“We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,
We turned the dusty drill:
We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,
And sweated on the mill:
But in the heart of every man
Terror was lying still.”

These are the words of famed master of the pen, Oscar Wilde, in his Ballad of Reading Gaol, referencing his time spent at Pentonville Prison for, ironically, mastering working with a different type of pen…

As a brief aside, while many lament the initial thing that set forth a chain of events that saw Wilde imprisoned today, specifically his affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, very surprisingly, unlike with the likes of the great Alan Turing and countless thousands others who were unjustly punished for their sexuality, it turns out there is a LOT more to the story of Wilde’s conviction that many a biographer skirts over, though to be fair this is in part because some elements of the original transcript from the original trial were only discovered in the year 2000. Reading through those, however, even in modern times and through a modern lens and sensibilities, Wilde would have almost certainly found himself behind bars, disgraced, and absolutely vilified pretty well universally on the interwebs.

But we’re not here to discuss Oscar Wilde, the full story of his conviction was simply a rabbit hole we were previously woefully ignorant of, and will share more on later in the Bonus Facts if you’re interested as well- though fair warning, it’s quite dark and, oof. Never look too deeply into your heroes, especially when they are from the past, which was of course, the worst.

But in any event, embedded in Wilde’s aforementioned poem, he references sweating on the mill. This was a device created by famed engineer Sir William Cubitt in the early days of Cubitt’s career, with the primary purpose of the surprisingly feature rich machine being both to punish prisoners in an excruciating way for upwards of 10 hours per day, while also isolating them in that task so that they could properly think about what they’d done wrong.

While Wilde may have abhorred the machine, having been forced to march on it for a couple years, another famous master wordsmith, Charles Dickens, would praise it, writing, “It is a satisfaction to me to see that determined thief, swindler, or vagrant sweating profusely at the treadmill… [knowing] he is doing nothing all the time but undergoing punishment.”

Here now is the story of when humans first started exercising for fitness’ sake, as well as the rather torturous invention of the treadmill, which saw prison death rates ramp up considerably once implemented, but paradoxically also seemed to be a major health boon to those that survived their monotonous march.

Contrary to what you might think, as long as humans have been humaning in a documented way, it would appear we have been deliberately exercising for the sake of health and fitness. From the Ancient Egyptians, who not only had forms of fitness training, but even acrobatic based sports they trained for, to the much more famous Ancient Greeks athletes, a subset of whom regularly trained for things like the Olympic Games, with some frankly incredible results.

For example, one of their favorite forms of exercise seems to have involved lifting and sometimes throwing stones of various sizes. If you’re wondering here, the Ancient Greek record for heaviest stone used in stone throwing, or at least as far as we are aware today, was a 316 lb or 143.5 kg stone found in Olympia, Greece. Based on an inscription on the stone, this was successfully thrown one handed, over his head by an apparently beast of a man named Bybon.

In another case, there is a surviving stone weighing 1058 lbs or 480 kg that has inscribed “Eumastas, the son of Critobulus, lifted me from the ground.” Note here, that’s only 6% under the current world record for deadlifting.

Beyond training for various sporting events, and seemingly just for physique in some cases, similar to modern humans, soldiers also commonly trained via doing things like digging, chopping wood, as well as used various weighted devices, for example training with practice weapons and armor that were significantly heavier than the real thing.

Through medieval times to the modern day, similar stone throwing and picking up, and military training exercises remained common.

Training for women throughout history tended to be similar, just generally geared towards lighter weights and focussing more on agility and speed, not too dissimilar to many today. However, it should be noted in modern times the science has shown pretty clearly that women should actually be training more or less exactly like men train with some cardio, which many women do a ton of, but also heavily focussing on low rep, heavy weights and big compound movements. This is something that’s even more important for post-menopausal women in order to fight the effects of hormone shifts that otherwise accelerate the loss of muscle and bone mass, but can be well countered with heavy weight training.

But going back to ancient times, the Ancient Greeks even had a women’s version of their Olympic Games called the Haraean Games, where every four years in Olympia unmarried women could race each other.

But in all, humans seemingly realized right quick that being in good shape is a key to health, happiness and longevity, with Plato writing in Theaetetus, “And is not the bodily habit spoiled by… idleness, but preserved for a long time by motion and exercise?… Then motion is a good, and rest an evil, to the soul as well as to the body…”

A notion that seemingly with every new scientific study on the subject continually confirms. As famed longevity researcher Dr. Peter Attia sums up, “Exercise is one of the few areas where there is very little ambiguity… If you compare the top 20% of strength in a given age and sex bracket to the bottom 20% of strength you are talking about 150% to 200% difference in [likelihood] of all cause mortality at any given time [in that person’s life]. When you do the same type of analysis with peak cardiorespiratory fitness, if you just compare the least fit 25% to the middle core percentile, that’s about 100% difference in all cause mortality… So, whether you’re talking about cardio fitness, whether you’re talking about strength training, the difference in how long you live is unparalleled by any other intervention… that we have. And then that says nothing about the impact that those things have on your quality of life. I always say this to my patients- if all this exercise didn’t lengthen your life by one minute, it would still be worth it in terms of the quality of life improvements it brings….”

