The Olympics remain one of the most prestigious sporting events in the world. Countries all over the world spend enormous amounts of money, athletes dedicate their lives to training, and enthusiasts come from everywhere to watch the games. However, while this all seems good on the surface, many shocking revelations have come to light.

10 Russia Had An Untraceable Drug For The Sochi Winter Olympics

Before the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, the World Anti-Doping Agency received word that there was a human growth hormone (HGH) available in Russia that was completely untraceable by any standard Olympics drug test. If true, that would have given the Russians a huge advantage in virtually every sport in the Winter Olympics that year. So the question on everyone’s mind was: How true was this claim?

German broadcaster WDR (which has a reliable reputation in the media) was behind the shocking report. They sent undercover reporters to the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. There, they interviewed a scientist who claimed that an untraceable HGH had been created called full-size MGF, which had been previously tested on animals.

In the words of the scientist, it “works two times faster than a normal muscle tonic and cannot be detected by the doping authorities.” He then went on to say that it would cost €100,000 to “prepare” an athlete for the Winter Olympics.

It is well-known that there are stringent testing standards that improve constantly, so most coaches and athletes wouldn’t even risk supposedly “untraceable” drugs. Nevertheless, it was claimed that some athletes would not pass up the opportunity to have a possible advantage.

This became even more of a worry when full-size MGF was tested by German scientists. They proved how effective the drug really was. Luckily, new testing was developed to help prevent abuse of supposedly “untraceable” drugs.

9 The 2016 Rio Olympics Have Been Brutal On The Locals

Ever since Rio de Janeiro was given the rights to host the Olympics in 2016, the Brazilian government has been displacing the locals to prepare for the games. While some say this is just about the games, others claim that there is an ulterior motive.

It has been reported that the Brazilian government is deliberately destroying poor neighborhoods to make way for infrastructure for the coming events. Specifically, several locals were forced out of their homes so that a high-speed bus lane could be built from the international airport to Barra de Tijuca, the neighborhood where most of the Olympic events will be held.

Since 2009, over 22,000 families have been moved from their homes because their homes were labeled “at risk” or, more likely, in the way of proposed Olympic developments. Many families haven’t received any compensation for the destruction of their homes due to legal issues surrounding much of the property.

Most of these families have been resettled in government developments far from the inner city where they are employed, which causes untold economic hardships. The government claims that only 344 families—all living in the favela of Vila Autodromo—have been resettled due to the Olympics.

According to housing activists, the Rio city officials have been using the Olympic developments as a way of segregating the rich and the poor in the city. The housing developments to which many people are moved have no convenient bus routes for commuters, no local schools, increased utility costs, and unofficial “militias” that extort money from the residents in return for security.

8 Chinese Abuse In The London Olympics

In many countries, winning the gold in the Olympics is the only way to prove your worth. If you fail, you’re considered a social pariah; if you win, then you become a national hero. To achieve the top prize, many coaches and athletes will go to extreme lengths to become and remain a victor.

China is one of the nations where this happens. During the 2012 London Olympics, allegations emerged that Chinese coaches were grossly abusing their teams. Apparently, their heartless behavior begins as soon as the athlete is recruited.

Once children show a talent for sports in China, they are immediately uprooted and isolated from their families so that they can train without distractions. Coaches often deliberately withhold news from their athletes, no matter how personal, to reduce stress that is unrelated to the sport.

Such was the case with Olympic diver Wu Minxia. She was not told that her mother had died from cancer until after she had completed her routine during the 2012 Olympics. However, she had been so emotionally removed from her parents that when she received the news, she showed no sadness and claimed that her team was her “family.”

Many coaches have also claimed that the Chinese routinely use physical abuse to control their athletes. One coach said, “The women are literally beat into submission.”

They claim that this abuse starts at a younger, more vulnerable age. Eventually, the coaches are able to dictate the athletes’ every waking moment. The enormous cash bonuses offered by the Chinese to Olympic winners apparently encourage this extreme behavior.

