Kids these days may think they have it bad when their parents take away their phones
or their teachers call home to tattle on them, but if you were born back in the days of the
Aztec you might be dangled over burning chilis for your disobedience.
Still think you got it tough?
Why not try out some of the historically worst punishments children ever suffered?
When it comes to horrible punishments of children, Victorian England just might have the market
cornered.
The 19th century was a tough time to be a kid, especially in a society that didn’t
distinguish between adults and children when it came to punishment - even criminal punishment.
Children found guilty of crimes like theft could face the same harsh punishments that
would be levied against an adult thief - children could find themselves sentenced to hard time
in an adult prison, forced to do months of hard labor, or even be sent to the penal colonies.
In some extreme cases, children as young as 12 years old could be hanged and executed
for their crimes.
As the industrial revolution kicked off, and more and more people flooded into Victorian
cities from the rural countryside, cities became crowded and the crime rate skyrocketed.
This frightened the wealthy upper and middle class citizens, and their fear shaped the
laws that would dictate how criminals - including children - were treated in Victorian England.
Sending criminals and other undesirables to the new frontier of Australia became the common
method of dealing with crime - out of sight, out of mind.
Between 1788 and 1850, 162,000 convicts were sent to serve their sentences in Australia
on 806 ships.
Since child criminals were not treated any differently than adults in Victorian England,
countless children found themselves among the ship loads of convicts sent to the New
World.
An 1873 passenger list from a ship bound for an Australian penal colony listed among its
human cargo a number of underage criminals.
Kids as young as 13 were regularly sentenced to spending 7 years or more working in a penal
colony halfway across the world from crimes like stealing from their master or even just
for stealing a coat and boots.
Eventually, people in Victorian England started to become a bit uncomfortable with the extremely
harsh ways that they were punishing children.
In response to public outcry, the government created reformatory schools as a more humane
way to rehabilitate criminal children.
The idea behind these schools was that they could provide a place where bad children could
spend several years separated from the so-called bad influences at home and in their daily
environment.
Reformatory schools were renowned for their strict discipline - beatings were frequent,
the children were exploited for free labor, and runaways were often locked up in isolation.
Some court documents from 1873 provide some startling examples of exactly how harsh these
punishments were.
11 year old Joseph Lewis was sentenced to 1 month of hard labor for stealing 28 pounds
of iron.
John Greening, also 11 years old, was given a stiff sentence of 1 month of hard labor
followed by 5 years at a reform school for his crime of stealing gooseberries off of
a bush.
This harsh sentence for a seemingly minor infraction was likely because of his prior
record of criminal behavior - he had already been sentenced to 2 months of hard labor and
had received a public whipping for stealing coal.
These are just 2 of the many, many examples of similarly harsh punishments given to Victorian
children, many of whom were simply trying to keep themselves alive.
Going back even further in history, child punishment becomes even more bizarre.
The ancient Aztecs had some unique - and especially harsh - methods when it came to childrearing.
Aztec children who disobeyed their parents could find themselves under fire - or rather,
over it.
Nautghy Aztec children who displeased their parents could be dangled over the chilis,
which is exactly what it sounds like - they would be forcibly held over a small fire full
of smoking Habanero peppers.
This bizarre punishment would usually only last for a few seconds at a time, but it was
enough to burn the child’s eyes and skin and cause extreme distress.
Long-term exposure could cause intense weeping, painful skin irritations and burning sensations,
coughing and difficulty breathing.
A more intense form of this same punishment was used to execute criminals, so Aztec parents
were not fooling around.
As if this wasn’t enough, Aztec parents were also known to leave misbehaving children
outside and exposed to the elements overnight, or they would even scar them with cactus needles
as a permanent reminder of their misdeeds.
There’s no doubt that kids throughout history were subjected to some pretty horrific punishments
at home, but it wasn’t just their parents that they had to worry about…
School today might be a respite from the rigidness of home for kids with overly strict parents,
but in the past, school could be just as brutal as life at home.
Teachers had ultimate authority over their pupils, and they were allowed - and often
encouraged - to use corporal punishment to teach children how to behave properly and
to prepare them for the harsh realities of the real world.
Children who misbehaved at school around the turn of the 20th century could expect the
same harsh treatment from their teachers as they would receive at home.