However, while lifting heavy objects like stones were common throughout history, up until extremely recently in history, exercise devices like the treadmill weren’t exactly on anyone’s radar, though that’s not to say humans didn’t have a version of them.

For example, as far back as the 2nd century AD, the Chinese had what were essentially stair climber devices in the form of stepped wheels that a person would walk on, turning the wheel as they did so. As far as history is aware, these weren’t used specifically for exercise, but rather to perform some practical work, such as use as a water pump, or for milling. The Ancient Romans used a similar stepping device to help lift heavy objects, with the walking wheel incorporated into a type of crane.

Similar devices were also used with animal power doing everything from grinding grains, to churning butter, though most of these tended to resemble a hamster’s wheel, with the animal, or sometimes humans, driving it from inside the device.

Humans even enlisted the help of man’s best friend in these devices, creating a specific breed of tiny dog known as turnspits, which were not only made to walk inside such wheels for hours on end, but also sized right and trained to be used as foot warmers when they weren’t working. More on turnspit dogs and their development in the Bonus Facts later.

Around the same time the turnspit dog was trotting away in kitchens across Britain, the devise that would be dubbed by contemporaries the “Treadmill” was born.

At the time, there had been a gradual shift in thinking when it came to dealing with criminals, from the general philosophy of they are irredeemable so “hang ‘em all and let god sort them out,” to that maybe… just maybe, prisoners could actually be reformed and made into functional members of society.

And thus, prison populations began to rise as more and more people were incarcerated for lengthy periods instead of just killing them or shipping them off to America, though once that latter outlet dried up when the colonial terrorists rose up against their rightful King, there was the well known shift to sending criminals to Australia instead.

But in any event, simultaneous to all this, a few other shifts had occurred thanks to some prison reform acts that concerned many in the general public. For example, rather than prisoner’s family and friends required to provide food and other necessities for the inmates, the state began more systematically doing so itself, given the previous system had the glaring error that if individuals were held for any length of time and had no one on the outside to provide them sustenance, blankets and the like, they, you know, could starve or potentially freeze to death. While for some crimes this would have been deemed by many to be a just punishment, for most who were simply in prison for minor offenses, being forced to starve to death or the like was deemed unjust.

However, providing such necessities for inmates cost money and seemed then a punishment for the law abiding citizens in having to pay for the criminal’s upkeep while incarcerated. Further, many, who clearly had no concept of what prison was actually like, argued providing prisoners with the bare necessities of life would make it so people would want to commit crimes just so they could go to prison.

Another issue with mass incarceration had been observed by officials at the time- impoverished children living on the streets that were imprisoned for minor crimes like stealing food to eat, tended to see older, hardened criminals in prison exerting their influence on the children, recruiting the kids to more or less work for them or their associates in more serious crimes later, as well as even training them up in some of the skills needed for such while they all sat around in jail. In essence, these kids and sometimes other adults went in as simple petty criminals, and came out much more likely to commit crimes than they were before.

All combined, some among the law abiding masses were concerned that all the prison reforms happening were just making it more likely that more crimes would be committed, not less.

As such, support for the age old practice of using prisoners for hard labor, where they wouldn’t have time for such socialization, would potentially learn a useful trade, and could help pay for their necessities, began to ramp up.

The problem here was this irked many on the outside as well, as if prisoners were being made to do things like make shoes for cheap, this would hurt the law abiding cobblers of the world’s businesses. Further, those incarcerated for only short periods would not be around long enough to learn some of these trades in order to produce good quality products.

And, of course, such labor didn’t necessarily deter people from wanting to go to prison inherently. In short, it was generally felt they needed to suffer more during all this.

It was a dill of a pickle.

Enter William Cubitt in 1817, who felt he had a solution to all these problems. While Cubitt would go on to have a prestigious career as an engineer, even being knighted by Queen Victoria for his work on the Crystal Palace project in London in 1851, at the time he was just starting out, making agricultural machinery such as windmills at an ironworks in Ipswitch.

Contemplating the perceived issues with jails at the time, Cubitt thought up what would ultimately be called the treadmill to solve the problem.

This was essentially a long stepping wheel meant to be driven by walking humans- on its surface not too dissimilar to many similar hamster wheel designs, but having those driving it walk on the outside, rather than within.

The designs of the device also ultimately had a number of innovative features built in, including arguably the first true ergometer. In a nutshell, he created mechanisms within the device which tracked things like steps, revolutions, and general work done, and included bells that would ring for things like when a set step interval was complete, or if the rotation speed became too slow.

