[11] The clumsy police of the time seem to have entirely ignored the existence of unchaste women till they became riotous, were mixed up in tavern brawls, had given offence to the rich rakes, or, especially, were discovered to be the mistresses of thieves and highwaymen. Then they were suddenly caught up, taken before a justice, and committed to Bridewell—either the ergastolo in Bridge Street, or the presidio in Tothill Fields—I take the former. Arrived there, they were kept till noon on board-day, Wednesday. Then they were arraigned before the honourable Board of Governors; the president with his hammer in his high-backed chair. The wretched Kate stands among the beadles clad in blue, at the lower end of the room, which is divided into two by folding doors. Then, the accusation being stated, the president cries, “How say you, gentlemen, shall Katherine Hackabout receive present punishment?” The suffrages are collected; they are generally against Kate, who is forthwith seized by the beadles, half unrobed, and receives the “civility of the house,” i.e. the correction of stripes, which torture is continued (the junior beadle wielding the lash) till the president strikes his hammer on the table as a signal for execution to stop. “Knock! Sir Robert; oh, good Sir Robert, knock!” was a frequent entreaty of the women under punishment; and “Knock, knock!” was shouted after them in derision by the boys in the street, to intimate that they had been scourged in Bridewell. Being sufficiently whealed, Kate was handed over to the taskmaster, to be set to beat hemp, and to be herself caned, or scourged, or fettered with a log, like a stray donkey, according to his fancy and the interests of the hemp manufacture. Many women went through these ordeals dozens of times. “It’s not the way to reform ’em,” observes Ned Ward; and for once, I think, the satirical publican, who travelled in “ape and monkey climes,” is right—Vide Smollett: Roderick Random; Cunningham: Handbook of London; and, Bridewell Hospital Reports, 1720-1799.
Written in the Deepdene Album.
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