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treadwheel
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Hand-colored engraving showing prisoners walking on a large wooden treadmill under a roof at Brixton prison, London, in 1827, with a guard overseeing them and others seated nearby. Illustration showing British prison life in 1907: men walking on a treadmill for hard labor at the top, and at the bottom, a prisoner tied to a post being whipped with a cat-o-nine-tails while a guard watches.
Quick Facts
Also known as:
treadmill or “everlasting staircase”
Related Topics:
corporal punishment
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inmates on a penal treadmill
inmates on a penal treadmill Inmates on a penal treadmill at Brixton prison in London, England, c. 1827.

treadwheel

punishment
Also known as: everlasting staircase, treadmill
Written by
Geoffrey Abbott
Former Yeoman Warder, Tower of London, United Kingdom. Author of The Book of Execution and others.
Geoffrey Abbott
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Britannica Editors
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
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History

treadwheel, penal appliance introduced in 1818 by the British engineer Sir William Cubitt (1785–1861) as a means of usefully employing convicts. The device was a wide hollow cylinder, usually composed of wooden steps built around a cylindrical iron frame, and was designed in some cases to handle as many as 40 convicts. As the device began to rotate, each prisoner was forced to continue stepping along the series of planks. The power generated by the treadwheel was commonly used to grind corn and pump water, although some served no purpose at all other than punishment. The use of treadwheels was abolished in Britain by the Prisons Act of 1898. See also forced labour.

Geoffrey Abbott