Much like modern treadmills and stair stepper devices, the contraption also included handle bars for the walking individuals to steady themselves with as they trudged along.

Finally, a shaft from the device was then provided for use in powering pretty much anything, but in particular commonly used for attaching to a milling device, hence the name- treadmill.

Cubitt described that with his device, “There would be no difficulty in establishing a mill or manufactory near the boundary wall of a prison through which only a single shaft or axle would have to pass to communicate the power and motion.” And that, “The operations of the convicts would be precisely the same as those which are now effected by the ordinary powers of wind, water, steam, or horses, and they would have no more concern with the object of the machinery, or manufacture, than any of the above-named agents.”

In all, this would make the prisoners contributors to society in their labor, not take the jobs of any skilled craftsman or the like, required no training to operate, was excruciating physically, while also giving the prisoners no mental stimulation or distraction or opportunity to socialize, leaving them nothing to do but step step step for hours on end while they thought about what they’d done to get in prison, and how horrible it was to be marching on the treadmill.

Towards this end of making sure the inmates had no chance to talk with one another or even look around, a tweak to the original design was later added putting little walls in place separating the prisoners as they walked.

As one contemporary news report titled “A Description of the Tread-Mill” sums up, “The tread-mill at Brixton, that “terror to evil-doers,” …is the invention of Mr. Cubitt of Ipswitch, and is considered a great improvement in prison discipline… To provide regular and suitable employment for prisoners sentenced to hard labour, has been attended with considerable difficulty in many parts of the kingdom; the invention of the Discipline mill has removed the difficulty, and it is confidently hoped, that as its advantages and effects become better known, the introduction of the Mill will be universal in Houses of Correction.”

As for duration of their marches, this varied based on time of year and which prison, but for example, at Warwick Gaol, the prisoners were noted as walking approximately 10 hours a day in the summer, with a rate which equated to ascending approximately 17,000 vertical feet, or 5100 meters, of steps in that span.

Noteworthy the prisoners would get short breaks, for example, the referenced Brixton Prison treadmill had enough room for about 24 prisoners to walk, with at intervals one of the sidemost poor souls getting off, the remaining shifting over, and a resting prisoner getting back on. This general cycle gave each prisoner about 12 minutes of rest every hour. As alluded to, this entire thing was then all regulated by a series of bells ringing at given step intervals, as well as a bell for if the prisoners slowed down too much.

And if you’re wondering, as for general punishment if a prisoner didn’t keep up the pace, this tended to see them given a variety of punishments, including dietary restrictions… Because, you know, the best way to get more physical exertion and endurance out of someone is to cut their already poor allotment of calories.

Some models were even designed to emphasize punishment over productivity, making the treadmill do nothing at all, simply using a weighted contraption to provide resistance to the convict’s treading, with the idea being it would be worse for the criminal knowing their extreme and monotonous labor was completely pointless.

Right from the start, Cubitt’s invention caught on like wildfire, within a few decades versions of which being installed in 109 of Britain’s 200 prisons, and also being utilized across the pond in American prisons as well within 5 years, with the first such American device costing $3,050.99 (about $84,000 today). This one could hold 16 prisoners at a time and could process about 40-60 bushels of corn per day.

That said, almost immediately after its implementation in the United States the utility of the device was questioned, with the Prison Discipline Society of Boston writing that “the treadmill… teaches the convict nothing that can be useful to him on his discharge. It is not a profitable employment of human power.”

Groups pushing this narrative around the treadmill tended to support expanding efforts to use prisoners as factory workers instead, with the rule of the day calling for, to quote, “downcast eyes, lockstep marching, no talking, and constant work when outside the cells”, as well as punishing violating any of the rules or not working hard enough with the whip.

Funny enough, this was all generally thought to be much more humane than the treadmill, as well as would help better solve the labor shortage many regions of the United States had at the time.

On that note, because the past was the worst, the treadmill was seen as a particularly good punishment for runaway slaves, with the slave owners even earning money during the punishment. As for pay here, in one such case in 1841, slave holders were paid 18.75 cents per day (about $7 today) per slave marching on the treadmill.

As the century of marching prisoners progressed, however, a rather curious thing was observed. On the one hand, prison administrators noted that, on the whole, many prisoners seemed to get healthier over time marching on the mill. As one jailer at Lancaster Country Gaol claimed, “On examining those men who have worked longest at the Wheel, I have found them in perfect health, and not withstanding their expression of dislike to the work, have admitted that they have gained weight since they have been so employed.”

Similarly, it was claimed that the health of female prisoners at Colbath Fields House of Correction in 1835, in the general case, would improve after months of walking on the treadmill.

On the other hand, there was a subset of the prison population who seemed to get much sicker and even much more likely to die after, or sometimes even during, their sessions on the treadmill.

