“THE WORLD HAS MOVED.”

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LIV, Issue LIV, 19 August 1920, Page 1

“THE WORLD HAS MOVED.”

Commenting on a recent sermon by Dean Inge in jLomlon, in wlpca he tooK a pessimistic mow oi human prog.ess, .dark Guy I’eaisc writes. in the Methodist Recorder adopting the opposite outlook, it should, he says, be a matter <,f great thanksgiving and of much rejoicing to look back over a century os Eugtaiul, He asked an 80-ycar-oM woman who had lived at a turnpike gate a.l her days, “Tell me, when vou uere :i girl June many clnuiKon lanuei s iiave you seen gouig iiomc of a market night.' ' Bhe stopped a moment. •\Vhy, there was semes.’ “flow many are x-here now'.'' Again she stopped as if to count. s oniy one—.o' course, if you do mean things like taut ; win* you might call it another world. An oid .man declared to him, T do not say since 1 was a boy the world has been Christianised, but 1 do say it has been humanised. 1 mysc.f saw a 'woman'stripped to the waist and tied to a, cart tail, and whipped through the streets of Kidderminster for stealing. Mr. Fearsc proceeds : ■ “It is but a hundred years ago tost every week a waggon-load ox oltio children were sent from the London -workhouses t° work in Lancashire cotton .factories from 5 in the morning to 7 or 8 at night ; ami in the ease of oiio workhouse the condition was made that in every waggon-load of children Here should be one idiot child. Dec I.* k\.) We iind as late as 1846 that a sVdier was Hogged till lie died. Lord I’aiu.erston resisted the proposal that the punishment of «a soldier or a s-a’ or should be limited to a hundred iasi-os. Slavery existed in ‘Scotland down t<> the dawn of the nineteenth century. (oiliors and pullers were slaves bought and sold with the works at which they laboured.

“Think of Ml the coal 0 f the country being brought np ladders by women with baskets on their heads, often stripped to the waist. They dragged about little waggons by a chain ‘.listened round them, crawling on hands and feet in the darkness of the i ar.e. Children of six were regularly < u.ployed. ‘I was one of ’em,’ -said an old man to me, in South Wales. ‘I was one of ’em —had hali-n-cvown a week, and had to pay fur the oil ‘cr ray lamp out of that. the act which prohibited working people oy xiovet *;i imprisonment from entering :lilo any combination to raise wages or tv reduce hours of labour remained in H-du until 1324. ‘•The terrible brutality of a hundred years ago is - appalling; there were two hundred and twenty-three offences for which one could be hanged. If a man injured Westnimster Bridge he iy as hanged. 11 he appeared disguised in a public road he was hanged. if he jut clown a young tree he was hanged. If he shot at a rabbit he was hanged. If he stole anything o ver hv e shillings lie was* hanged. In 1816 thoie were at one time fifty-eight persons under sentence of death, one a child of 10' vears of age. In the }ife of Mrs Fry, the story is told of. a child of a who broke a window and stoic two-pennv-worth of sweets, and wa* sentenced to bo hanged. .“No. no, Mr, Dean . the waiter concludes. ■ “ thank God it is another world.”