand in rows round a square with about nine feet between each man. On order a 24-lb. cannon ball had to be picked up and carried to the next man in the line, dropped before him, and back to the original stance where another ball was waiting.
Culled from: Crimes and Punishment, the Illustrated Crime Encyclopedia, Volume 16
Prisoners engaging in the Shot-Drill:
Needles and Pins-uh!
The following is culled from Special Cases: Natural Anomalies and Historical Monsters
“Needles taken from the body of an insane woman after her death. From the collection of the Warren Museum, Harvard University.”
BTW… The Warren Museum? A new morbid sightseeing destination!
So damned weird… (or Sisyphean, or Kafkaesque…whichever literary nightmare word you prefer). Why couldn’t the prison system find them useful work to do? Or was the very meaninglessness of it part of the punishment?