So what was going on here?

In the former case, assuming the accounts of inmates getting healthier were accurate, and given the propensity for many of the inmates to be alcoholics, it’s thought that the combination of the inmates sobering up over their time in prison, combined with exercising most all day, every day, that this was a great boon to their health, even despite their generally poor diets in prison.

And, indeed, more and more studies in modern times show that while diet is extremely important for health in a variety of ways, as long as you’re not overdoing it with calories and otherwise maintaining relatively healthy body fat levels, even individuals with generally poor diets from a nutritional standpoint still tend to see huge health marker improvements with good, consistent exercise.

In short, the prisoners may have been eating crap food, and even potentially somewhat deficient in calorie intake, but nonetheless, exercising all day, combined with a lengthy period of being fully sober was seemingly markedly improving their health… or some of them. Or, at least, if they got through the initial weeks.

On that note, on the other hand, starting from a potentially physiological less than ideal place commonly found with alcoholism, combined with perhaps the body not being used to really any form of exercise, let alone suddenly marching 6-10 grueling hours per day on what essentially was a stair climber, is all a rather abrupt shock to the system. And, well, for some prisoners, their bodies couldn’t take that abrupt of a ramp up in exercise, and they would just up and die, usually of cardiovascular issues.

As a March 28, 1885 edition of the British Medical Journal titled “Death on the Treadmill” discusses, “At an inquest which was recently held at Durham, as to the cause of death of a prisoner, Wm Morgan, who died shortly after being taken off the trademill, and who was found to suffer from heart-disease, a state of things was revealed, according to the account in the local paper…. It seems that the death-rate at Durham Prison has averaged for some time back one a week. Whatever may be the number of inmates, this rate is excessive, so much so, indeed, as to be hardly credible…. We do not sufficiently recognize the fact that a large number of prisoners convicted of what might be termed moral offences- drunkenness, vagabondism, etc. are subject of organic disease of one or more vital organs, induced by habitual excess; and that, directly these are deprived of their customary stimulus and subjected to prison-discipline and low diet, the victim succumbs to the previously dormant disease.”

They go on questioning whether the use of the treadmill in prisons should be abolished, writing, “…the question naturally arises, Is the treadmill a fit punishment for any one? Or rather, should it not be relegated to the limbo of the stocks and other remnants of barbarism?… “The mill” is not useful, and has proved itself occasionally injurious. It would therefore, be well for those in whose hands penal authority lies, to see if they cannot devise some mode of punishment which, whilst sufficiently deterrent, shall be free from direct danger to life, and which would embrace in its energy some… more useful object than grinding wind.”

On top of this, some complained that using prisoners in this way was still negatively impacting law abiding millers, all leading to one report in an 1882 edition of the Scientific American coming up with an alternate use for the treadmill, “It is suggested that all the penal advantages of the old treadmill system may be regained, with better economic results than with the factory system, by attaching dynamo-electric machines to the cranks, and storing electrically the energy developed… In this way, the prisons and penitentiaries would be converted into sources of brute energy to be sold for outside use in running machinery, electric lighting systems and the like…. The rounders might not like the place so well, but the honest public would like it better. Ten days on the treadmill would sober off a beat as effectually as ten days of idleness and in the interval he might help to store up many foot-tons of available energy. …the storage cell would never give offense to the citizen who was trying to support a family by the voluntary production of boots or hats, while the indirect economy that would flow from a simplification of prison work, with the prompter utilization of the strength of criminals of all grades and conditions, might more than make up for the loss through the less profitable employment of a few skilled hands.”

But such suggestions weren’t headed. The treadmill was simply deemed too much of a punishment for what was often relatively minor crimes by most, especially given its propensity to cause some of those marching on it to simply up and die.

Of course, through a modern lens, this likely could have been avoided by simply giving people proper diet, and then more slowly ramping up their exercise, instead of just putting the already physiologically compromised individual on the treadmill and having them march away most of their waking hours.

But either way, the treadmill was officially banned in prisons in Britain in 1902 and by 1912 had completely disappeared from America as well, deemed to be too cruel of a punishment, and generally a mostly pointless use of their time.

That said, similar devices were still put in use using animals, including some designs featuring flat surfaces with a type of belt covering rollers, where the animal would be made to march along on.

On that note, in the early 20th century, one Claude Lauraine Hagen got the idea of making such a flat device for humans to walk on for exercise purposes. He describes the device in his 1913 patent, labeling it a “Training-machine” to help with fighting what was named the #1 killer in the United States at the time “diseases of the heart”.

