DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.2056#0154
14 THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS.
even her own servant, who is well acquainted with
the rules of the place, appears little disposed to shew
any return of gratitude for recent obligations,
though even her shoes, which she displays .while
tying up her garter, seem by their gaudy outside
to have been a present from her mistress.. The
civil discipline of the stern keeper, has all the
severity of the old school. * With the true spirit
of tyranny, he sentences those who will not labour,
to the whipping post, to a kind of picketing sus-.
pension by the wrists, or having a heavy log
fastened to their leg. With the last of these pu-
nishments he at this moment threatens the heroine
of our story, nor is it likely that his obduracy can
be softened, except by a well-applied fee. How
dreadful, how mortifying the situation! These
accumulated evils might perhaps produce a mo-
mentary remorse, but a return to the path of vir-
tue is not so easy as a departure from it. The
Magdalen hospital has been since instituted, and
the wandering female sometimes finds it an asy-
lum from wretchedness, and a refuge from the re-
proaches of the world.
To shew that neither the dread nor endurance
of the severest punishment will deter from the.
* The notorious breaches of trust and cruelties of which
Bainbridge, Cuthbert, and other keepers of prisons were
about this time guilty, attracted the attention of the House
of Commons, who appointed a committee to enquire into the
abuses, which were afterwards io a degree corrected.
even her own servant, who is well acquainted with
the rules of the place, appears little disposed to shew
any return of gratitude for recent obligations,
though even her shoes, which she displays .while
tying up her garter, seem by their gaudy outside
to have been a present from her mistress.. The
civil discipline of the stern keeper, has all the
severity of the old school. * With the true spirit
of tyranny, he sentences those who will not labour,
to the whipping post, to a kind of picketing sus-.
pension by the wrists, or having a heavy log
fastened to their leg. With the last of these pu-
nishments he at this moment threatens the heroine
of our story, nor is it likely that his obduracy can
be softened, except by a well-applied fee. How
dreadful, how mortifying the situation! These
accumulated evils might perhaps produce a mo-
mentary remorse, but a return to the path of vir-
tue is not so easy as a departure from it. The
Magdalen hospital has been since instituted, and
the wandering female sometimes finds it an asy-
lum from wretchedness, and a refuge from the re-
proaches of the world.
To shew that neither the dread nor endurance
of the severest punishment will deter from the.
* The notorious breaches of trust and cruelties of which
Bainbridge, Cuthbert, and other keepers of prisons were
about this time guilty, attracted the attention of the House
of Commons, who appointed a committee to enquire into the
abuses, which were afterwards io a degree corrected.