subs. (old).—The pillory, stocks, or any similar mode of punishment; a prison-cell: see quots.
d. 1555. LATIMER, Sermons, fol. 105, b. Was not this a seditious fellow? was not this fellow’s preaching a cause of all the trouble in Israel? was he not worthy to be cast in bocardo, or LITTLE-EASE?
1585. FLEMING, The Nomenclator, 196b. Nervus, A kinde of stockes for the necke and the feete: the pillorie, or LITLE EASE.
1688. RANDLE HOLME, Academy of Armoury, III. cvii. No. 91, p. 312. ‘Like to this [the Stocks of which he has just given a description] there is another like place of Punishment in our House of Correction in Chester (the like to it I have not heard in any other place) it is called the LITTLE EASE, a place cut into a Rock, with a Grate Door before it; into this place are put Renegadoes, Apprentices, &c. that disobey their Parents and Masters, Robbers of Orchards, and such like Rebellious Youths; in which they can neither Stand, Sit, Kneel, nor lie down, but be all in a ruck, or knit together, so and in such a Lamentable Condition, that half an hour will tame the Stoutest and Stubbornest Stomach, and will make him have a desire to be freed from the place.’
1733. Abstract of the Sufferings of the People called Quakers, etc. Footnote. ‘This LITTLE EASE was a hole hewed out in a rock; the breadth and cross from side to side is 17 inches, from the back to the inside of the great door; at the top, 7 inches; at the shoulders, 8 inches; and the breast, 91/2 inches; from the top to the bottom, 1 yard and a half, with a device to lessen the height as they are minded to torment the person put in, by drawboards which shoot over across the two sides, to a yard in height, or thereabouts.’
1738. The Curiosity, p. 60. LITTLE-EASE … a place of punishment in Giuldhall, London for unruly apprentices.
1796. GROSE, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (2nd ed.), s.v.
1819–30. LINGARD, A History of England, viii. note G. p. 424 (4th ed.). ‘A fourth kind of torture was a cell called LITTLE EASE. It was of so small dimensions and so constructed that the prisoner could neither stand, sit, nor lie in it at full length. He was compelled to draw himself up in a squatting posture, and so remained during several days.’
1871. Daily Telegraph, 25 Jan., p. 5, col. 2. We should see a hideous dark den … apparently capable of containing about one-fourth of the prisoners with which it is commonly filled…. Every now and then one dies … after a temporary sojourn in one of these chapels of LITTLE-EASE at the Acton Police Station.
1895. H. B. MARRIOTT-WATSON, The King’s Treasure, in The New Review, July, p. 17. ‘I think,’ he says, ‘my good highwayman, that the LITTLE-EASE in Dartford Compter is the place for you,’ and chuckled as if he had made a jest.
