as axiomatic and beyond
the need of proof.[1834]

+573. Punishments for crime.+ Mediaeval punishments for criminals,
leaving out of account heretics and witches, bore witness to the
grossness, obscenity, inhumanity, and ferocity of the mores of that age.
The punishments were not thought wrong or questionable. There was no
revolt against them in any one's mind. They were judged right, wise, and
necessary, by full public opinion. They were not on the outer boundary
of the mores, but in the core of them. Schultz[1835] says that the
romancers have not exaggerated the horrors of mediaeval dungeons. Many of
them still remain and are shown to horrified tourists. There was no
arrangement for having them cleaned by anybody, so that in time they
were sure to become horribly dangerous to health. They were small, dark,
damp, cold, and infested by vermin, rats, snakes, etc.[1836] Several
dungeons in the Bastille were so constructed that the prisoners could
neither sit, stand, nor lie, in comfort.[1837] Fiendish ingenuity was
expended on the invention of refinements of suffering, and executions
offered public exhibitions in which the worst vices in the mores of the
time were fed and strengthened. Many punishments were not only cruel,
but obscene, the cruelty and obscenity being destitute of moral or civil
motive and only serving to gratify malignant passion. A case is
mentioned of a law in which it was provided that if a criminal had no
property, his wife should be violated by a public official as a
penalty.[1838] In the later Middle Ages, after torture was introduced
into civil proceedings, ingenuity and "artistic skill" were manifested
in inventing instruments of torture.[1839] A case is given of
extravagant cruelty and tyranny on the part of a man of rank towards a
cook who had displeased him. It was impossible to obtain protection or
redress. The standpoint of the age was that a man of rank must be
allowed full discretion in dealing with a cook.[1840] In many cases
details were added to punishments, which were intended to reach the
affections, mental states, faiths, etc., of the accused, and add mental
agony to physical pain. "Use and wont" exercised their influence on
people who saw or heard of these acts of the authorities until cruelties
and horrors became commonplace and familiar, and the lust of cruelty was
a characteristic of the age.

+574. Prisons in England in the time of Queen Anne.+ The prisons of
England, in Queen A