Some of these rules betray a callousness almost 

 incredible ; but they express the mental attitude 

 of a rude age towards physical suffering. The 

 rules are what might be expected of the times 

 in which cocking flourished 



Men do not realise how far they have travelled 

 on the road to humanity within the last hundred 

 and fifty years and a hundred and fifty years 

 is a short chapter in the history of a nation 



Our laws show the change that has gradually 

 come over us. On the 6th April, 1763, Anne 

 Bedingfield was burned alive for the murder of 

 her husband under the savage law against 

 44 petty treason " 



Nowadays the death penalty is seldom in- 

 flicted upon a murderess however inhuman her 

 crime. A hundred years ago and less the 

 appalling condition of our prisons and asylums, 

 and the extraordinary combination of brutality 

 and neglect with which prisoners and the insane 

 were treated make us w r onder whether we are 

 reading of days when the fathers of many 

 among us were alive 



When men were thus indifferent to the 

 sufferings of their fellow creatures it was not 

 singular that they should be callous where the 

 brute creation was concerned; and perhaps a 



