{"id":4386,"date":"2025-06-17T07:32:16","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T07:32:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianregency.com\/blog\/?p=4386"},"modified":"2025-06-17T07:32:16","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T07:32:16","slug":"life-in-the-big-house-doing-time-in-the-regency-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vanessariley.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/17\/life-in-the-big-house-doing-time-in-the-regency-era\/","title":{"rendered":"Life in the Big House: Doing Time in the Regency Era"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"file9831250746217\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Criminals today have it easy. Cable TV. Internet access. Three square meals and free health care. Sure, they can\u2019t leave to take a smoke break any time they\u2019d like, but hey, things could be worse . . . and boy, were they ever in early nineteenth century England.<\/p>

\"Fire<\/a><\/div>\n

Nice accommodations came with a price. New prisoners were expected to pay a \u201cgarnish\u201d when they arrived. This fee ensured they\u2019d receive \u201cclean\u201d water, food, and even candles and newspapers. Unfortunately, if you didn\u2019t have any money, it was likely the \u201cpit\u201d for you, where you\u2019d maybe receive a piece of moldy, mealy bread once a day.<\/p>\n

But no matter which cell you ended up in, there were some common punishments that prisoners often had to submit to:<\/p>\n

Oakum Picking<\/strong><\/p>\n

Recycling isn\u2019t new to our day. During the Regency and Victorian periods, prisoners were given old rope covered in tar, which had been used to fill the cracks in ships. The task was to untwist into many corkscrew-like strands, then unroll each strand until the mesh became loose. This was used to remake into new rope. Other than the tedious boredom, this doesn\u2019t sound too horrific a punishment, right? Wrong. Not only were the ropes hard to break apart, the coating caused blisters on the hands, and the fibers were prickly and painful. Bad combo.<\/p>\n

The Endless Treadmill<\/strong><\/p>\n

Personally, going to the gym and working out for a half hour on the treadmill is torture enough for me. Now imagine doing that for eight to ten hours a day, with no earbuds blasting your favorite playlist. Just trudging, trudging, trudging . . .<\/p>\n

The Crank<\/strong><\/p>\n

No, I\u2019m not talking about the warden on a bad day. The crank was a form of pointless punishment, which was not only physically demanding but psychologically brutal. It was a large handle, usually in a prisoner\u2019s cell, that the incarcerated would have to turn, thousands of times a day. To make it even more cruel, the warden could tighten a screw, causing the crank to be tougher to turn. That\u2019s where the slang term \u201cScrew\u201d came in to describe a guard or warden.<\/p>\n

\"Brentwood's<\/a><\/p>\n

In my upcoming\u00a0release, BRENTWOOD\u2019S WARD, hero Nicholas Brentwood is a nineteenth century lawman who\u2019s sent many criminals to experience such punishment . . . except for his latest offender:<\/p>\n

There\u2019s none better than NICHOLAS BRENTWOOD at catching the felons who ravage London\u2019s streets, and there\u2019s nothing he loves more than seeing justice carried out\u2014but this time he\u2019s met his match. Beautiful and beguiling EMILY PAYNE is more treacherous than a city full of miscreants and thugs, for she\u2019s a thief of the highest order . . . she\u2019s stolen his heart.<\/em><\/p>\n

Modes of punishment have definitely changed over the past three hundred years, but human nature hasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Originally posted 2014-11-17 01:00:51. <\/small><\/p>

\"Listen<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Criminals today have it easy. Cable TV. Internet access. Three square meals and free health care. Sure, they can\u2019t leave to take a smoke break any time they\u2019d like, but hey, things could be worse . . . and boy, were they ever in early nineteenth century England. Nice accommodations came with a price. New […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[466,494,496,495,498,497],"class_list":["post-4386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","tag-brentwoods-ward","tag-jail","tag-oakum-picking","tag-punishment","tag-the-crank","tag-treadmill"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanessariley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanessariley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanessariley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanessariley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanessariley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4386"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vanessariley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4389,"href":"https:\/\/vanessariley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4386\/revisions\/4389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanessariley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanessariley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanessariley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}