In 1266 bakers were commanded not to impress their bread with the sign of the cross, _Agnus Dei_, or the name of Jesus Christ. The lot of the baker in bygone times was a very hard one. He could not sell where he liked, and the price of his bread was regulated by those in authority. Pike, in his "History of Crime in England," says, "Turn where he might, the traveller in London in 1348 could hardly fail to light upon some group, which would tell him the character of the people he had to see. Here, perhaps, a baker with a loaf hung round his neck, was being jeered, and pelted in the pillory, because he had given short weight, or because, when men had asked him for bread, he had given them not a stone, but a lump of iron enclosed by a crust." At this period women were largely employed in the bakehouse. Women in mediæval times performed much of the rougher kind of labour. Mr. Pike tells a tragic tale to illustrate the heartless character of bakehouse women in bygone times:--"At Middleton, in Derbyshire, there lived a man whose wife bore a name well known to readers of mediæval romances, Isolda or Isoult. As he lay one night asleep in his bed, this female Othello took him by the neck and strangled him. As soon as he was dead, she carried the body to an oven which adjourned their chamber, and piled up a fire to destroy the traces of her guilt. But, though she had so far shown the energy and power of a man, her courage seems to have failed her at the last moment. She took to flight, and her crime was discovered." In the olden time, it was the practice of females to deliver bread from house to house in London. The bakers gave them thirteen articles for twelve, and the odd article appears to have been the legitimate profit which they were entitled to receive in return for their work. From this old custom we obtain the baker's dozen of thirteen. Bakers were not permitted to give credit to women retailers if they were known to be in debt to others. It was also against the law to receive back unsold bread if cold. The latter regulation would make the saleswomen energetic in their labours.