7 USA Competitive Swimming Sex Scandal

A frightening trend has been discovered among American competitive swim coaches. Although it has long been unnoticed or simply ignored, some coaches have been sexually abusing their athletes. Several coaches have received harsh punishments for their behavior, but this has done nothing to scare others into following the law.

As of 2014, at least 100 competitive swim coaches have been given lifetime bans for sexual abuse. Many of these men were and are repeat offenders. For example, swim coach Andy King was convicted of 15 sexual abuse charges. These repeated offenses occurred mainly because this sort of behavior was swept under the rug to protect the integrity of the sport.

Much like other sex offenders, the coaches use a process known as “grooming” in which they build up the trust and affection of a young athlete as a means to an end. What starts as an innocent “friendship” eventually deteriorates into sexual abuse. The coaches do this by giving a warped sense of intimacy to their victims, which these young athletes accept as normal.

This type of exploitation may have flourished in an era when athletes remained quiet. But people are more willing to reveal the truth today. With such a clear-cut pattern and witness confirmations, it would stand to reason that the authorities are devoting more effort to combating this abuse.

The Olympics and the US government have begun to crack down on hurtful behaviors toward young athletes, but many instances of abuse are not recognized. Therefore, many people believe that there is far more abuse than officially reported.

6 The Olympics Are A White Elephant

A white elephant is a possession that can’t be sold for any real profit and that is expensive to maintain. Such is the case with the Olympics. Many cities don’t earn a profit from hosting this prestigious event. Today, the Olympics have become less of a cash cow and more of an expensive trophy to show off the superiority of the host country and city.

In 2004, Athens budgeted $1.5 billion to host the games but ultimately spent an astounding $16 billion, an astronomical sum for a cash-strapped country like Greece. Montreal spent so much for the 1976 Olympics that it took 30 years for the city to pay off its debts. Rio de Janeiro has already spent $25 billion on infrastructure for those watching and participating in the 2016 Olympics.

It has become a multibillion-dollar game of keeping up with the Joneses for each successive host city. To show off their economic superiority, the latest host tries to one-up the previous hosts.

Many of the extravagant construction projects undertaken by host cities are short-term. When the Olympics are over, lavish facilities are often left to deteriorate for the simple reason that no one wants to use them.

This is why many American cities—Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Washington—have been reluctant to lobby for the title of host city. Make no mistake, a few of the games have been profitable: Los Angeles 1984, Barcelona 1992, and Seoul 1998 were all financial boons for the host cities.

However, for many countries, profits don’t matter. The extravagant expenses are an investment in propaganda pieces to show off the supposed financial strength of their country. In 2008, the Beijing Olympics were considered a success because of the prestige the event brought to China.

However, the 2004 Athens Olympics were a failure because Greece overestimated the event’s profit potential—a mistake that helped to plunge the country into bankruptcy. Most experts agree that the Olympics are less of a financial opportunity and more of an expensive party.

5 Olympic Athletes Have A Hard Time Becoming Normal

What it means to be “normal” depends on one’s perspective. But we can probably agree that the life of an Olympic athlete is far different from that of most people.

They begin training at an extremely young age, dedicating their lives and sacrificing youthful experiences so that they can have a shot at achieving athletic greatness. But once that time has passed, their lives radically change. No longer do they spend all of their time training; they now have to become like the rest of us.

This is understandably hard because they have never experienced many of the daily situations that comprise a “normal” life. Diann Roffe, who won the silver in giant slalom in 1992 and the gold for Super G in 1994, announced her retirement from sports when she was 26. Afterward, she spent a long time in a “big bucket of melancholy” because she couldn’t recapture the excitement of being an Olympic athlete.

Still, she was one of the luckier athletes. Some athletes have taken darker and more lethal roads. Scott Miller, a silver medalist in the 1996 Olympics, was arrested for drug possession in 2014. Jeret “Speedy” Peterson, a silver medalist in 2010, struggled with alcoholism and tragically killed himself a year after he won.

When spectacular athletes emerge, they are thrust into the spotlight and showered with media attention. Obviously, being the center of attention can be intoxicating. But once the press moves on, it can be a devastating blow.

