THE modern concept of hard labour springs from the 19th century belief that prison was meant to punish and break the prisoner's will.
Originally introduced as a replacement for transportation to the colonies in the mid-18th century, it was characterised by its pointless monotony.
Some inmates were placed on a treadmill and forced to walk for hours without purpose. A similar puni
shment involved the turning of a crank handle repeatedly, with no purpose other than to reach a necessary number of turns to earn a meal.
One particularly arduous punishment was that of shot drill, in which the prisoner had to lift a heavy cannon-ball then carry it a measured distance, put it down, move back three paces and repeat the task.
Other more constructive but no less demanding tasks included picking oakum; pulling apart tarred rope into its fibres, so that it could be used again, producing the expression "money for old rope"; or separating and tearing up rags.
Where the prisoners were given tasks with definable aims, they often found themselves in labour gangs, forced to carry out a variety of laborious tasks such as breaking rocks or building roads and even new jails.
One of the most famous people to suffer the sentence of hard labour was Oscar Wilde, who served two years in jail for gross indecency. He endured the indignity of being forced to walk the treadmill and pick oakum, and his prison experience left him a broken man.
In America, the practice of using chain gangs to dig ditches and break rocks was abandoned in 1955, though there has been a reintroduction of the system in recent years.
It was only with the Prison Act of 1898 that hard labour was officially abolished in the UK.
The full article contains 303 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
