1823:] 
India Company.” He farther ‘states 
“that another of the cranes was erected 
in the warchouse of the assistant pri- 
vate-trade warehouse-keeper ;” but a 
note is here also annexed hy the officer 
of that department, which tells us “ that 
the men have often received bruises 
when working the wheel, and that it was 
considered more dangerons to work 
than at the capstan: that Dennis Leary 
received a severe hurt while working at 
one of them, aml was pensioned by the 
East India Company; and finally, that 
the cranes were taken down last 
summer.” 
From the investigation the following 
facts appear to be incontrovertibly esta- 
blished :— 
1, That, from the enormous height, ex- 
tent,and complication, of the machinery of 
the tread-wheel, there appears to be an in- 
superable difficulty in constructing it of 
iron, whether cast or malleable, sufficiently 
pure and powerful to support the incum- 
bent load or strain that is often imposed 
upon its shafts, with their subterraneons 
ramifications, toa perilous extent, without 
breaking: that such accidents ‘have al- 
ready taken place in different prisons, and 
not less than four times, in littie more than 
three months, in the House of Correction 
in Cold Bath Fields, with precipitation, 
from a considerable height, of all the pri- 
soners employed at the time, who were 
thrown on their backs, with considerable 
injury to many of them.* 
2. That, from the peculiar motion of the 
limbs for which alone this machine was in- 
tended, which is that of treading on tiptoe 
up anendless hill, with the body bent for- 
ward,t and the bands rigidly and unremit- 
tingly grasping a rail for support, an exer- 
tion is produced, so exhausting to the ani- 
mal frame, that scarcely any committee of 
Visiling magistrates have ventured to en- 
force its use for more than a quarter of an 
hour at a time; while at the House of 
Correction at Edinburgh, seven minutes 
and a half, or just half this period, is the 
utmost that is risked. 
3. That in consequence hereof a most 
distressing thirst, debilitating perspiration, 
and actual loss of flesh, are often pro- 
duced, and especially in’ warm weather, 
during every successive round of working, 
short as the period is; as has heen fre- 
quently experienced in the prison.in Cold 
Bath Fields, and is admitted to have oc- 
* Other similar fractures have since 
taken place in’ the same prison, one of 
them since part of these sliects have been 
in the press, 
+ Such was their position at the Cold 
Bath Fields Prisou, when visited by the 
writer in May, 1822, 
Prison Amelioration Soctety. 
59 
curred at Edinbargh and various other 
places; and that, in order to support suck, 
exhanstion, a fuller and richer diet has 
been humanely allowed in several prisons, 
particularly at Edinburgh and North 
Allerton. 
4. That not only severe exhaustion, but 
strains upon the organs and muscles imme- 
diately called into exercise, in many cases 
highly injarions to health, have actually 
taken place on various occasions, and, in 
the opinion of a large body of physicians 
and surgeons of the highest rank and re- 
spectability who have migutely examined 
into the subject, are necessarily threatened 
at all times. 
5. That, in consequence of such _strain- 
ing and over exertion, many of the female 
prisoners have been suddenly obliged to 
descend from the tread.mill in the prison 
in Cold Bath Fields in the midst of their 
task-work, accompanied with circum- 
stances of the most repulsive indelicacy, 
insomuch that the female prisoners con- 
fined within these walls, as well as in most 
other prisons, have been of late, alto- 
gether or in-agreat degree, exempted from 
this kind of labour. 
6. That the concurrent testimony of nu- 
merous medical practitioners, of high cha- 
racter and extensive experience, has 
proved that habitual labour of a like de- 
scription, as that of mariners, and even of 
a lighter kind, as the ladder-treading in 
thatching and among masons’ labourers, 
miners, &c. has a gradual tendency to 
produce ruptures and varicose veins, oy 
nodulous tumours on the legs ; and, in nu- 
merous instances, has actually produced 
them. Whence it -has been reasonably 
apprehended by other practitioners of 
great talents and attainments, who have 
particularly attended to this machine and 
its effects, that a stated and longer em- 
ployment upon it than has hitherto been ex- 
perimented in any prison, in consequence 
of its being of novel introduction, will ne- 
cessarily give a still greater tendency to 
the same injuries, and, in the end, more 
certainly and more extensively induce 
them among those who are sentenced to 
its morbid discipline. 
7. That on this accoupt,. prisoners, 
labouring under the above affections, and 
especially under ruptures or consump- 
tions, or a tendency to such complaints, 
are, in the Cold Bath Fields Prison, or 
were til] of late, as also in other prisons, 
altogether exempted from the punishment 
of the tread-wheel. 
8. That for these and similar reasons, 
the unhappy culprits whose fate it is to be 
committed to prisons where this trying 
discipline is in use, to adopt the impressive 
language of the, Prisom Discipline Com- 
mittee, ‘have a horror of the mill, and 
would sooner undergo, as they all declare, 
any fatigue, or sufler any deprivation, thau. 
return 