Many struggle with their identities and feelings of self-worth because they are now average Joes and have to deal with the realities of life as a regular person. Although some have led well-adjusted lives after the Olympics, many others have struggled to make the transition to normality.

4 Russia May Have Sabotaged The 2012 London Olympics

According to a report by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the Russians sabotaged and intimidated drug testers during the 2012 London Olympics to allow their athletes to get past the drug regulations. The WADA report claimed that the FSB, a successor to the Soviet KGB, was behind this conspiracy. The alleged unethical behavior of the Russians was far-reaching.

First, the FSB offered bribes to officials. Then independent drug-testing officials were intimidated and spied on. FSB agents also infiltrated the laboratories, tampered with samples, and threatened others in the lab.

Before samples were sent to the WADA-accredited Russian laboratory in Moscow, they were sent to a “shadowy” secondary facility on the outskirts of the city. There, the samples were screened and subsequently altered if they came out positive for performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs).

If positive samples managed to get to the accredited lab, the lab director was bribed with cash payments. In one case, the director supposedly destroyed 1,500 tests when he heard that WADA was going to investigate. Phone calls by Russian officials were found to make frequent references to slang terms for steroids, other stimulants, and PEDs.

As a result of these findings, WADA has called for Russia to be banned from the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro. Russia claims that WADA doesn’t have the authority to order such an action. As of February 2016, we don’t know if the International Olympic Committee will do anything about these shocking allegations.

3 The Japanese Olympics Are In The Pocket Of The Yakuza

The yakuza is an organized crime syndicate in Japan, which is often thought of as the Japanese Mafia. Although the organization is not illegal, it is regulated. There are over 60,000 members, and many of them are quite public about their association with the yakuza. Despite this, the US Department of the Treasury has imposed sanctions on the Sumiyoshi-kai, the second largest yakuza organization, which is led by Hareaki Fukuda.

So how does this affect the Olympics in Japan? There is a litany of evidence that Hidetoshi Tanaka, the vice-chairman of the Japanese Olympic Committee, is closely tied to Fukuda. Photographs, police reports, other documents, and verified testimony from individuals associated with the yakuza have all shown that the Japanese Olympic Committee is in bed with the yakuza.

Tanaka is friends with Fukuda and at least one person in the Yamaguchi-gumi, another large criminal organization. In addition, former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, who became head of the Tokyo Organizing Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, has been accused of having yakuza ties.

All of this creates quite a problem for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. It is illegal for an individual or an organization to associate with or provide funds to the yakuza. If it can be proven that so many top Olympic officials are in the pocket of the yakuza, it could rock the proposed Tokyo Olympics to the core.

Tanaka, who was an amateur sumo champion, has lobbied to have sumo wrestling become an official Olympic sport. In 1996, Tanaka allegedly consulted with Kyo Eichu, the consigliere of the Yamaguchi-gumi, to make this happen.

However, Eichu was prosecuted for financial crimes in 1999 and couldn’t assist Tanaka. This wasn’t the end of Tanaka’s association with the Yamaguchi-gumi, though. There are photographs that show him with the head of the gang in 2005. Despite all of the testimony and evidence against the Japanese Olympic Committee, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics are still going on as planned.

2 The Bidding Process Is Notoriously Corrupt

For the most part, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) chooses a host city for the games according to which city will pay the most money. Unethical? Of course. Effective? Definitely.

Most recently, it was revealed that Turkey was almost going to host the 2020 Olympics, but they didn’t pay bribes. In the end, Japan secured the 2020 Olympics after paying $5 million in sponsorship money to members of the IOC.

This isn’t a new practice. Many still remember the revelation that extensive bribery had led to Salt Lake City hosting the 2002 Winter Olympics. The corruption was so extensive in Salt Lake City that 15 officials faced criminal charges of racketeering, fraud, and conspiracy.

Approximately $1 million was spent on sponsorships to secure the city. But the charges were thrown out by the judge in 2003. Although the federal government’s case failed, it did shine a light on the process of host city selection.

Nevertheless, corruption still exists, as in the case of Tokyo 2020. The main character in this drama is Lamine Diack, the 82-year-old former president of the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF), who wanted a $5 million sponsorship for his league.

