Execution by beheading was
performed in a summary way upon either men or women who were guilty of
but very slight crimes; and a dogged, yet in some cases fine,
indifference to human life was thus generated. The roads were so
notoriously bad, even up to the last thirty years, that there was little
communication between one village and another; if the produce of industry
could be conveyed at stated times to the cloth market of the district, it
was all that could be done; and, in lonely houses on the distant hill-
side, or by the small magnates of secluded hamlets, crimes might be
committed almost unknown, certainly without any great uprising of popular
indignation calculated to bring down the strong arm of the law. It must
be remembered that in those days there was no rural constabulary; and the
few magistrates left to themselves, and generally related to one another,
were most of them inclined to tolerate eccentricity, and to wink at
faults too much like their own.
Men hardly past middle life talk of the days of their youth, spent in
this part of the country, when, during the winter months, they rode up to
the saddle-girths in mud; when absolute business was the only reason for
stirring beyond the precincts of home, and when that business was
conducted under a pressure of difficulties which they themselves, borne
along to Bradford market in a swift first-class carriage, can hardly
believe to have been possible.
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