As for his general design, this is a rather familiar one to all of us today- “a rectangular frame, in the side pieces of which are mounted a series of rollers… over which rollers I prefer to mount distributing and wear take-up belts forming additional treads as well, and over such take-up belts I provide a tread or toe gripped belt of a peculiar construction, preferably formed with lateral slats joined by flexible hinged joints… In order to secure a machine which will be adjustable, and have the narrowest possible tread when used for persons of various size, I provide inclined side posts having sliding therein or thereon supporting rods for side rails which as raised or lowered will also be brought more or less toward the center of the apparatus, whereby a. short person with short arms will not have to reach as far out.”

He even thought of how it would be delivered or potentially compactly stored, writing, “in order to make the device readily shipable, I provide such side posts with removable bolts to permit the same to be folded inwardly over the rectangular frame… “

Whether Hagen actually ever built a working prototype isn’t clear today, but this, and many other similar treadmills that came after, while similar in design to the modern variety, lacked any driving motor, requiring the person walking or running on it to provide the locomotive power, which is handy for exercise in some ways, but decidedly less than ideal if one wanted to go for a proper run on one.

The next major milestone in treadmill design, including an integrated motor, came thanks to one co-developed by cardiologist Dr, Robert Bruce at the University of Washington in the mid-20th century, meant to be used with his revolutionary Bruce Protocol for evaluating cardiac function. Before this, it was sometimes considered dangerous to stress test cardiac function in this way, as well as just generally impractical to take ECG’s and the like with the patient doing anything but sitting or lying down.

Dr. Bruces’ device and method, in contrast, allowed for monitoring the patient’s heart, breathing, etc. while they were physically exerting themselves at various levels from walking to running, with his treadmill even including changing incline levels.

Bruces’ device and protocol quickly caught on among physicians, and even some gyms began using his treadmill, but it was incredibly expensive and not even close to accessible to the home consumer.

…That is until engineer William Staub read a 1968 book by famed physician and “Father of Aerobics”, Dr. Kenneth Cooper, simply titled Aerobics. The summation of the argument in the book was that good cardiovascular health is conducive to a better and longer life, with Cooper suggesting a treadmill device as could be found in hospitals could revolutionize home fitness, getting more people running regardless of weather, time of day or night, or any outside concern of safety… the problem was, as Cooper wrote, those treadmills were impossibly expensive for home consumers.

After reading this, Staub went down to the shop at his company, Besco, and while his workers continued their normal work of making various parts for aircraft, he began designing and constructing a much simpler version of the treadmill than doctors were using. His prototype ultimately mostly just comprised of an electric motor, a belt, a frame and handle to hold onto, 40 rollers, and an on off switch.

After completing the prototype, Staub sent it to Dr. Cooper for his thoughts and feedback on the design. The good doctor loved it, decided to help fund the development of the commercial version, the PaceMaster which was initially sold for $399 or about $3300 today, and when it was in production, promoted it to his many fitness inclined acolytes.

The treadmill revolution had begun.

While sales were initially somewhat lackluster, within a decade of its launch, they had risen to some 2,000 treadmills sold per year, and a little over a decade after that in the 1990s, the company was selling about 35,000 units per year. Today around 50 million Americans, that’s about 1 in 6, use a treadmill every year, being one of the most popular pieces of home and commercial gym equipment in the world. As Dr. Cooper summed up of Staub’s invention, “He took away a lot of the excuses people had not to exercise. They don’t have to worry about the weather, safety or whatever may be. I don’t know how long he exercised for himself, but I know he didn’t die early.”

For the record on this one, Staub’s son noted his father did exercise regularly on his treadmill, all the way up to his death at the age of 96.

But going back to the treadmill, day or night, good weather or bad, the treadmill is there… Ready to be used as a place to drape your laundry.

Because, you see, in the general case, while handy devices, much like their wheeled ancestors, treadmills can still be quite torturous to use from the sheer monotony of walking, or running along, not going anywhere, just staring at your wall thinking about where your life went wrong…

Bonus Facts:

And now how about those promised Bonus Facts on turnspit dogs and the frankly disturbing tale of Oscar Wilde and why you should never look too deeply into your heroes:

First, the turnspit- considering how most dogs in the Western world these days are treated as a member of the family, it’s often easy to forget that the vast majority of our furry friends up until very recently were bred for a specific purpose. Perhaps no dog was bred for a more specific purpose than the now extinct aforementioned turnspit.

As mentioned, the turnspit was so named because it was literally bred just to run for hours on a tiny wheel that turned a spit.

You see, a few hundred years ago the generally preferred method for cooking a large piece of meat evenly was to put it on a spit and rotate it until it was fully cooked. Cooking meat thoroughly on a spit takes anywhere between 40 and 80 minutes per kilo depending on which meat it is you’re cooking. Needless to say, roasting an adult hog on the fire for a party took an incredibly long time.

