ABSTRACT
T h e early nineteenth century has left behind it the tradition of an iron age. While the nation was engaged in the long struggle with France, it was natural that the Government should develop some of the characteristics of martial law and that progress in the arts of peace and civilised life should be slow. Heavy arrears, which have never fully been worked off, were piled up for future generations. Even more characteristic than the state of factories, of town-housing, and of hygiene was the general condition of the penal system and the criminal law. Soldiers and sailors were flogged, sometimes almost to death, for trivial offences against discipline.1 The public whipping of women could still be practised at the cart’s tail in the streets of a provincial town.2 The corpses of criminals were publicly beheaded, after public execution, on charges of treason.3 Children were condemned to death for petty thefts, though here the severity of the law was, in practice, mitigated by jurors.4