Misbehavior such as talking out of turn, disrupting class or even daydreaming could warrant a
few lashes with the teacher’s weapon of choice - a switch made of hickory branches,
a leather strap or a yardstick were common weapons of choice for teachers around the
world.
Corporal punishment is largely banned in schools around the world today, but shockingly it’s
still legal in many states - prior to Covid shutdowns, 600 students were hit at school
every day!
Unbelievably, students could also be punished for failing to learn properly.
Rather than be given extra help and attention, children who struggled to keep up with their
classmates could be sent to the corner of the room, where they would be forced to sit
on a stool in full view of the rest of the class, and made to wear a Dunce Cap, a large,
cone-shaped hat that was meant to humiliate them.
The modern-day insulting taunts of “conehead” or “blockhead” have their roots in this
shameful practice.
Getting it at home and at school is bad enough, but for some poor kids, there was yet another
place where they were subjected to horrific punishments - work.
Child labor laws are a relatively new phenomenon - during the 17th and 18th centuries, as the
Industrial Revolution kicked into high gear, there were no laws in place to protect workers
at all, let alone child laborers.
With no laws regulating the conduct of factory owners, child laborers became incredibly popular.
For one thing, children could be paid significantly less for their work - in some cases, they
made as little as 10% of what an adult would be paid to do the same work.
Children were also preferred because they were seen as more obedient and were much easier
to control - and, let’s face it, abuse - than adults were.
Children were also smaller, which meant they could work in close quarters and fit into
tight spaces - this allowed factories to keep their machines running while they sent children
into dangerous areas to make repairs, saving them time and money compared to having to
shut down production to have an adult complete the work.
At the height of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, many children, especially
orphans, found themselves working hard for a living from a startlingly young age.
Kids as young as 6 worked in Victorian factories, where conditions were abysmal and punishments
were incredibly harsh.
A typical work day could last upwards of 14 hours, and many child laborers lived on site
at the factory, which meant that they never got a break from the hellish conditions.
Factories and dormitories were overcrowded, filthy, and full of disease.
And to make sure that the very thought of escape never even crossed the minds of these
poor, overworked kids, their overseers devised brutally efficient ways of punishing runaways.
Children who had run away and been caught - or even just those who were deemed a flight
risk - were kept in irons.
The factory blacksmith would fashion heavy iron chains, which would be riveted around
the child’s ankles and wound around their waist.
The child would have to walk to work, do their job and even sleep in the chains.
If even that wasn’t enough to stop them from running away, young children could face
jail time for attempting to escape the hellish conditions of factory life.
Even the most diligent child laborers were not immune from harsh punishments.
The work was brutally hard, and the expectations were nearly impossible to meet.
Children who were deemed to be working too slowly were frequently beaten with straps,
sticks, fists and boots, often to the point of leaving permanent damage.
But some overseers devised other, more creative forms of punishments to keep their young charges
in line and working at a frantic pace.
Shaving the head of rebellious child laborers was a favorite punishment, especially for
girls.
This embarrassing punishment marked the child out as a troublemaker, making them an easy
target for further abuse.
If a child appeared to be too tired to work at the impossible pace expected of them, their
overseer would often hoist them into the air by their ankles and dunk them head first into
the water cistern to shock them into wakefulness, before sending them back to work, where they
were expected to make up for lost time.
Then, of course, there was the innate danger of the work itself.
Children were favored laborers in textile mills, where their small fingers and tiny
frames could easily fit inside the complex machinery.
These huge machines were full of dangerous spinning wheels and rotating belts, and too
many children were gravely injured operating them.
Children were often too small to operate the equipment properly, so they would stand on
the frame of the machine to work, putting them at risk of falling into the spinning
shafts and grinding gears just below them.
Losing a finger, a limb or even your life on one of these machines was sadly all too
common in early 19th century factories - in fact, it was such a common occurrence that
it usually didn’t even warrant stopping production.
Other child laborers were forced to continue working as their poor colleague - or their
body - was removed from the factory floor.
If you thought this video was horrifying, you’ll definitely want to check out our
other videos, like this one called “Worst Punishments In The History Of Mankind”,
or maybe you’ll like this other video, instead.