Prior to the introduction of turnspits around the 16th century, the painstakingly tedious and unrelenting job of turning the spit was left to the lowest ranking member of the household, “usually a small boy”, though in larger households the size of the spit necessitated delegating the job to an adult. The job was tough, cruel and often resulted in the poor soul tasked with doing it suffering from burns, blisters and exhaustion. What made the job more difficult was that the spitjacks, as they were known, had to work in full uniform. In fact, during Tudor times, spitjacks working in Hampton Court were told that they had to stop working in the nude as well as to stop urinating in the fireplace, because nobody wants their meat smoked with evaporated pee… Or, I mean, if you do, we here at TodayIFoundOut don’t judge. Just, you know, not everybody has the same kinks.

While we’d like to say that spitjacks were replaced by dogs out of concern for their health, the truth is that dogs could work longer hours without a break and they didn’t need to be paid in anything other than food. This is why in the 16th century, spitjacks were phased out in favour of a small machine powered by an even smaller dog.

So were the dogs treated any better than the spitjacks? Nope. Turnspits were generally seen more as kitchen tools than fuzzy members of the household who needed just as many belly rubs and chin scratches as normal dogs.

Along with being subjected to the same long hours and awful conditions as the human spitjacks before them, turnspits would often be cruelly mistreated by their owners. For instance, to train them to run at the correct speed, a common method was simply to throw a hot coal into the dog’s wheel every time it slowed too much. During their off-time, the exhausted turnspits were known to work great as footwarmers, even apparently commonly brought to church for that exact purpose.

Turnspits were ultimately replaced by steam-powered machines and by the end of the 19th century the breed officially was declared extinct.

Despite the fact that, for a few centuries, the turnspit could be found in almost every large home in England, including the homes of royalty, nobody anywhere bothered to note down exactly what breeding process went into creating the dog that had ensured so many people had evenly cooked dinners. All we have to go on are historical descriptions of the breed which described it as “long-bodied”, “crooked-legged” and “ugly”. We also have a single stuffed specimen called Whiskey.

It’s not all bad though; the horrific treatment turnspits were subjected to is reportedly what inspired Henry Bergh to start the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which in turn has resulted in countless animals being saved from abuse and cruelty.

Oscar Wilde

Speaking of cruelty to living things, in the never look into your heroes rabbit hole files- let’s talk about Oscar Wilde, who was both the recipient of a measure of cruelty completely unjustly from a modern lens, but also paradoxically from a modern lens completely deserved it and much, much more. And, on that note, I assure you, no matter which way you swing or how much you love his work, you will not like him by the end of this video.

Confused?

Well, as many know, Oscar Wilde was ultimately found guilty of “gross indecency with certain male persons”, today often thus claimed he was more or less simply being unjustly punished for homosexual acts. And that’s very true. And the results were devastating, not just because of the two year prison sentence, but as Wilde would sum up, “lost wife, children, fame, honour, position, wealth.”

While Wilde and about 50,000 others would be given a posthumous pardon in 2017 after the passing of the Policing and Crime Act of 2017, it turns out the authorities issuing those pardons may have wanted to look closer at the court documents and evidence leveled against Wilde to see if he actually deserved a pardon… because while there was nothing grossly indecent about a subset of his acts, the ones with other consenting adults, there were a whole lot of others that were with an entirely less consenting, underage group. And, indeed, most of the three trials that evidence was brought to bear against him were hyper focusing on those youthful instances for good reason after a recent scandal that had rocked Britain, and the masses still pretty pissed off about it.

Before I go further, let’s just say this is about to get dark and so just fair warning, though I’ll do my best to avoid things getting too explicit, as many of the witnesses, including his victim’s, accounts were not shy about being. If you’d like to read the transcripts for yourself, they are readily available with a little googling.

But to begin with, it’s important to get some very brief context leading up to Wilde’s trials in 1895. Enter the Cleveland Street scandal of 1889. The full details of it are mostly irrelevant here, but suffice it to say a brothel catering to gay or bisexual men was unearthed on Cleveland Street, London at that point, with three key facts enraging the masses in the aftermath beyond the obvious one of homosexual acts at the time being considered evil- first, it was allegedly frequented by many elite of society, up to and including certain very prominent royals. Second, many of those offering their services from that establishment were very young teen boys. And third, there seemed to be a positively Epstein level effort to cover up who all were involved here, and even to help get those who were known to be involved off on abnormally light sentences, or sometimes no punishment at all.

For example, the ring leader of it all, Charles Hammond, was seemingly allowed to escape to France and later emigrated to the United States, with the Prime Minister himself pushing for no extradition proceedings or any effort at all to try to get him back and prosecute him. Those inclined to believe there was a major coverup happening here, which was basically everyone, conjectured this was because Hammond simply had too much dirt on too many very prominent individuals for any among the elite wanting him to get his day in court. Thus, he was more or less let go and the case against him was dropped.

