God Sister Teresa
A popular piece of modern equipment, designed to build up health and make the body beautiful, is named after a cruel, 19th-century punishment amounting to torture. I have a young keep-fit acquaintance who had no idea of the origins of his apparatus.
The treadmill was invented by the distinguished civil engineer and prison reformer Sir William Cubitt in 1818. Worried by seeing prisoners lounging around, idle, he thought they would benefit from some strenuous work to toughen them up, and so he designed a machine that would keep them moving.
A sentence to hard labour in the 19th century meant at least three months on a treadmill: six hours a day, every day, the equivalent of climbing 14,000 vertical feet each time.
It was punishment at its purest and worst. Sometimes a treadmill would drive grinding machinery or hydraulics but, more often than not, it was simply pointless and very bad for your health. Oscar Wilde was one of its many victims.
It is not we who should be imposing retribution, but God: ‘Vengeance is mine, and recompense…’ Deuteronomy 32:35, quoted by St Paul in Romans.
Societies, not unnaturally, take a dim view of those who interrupt their smooth running, but to add vindictiveness to judgement is dark indeed.
Punishment is a necessity, but never a pleasant one. I find it shocking that the treadmill was abolished only in 1902, less than 50 years before I was born, and am thankful that a sea change has since taken place in our prisons. Reforms have been brought in to help prisoners towards better and happier lives after their release.
Alas, a vast amount of work still has to be done before crucial improvement and, above all, forgiveness, become a reality.
Thank heavens for the New Testament: ‘Love will come to its perfection in us when we can face the day of Judgement without fear… In love there can be no fear, but fear is driven out by perfect love: because to fear is to expect punishment…’ 1 John 4:17-18.
This is the grammar of Christianity and should be part of any penal system.
It is cheering to find punishment stood on its head. A very nice elderly bishop, many years ago when a novice, didn’t always see eye to eye with his novice master, for reasons unknown. Insubordination may have played a part.
The prescribed punishment was the (in theory) demeaning task of keeping the bathrooms clean. The future bishop did so with due obedience. He thoroughly enjoyed making the taps shine – but he never let on.