I apologize for the lack of facts over the last few months. I have been dealing with some family illness and have been quite busy and preoccupied. I do plan on revitalizing the Morbid Fact Du Jour in a few weeks and as part of that I will be moving the newsletter from Mailchimp to Substack. Since Intuit purchased Mailchimp the cost of sending out the newsletter has been steadily rising (currently $27/month). As of today, at least, Substack provides a free service. Don’t worry, I won’t go about making the MFDJ something you have to pay for, but the reduced costs will allow me more spending money for MFDJ material.
I will provide more information on the move to Substack nearer to the time it occurs. As always, thank you for your support and stay morbid in my absence!
Today’s Flogged Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Whipping was a favorite form of punishment in the Bridewells of England and of other countries. The name “Bridewell,” as designation for a house of correction, was first applied to a penal workhouse in London situated near Saint Bride’s Well and given to the city by King Edward VI in 1553, to be thereforward known as the City Bridewell. It intended, in the words of Bishop Ridley, “for the stumpet and idle person, for the rioter that consumeth all, and for the vagabond that will abide in no place”. Under a painting of the King which hung in the workhouse, appeared the following:
This Edward of fair memory the Sixt,
In whom with greatness goodness was commixt,
Gave this Bridewell, a palace in olden times,
For a chastening house of vagrant crimes.
The Original City Bridewell, formerly a palace built for Henry VIII
Young women and young men both who were sent to the Bridewell appear to have been flogged unmercifully upon the faintest of pretexts. They were stripped and whipped in the presence of the governors of the prison for offences against the regulations; they were flogged while at work in the prison on the slightest provocation and for the most trivial offenses. Even so comparatively recently as the nineteenth century, in certain South German prisons, according to the revelations contained in Lenchen im Zuchthause (“Nell in Bridewell”), young girls were whipped unmercifully on entering and leaving the prisons, and often these whippings were performed in public. The author describes how an unfortunate fifteen-year-old boy was fastened down upon the whipping-bench, and with birches especially prepared for the purpose by steeping for hours in water, was thrashed on his naked backside until the blood course down his legs. And all this terrible punishment was imposed, not for any crime, not for any misdemeanor, not even for the breaking of a rule or a regulation, but because of an infliction calling for medical treatment and sympathy, to wit, bed-wetting in the night resulting from incontinence of urine.
Culled from: The History of Corporal Punishment
Prisoner Du Jour!
Prisoner card from Joliet Prison, Illinois. Handsome young John Alloway got himself in some trouble!