This particular scandal had initially started when a 15 year old boy (and note here the age of consent in Britain at the time was 16) named Charles Thomas Swinscow was found with several weeks worth of wages at a time when messenger boys, as he was allegedly working as, were not allowed to carry personal cash during work. Police initially thought he must have stolen the money, but it later came out he’d simply been working as a prostitute for Hammond who, as noted, ran a brothel on Cleveland Street. In a nutshell, many of Hammond’s boys also worked as telegraph or messenger boys, or at least allegedly so, so it was easy to cover for why these lower class boys were going around to various prominent individuals’ homes.

While the masses were upset about the homosexual relationship side of things because the past was the worst, one thing they were more justifiably upset about even through a modern lens was the use of these lower class teens, including ones under the age of consent, for this purpose, with it seen as the elite exploiting and corrupting the telegraph boys with very little the boys could have done about it.

With all this still relatively fresh on the masses minds, and generally still irked that none of the elite had been made to pay for their crimes in such an operation, well, enter one of the elite in Oscar Wilde, who seems to have enjoyed the services of such telegraph boys himself and more or less shot himself in the foot making sure everybody ended up knowing about it.

While some in more modern times have defended Wilde claiming that the youngest boys were 16, which again is the age of consent in the UK, to begin with, regardless, paying for such services from someone under 18 is illegal today. And in any event, there were also plenty of accounts of him paying for the services of teens at least as young as 13 or 14, which was below the age of consent in Britain then too after the passing of The Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, which had, among other things, raised the age of consent from 13 to 16 in an effort to help suppress a major problem at the time of young teens of both sexes being forced to work in brothels or otherwise exploited by adults in this way.

Famed French author André Gide, who quite openly did the same, though noteworthy the age of consent at the time was 13 in France, so he could get away with not being shy about it, includes in his journal just such an occasion where he states Wilde had brought he and Gide two very young teens to spend the night with. In his journal, Gide glows about how great the night was for him and Wilde… But I’m not going to read the rather explicit journal entry here, because, frankly, I just don’t want to read it again.

But going back to Wilde’s legal issues because of such activities, they all started when Wilde made the monumentally stupid decision to sue the Marquis of Queensberry, John Sholto Douglas, the father of one of Wilde’s lovers, after Queensberry had written on a card for all to see that Wilde was a sodomite.

Wilde took offense to this, and decided to go after Queensberry to clear his name. This was despite that many of Wilde’s friends, who both knew well his activities and in some cases their own with Wilde, strongly advised he not do so because it would be relatively easy to prove in court that he had done these things given the sheer volume of individuals Wilde had slept with and how relatively open Wilde had been about it all.

Nevertheless, Wilde proceeded, resulting in Queensberry’s arrest and then needing to prove his statement against Wilde. He thus hired private investigators to gather evidence against Wilde and it was on- First with the trial against Queensberry, which ended after just three days when the evidence against Wilde was rather overwhelming and Wilde ceased trying to disprove it.

But, of course, now it was slightly more definitively publicly known that Wilde had likely done these things, which spurred another trial, this one a criminal one against Wilde himself.

On that note, looking over all the testimonies and evidence leveled against Wilde in the three trials, among other things prosecutors questioned Wilde about the slew of boys who he’d given, to quote “intellectual treats” to, such as fine clothes and even in one case a silver-mounted walking stick. On these, Wilde didn’t deny he’d done such in the general case, at which point the prosecutor further grilled him on why nearly universally these young boys were not sons of prominent companions or the like he might otherwise be expected to associate with, but almost universally just random, often impoverished and illiterate boys that he also seemed to not only lavish gifts on, but spend a lot of private time with, including overnight visits.

Wilde initially claimed he simply enjoyed the company of young boys for completely platonic reasons, stating, “I never inquired, nor did I care, what station they occupied.” And “I recognize no social distinctions at all of any kind, and to me youth, the mere fact of youth, is so wonderful that I would sooner talk to a young man for half-an-hour than be–well–cross-examined in court.”

When questioned further in one case where he took a newspaper boy and spent a weekend with him in a Brighton hotel, during which he appears to have attempted to cover up the boy’s origins by buying him a suit that included an insignia from an elite private boy’s school, Wilde claimed the choice of suit was simply because the boy had liked the school’s colors and the boy had picked it out himself.

In another instance, one of the boys had worked for Wilde’s publisher as an office boy, but with aspirations to someday be a great writer himself. The teen testified Wilde used this fact to cultivate a relationship with him, which included sexual contact, only to be fired from the publishing house not long after when his relationship with Wilde had been discovered.

In yet another instance, a chambermaid, Margaret Cotta, at the Savoy Hotel where Wilde frequently entertained his young teen “renters”, testified that Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas had met up at the hotel together, and the next morning when she went to clean their room, she found, to quote her, a “common boy, rough looking, about 14 years of age’ in Wilde’s bed, the sheets of which ‘were always in a most disgusting state… [with] traces of vaseline, soil…” and I’m just going to stop the quote right there because it gets much worse.

