Grinders - A Proposal To Extinguish The Trade

[RichardB]

For one part of this enormous evil we propose a remedy.

Let government gradually build a large gaol in Sheffield erecting successive portions every year until it is capable of holding two thousand five hundred felons and the machinery necessary for their employment.

Send thither the most obdurate felons of England and, establish in this gaol, the system of the penitentiaries of America.

Confine each felon solitarily to the grinder's stone; let him hear nothing but the screams of his Ixion like wheel during nine or ten hours of every day ;let him know that every day of this employment subtracts another from his life - and let him live in the knowledge that he is a self destroyer, wasting his existence under some unseen eye that constantly watches him at his work and, if, the spirit of the most desperate villain be not subdued by this fate, no punishment can correct him.

Thus, also, the grinder's fatal trade might be extinguished as an occupation for our honest and industrious poor.