This man had led a very wicked life, and as the fruit of his sins, a
very unpleasant disease kept frequently reminding him that the
pleasures of sin are a lasting bitter.--With this complaint he was
often confined to his room. At length it was conjectured that he was
not so sick as he pretended, and a resolution was formed that he
should go into the shop and do his work like the other prisoners. To
this, however, he objected, declaring that he was sick, and not able
to be in the shop. But when the king commands, he must be obeyed; and
so a course of preparations was made to make Perry well and get him
out to work.
In the first place, a long board was provided, with straps to fasten
it on his back, by lashing the sides around his arms, and neck, and
body. This being properly adjusted, a rope was fastened round under
his arms, and he was drawn up by it as if under a gallows, so as to
just permit his toes to touch the ground. This was done in the yard,
before all the prisoners, and keepers, and spectators from without;
and it was repeated every day for as much as a week. After he had hung
there a suitable time, he was let down, and being unable to stand, he
would fall directly to the ground. Then the keepers would throw whole
buckets of water on him, drawn cold from the cistern. Often would they
dash these directly in his face. After this, they would hang him up
again, so that the medicine of the rope, the board, and the bucket,
had a fair opportunity to exert their sanative properties. The patient
lived through it, and so did St. John live through the boiling oil,
but the strength of human nature is no excuse for those who delight in
cruelty. The man who maliciously gives me poison is a murderer, though
my constitution is proof against it; and the fact that Perry outlived
this process, is no evidence that he was not sick.
I have not the least sympathy for this man on account of what he
suffered from his disease. I am glad that providence has appended to
the impure gratification of sensual desires, some dreadful recoil of
suffering; that when the loveliness of virtue cannot charm, the
deformity and wretchedness of vice may appeal. But I have copied this
sketch from my memorandum, to shew how men in office can descend to
what would degrade a savage. If Perry was as bad as sin itself, no one
had any right to torture him. I have copied it also as a specimen of
what _many_ sick men have had to endure.