Others who worked at the hotel or various places frequented by Wilde, also testified that Wilde often unabashedly kissed many of the page boys, as well as, once again, frequently purchased gifts for them, had relatively large sums of money given to them for tips after he’d been closeted with them, the list goes on and on.

In yet another case, a 16 year old apprentice electrician Wallis Grainger testified that Wilde had taken him to a cottage, ironically the one near Goring-on-Thames that Wilde had written An Ideal Husband at- a play featuring blackmail and corruption- and “’came into my bedroom and woke me up and told me to come into his bedroom which was next door…” and just going to stop right there on that quote too.

Grainger also claimed that Wilde had stated that if Grainger ever revealed the nature of their relationship, Wilde would ensure he would find himself in, to quote Grainger, “very serious trouble.”

Wilde’s own governess to his sons, Gertrude Simmons, likewise testified against him, noting his frequently being extremely affectionate with certain young boys, including a young boat boy by the name of George Hughes.

The testimonies go on and on, which, granted, at the time it was not at all unheard of for individuals to bribe the impoverished to give false evidence. However, given the overwhelming amount of it both in these case, including the manny elements Wilde himself didn’t deny, as well as outside letters and journals only fully known about today from Wilde himself, friends and others, let’s just say few think the general thrust of what Wilde was being accused of was false, quite a bit of it being extremely illegal today, but even in his time in instances where the teen was under 16 would have been illegal for reasons that had nothing to do with the gender of the teen.

And it is at this point that I’m not really inclined to continue in our normally overly thorough way quoting countless primary documents and smoking guns, so as to leave no doubt it’s not a narrative we are spinning, but simply the facts as they were. In this case, frankly I just don’t want to read the quotes here, but go google to your heart’s content if you’re interested in greater detail.

Ultimately during the whole ordeal, Wilde gave his famous speech about “The love that dare not speak its name” which is today often hailed as a beautiful defense of homosexuality, and otherwise very much is in parts if one doesn’t read the context of the scope of what he was being tried for- not just his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas or other consenting adults, but with a myriad of young teens that had been roped into a prostitution ring.

Things become much less inspiring in the speech given Wilde explicitly references relationships between an older man with a younger, which technically does fit between himself and Douglas who was almost two decades his junior, but in the context of the rest of the trial, ooof. To quote Wilde,

“The love that dare not speak its name” in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan… It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect…. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as “the love that dare not speak its name”, and on that account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.”

In the end, while Wilde did get off during the first criminal trial owing to one of the jurors inexplicably refusing to convict him, the second didn’t go so well for him and he was sentenced to two years in prison.

While in prison, Wilde would lament in a letter to the Home Secretary, he had been “helpless prey of the most revolting passions, and a gang of people who for their own profit ministered to them, and drove [me] to… hideous ruin.”

That said, when he got out of jail and went into a sort of exile, he seems to have jumped right back into it, as his former lover Lord Alfred Douglas noted, “he was hand in glove with all the little boys on the Boulevard. He never attempted to conceal it.” And Wilde himself wrote in a letter to a friend, “Today I bade good-bye, with tears and one kiss, to the beautiful Greek boy. . . he is the nicest boy you ever introduced to me.”

In the end, Oscar Wilde was unequivocally one of the greatest wordsmiths to ever walk the earth, and one can at least still admire him for that. He was also unjustly vilified for his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas and seemingly quite a few other consenting adult men… or I mean, kind of unjustly vilified, as it was still him cheating on his wife… a lot. Not exactly considered an acceptable behavior in most countries, outside of maybe France, as Simon and I cover in our BrainFood Show episode The Common Differences Between the U.S. and Europe. The statistics in France on this one are genuinely mind boggling, at least from an American perspective. Link below.

The point being, there is good reason Wilde has long been held as the poster child of how unjust a period of history was for gay or bisexual individuals, especially as it’s only been since the year 2000 that many of the testimonies and evidence leveled against Wilde have been publicly known. That said, there still was enough existing evidence, letters, and the like before this that some particularly sleuthy biographers should have long ago covered it all much more thoroughly for the masses.

But at the same time, of course, when looking at any individual from history too closely, well, you’re going to quite commonly find they were all extremely racist, sexist, and, much like Wilde, did things with people who were of an age that if done today, would see that person behind bars for a good long time. Thus, it’s generally advisable to judge people more on the morals and precepts of their own eras, rather than our own, lest there’s quite literally almost no one in history we could write about and admire for anything, except for Mister Rogers.

That said, it’s harder to continue admiring some than others.

In the end, basically every facet of Wilde’s trials and story with it on all sides is the quintessential example of two universal truths- never meet your heroes (unless that hero is Mister Rogers), and the past was the absolute worst.

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