And in all these vile places there was generally no production of anything. The prisons and Bridewells were supposed originally to set rogues to work,[183] but the authorities took no trouble to organise it, and throughout the detention-places useful employment (if we except occasional work done for the gaoler, or permitted in particular instances) was impossible. It was found in 1818,[184] that, out of the 518 prisons in the United Kingdom, in 445 there was no employment, and that in the remaining 73 it was of the slightest possible description. Such were the bad old prisons of the past. Their faults were many, glaring, and obvious, but they had yet a human side, too, and a better one. Though the idiot might be laughed at and the new-comer despoiled, though the keepers might be brutal and the atmosphere poisonous, still in the midst of evil there would be individual acts of kindness and self-sacrifice. If the captives were in chains and rags,[185] they were not cut off from the outside world or striped and spotted in a livery of shame.[186] If gaols were hotbeds of infection and cesspools of corruption,[187] at least they were not the ghastly whited sepulchres which were built in the nineteenth century. MITIGATIONS AND PECULIARITIES So far we have endeavoured to trace the course of the usual punishments inflicted in various ages on the “common” criminals when they were brought up charged with the graver crimes. There were, however, ways of escape open, which are sufficiently general and important to be dealt with separately. _The Ordeals._—The invocation of miraculous guidance, to determine the guilt or innocence of a person accused, has been resorted to from time immemorial by all manner of methods throughout the four continents. There were many ordeals in mediæval England. There was the corsned, or consecrated barleycake, which was supposed to choke a perjurer if he tried to swallow it; when mouth and throat were dry from fear or excitement this was quite possible. There was a test by immersion, in which the accused had to sink two ells deep—over seven feet. A rope was attached round the body, and it is interesting to notice that Archbishop Hincmar (ninth century) gave express directions for the rescuing of those who, by thus sinking, were declared to be innocent.[188] There was a test tried with hot water, in which a stone had to be picked up out of boiling liquid without the arm being scalded. There was a test, to pass which the hand had to be inserted into a glove of hot iron without being burned by it. There was a test in which the suspected person must walk through flames without being scorched. There was a test which consisted in having to walk over nine red-hot ploughshares, blindfolded and unseared.[189]