PORPENTINE

“Until the late 19th century, imprisonment alone was not regarded in Britain as a punishment, at least not by those imposing it.

Anyone unfortunate enough to have no money for food, and no one to bring it in for him, simply died of starvation.

Robert Hughes writes that jailors assumed the right to chain prisoners with as many iron fetters as they chose, charging for their removal one at a time, the so-called “trade of chains,” a practice that survived into the 1790s.^[22]

In the Bishop of Ely’s prison, prisoners unable to pay for “easement of irons” were chained to the floor on their backs, with a spiked collar around the neck and heavy iron bars over the legs, until they somehow found the money.^[23]

Prisoners were regularly beaten with a “bull’s pizzle,” a whip made from a bull’s penis, or tortured with thumbscrews and a skullcap, a vice for the head that weighed 12 lb (5.4 kg). What often finished them off was being forced to lie in the Strong Room, a windowless shed near the main sewer, next to cadavers awaiting burial, of which there was a plentiful supply.^[41]

Bliss was left in the Strong Room for three weeks wearing a skullcap (a heavy vice for the head), thumb screws, iron collar, leg irons, and irons round his ankles called sheers. One witness said the swelling in his legs was so bad that the irons on one side could no longer be seen for overflowing flesh. His wife, who was able to see him through a small hole in the door, testified that he was bleeding from the mouth and thumbs. He was given a small amount of food but the skullcap prevented him from chewing; he had to ask another prisoner, Susannah Dodd, to chew his meat for him. He was eventually taken to the sick ward, and died a few months later.^[52]“