Turkey refused to pay; Japan didn’t. It’s as simple as that. WADA, which first discovered this information, has said that bribery harms the integrity of the Olympics as much as doping and cheating.

1 Many Of The Events Are Fixed

Recently, several events in the Olympics have been proven to be fixed. However, it’s almost certain that cheating has been going on much longer.

In the 2012 Olympics in London, Azerbaijani boxer Magomed Abdulhamidov was knocked down an incredible five times by Japanese boxer Satoshi Shimuzu. It was one of the most amazing matches in Olympic history, but something unusual happened. Knockdowns are extremely rare in Olympic boxing, but this happened multiple times throughout the match.

The judges gave Azerbaijan the win. Fans booed, but the judges insisted that their ruling was final. Then BBC Newsnight presented evidence that Azerbaijan had paid millions so that two athletes would win gold medals. The match had been fixed.

Evidence showed that Azerbaijan made a $9 million bank transfer to AIBA, which manages Olympic boxing. Of course, AIBA said that the allegations were groundless. But in a twist, AIBA officials upheld Shimuzu’s appeal and gave him the win.

This isn’t the only time that a blatant fix was uncovered. In the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, a French judge gave Russian skaters a higher score as part of a deal that would give the French skaters a good score later. Eventually, the Russians and the Canadians were given dual gold medals, and the rules for skating competitions were changed.

After the 2014 Sochi Olympics, there were allegations that the US and Russia had worked together during the skating events. This resulted in a Russian gold medal for team dance while American skaters won for duet. However, as of February 2016, many people don’t believe these allegations, and they have yet to be proven.

Gordon Gora is a struggling author who is desperately trying to make it. He is working on several projects. You can write him at [email protected].

We’ve come a long way since the computer generated ‘flying cow’ in Twister and the truly terrible creatures in the Stephen King movie, Sleepwalkers. Well, let’s just say we’ve actually come a long way since the disturbing CGI baby in Twilight freaked out audiences worldwide. Not to mention the plastic-looking dinosaurs in the short-lived Terra Nova and the Joker’s transformation in Gotham. Sadly however, creepy and downright weird CGI is still with us, and rears its head every now and then, even in recent TV series and movies (we’re looking at you Justice League).

10 Keeping a beloved character on screen

When Paul Walker died during the filming of Furious 7, the filmmakers had to decide between starting from scratch or somehow keeping Brian O’Connor alive. James Wan wanted to honor Walker’s legacy and hired a fantastic digital effects studio that eventually paired 350 CGI shots of Walker with distant shots of his brother. The result was mostly great, with most fans not even noticing the difference for the majority of the film.

However, there are a handful of scenes that are pretty startling, especially when watching the film a second time. During once scene, all of the characters are standing in a line, looking out over Los Angeles. Brian stands at one end and looks over at Dom but as his face turns, the CGI becomes clear. It is most apparent at the end of the film, when Brian stops next to Dom before they both drive off, with the character almost ‘glowing’ inside the car.

9 Cartoonish horror

CW series, Supernatural, finally concluded its 15-season run in November 2020 after an impressive 327 episodes. As it entered it’s 11th season, it became the longest-running America fantasy TV series and remained hugely popular throughout all its seasons. Sam and Dean Winchester fought monsters, demons and ghosts of all kinds and found themselves in several life and death situations throughout.

During the 7th season of the show, the Leviathan was introduced in a scene meant to scare the pants off audiences. Instead, the CGI used to bring the creature to life went horribly wrong somehow, and the sharp teeth and forked tongue had a cringeworthy, cartoonish effect which led to laughter instead of fear.

8 007 surfing a tidal wave

Die Another Day marked the 40th anniversary of the James Bond franchise and despite mixed reviews, was the highest-grossing 007 film at the time. And, even though the movie made a lot of money, some fans of the franchise view it as the weakest entry. The invisible car didn’t help this view much and neither did the over-the-top scene which sees terrible CGI implemented in order to get Pierce Brosnan surfing a tidal wave.

The scene follows 007 as he travels in a rocket car on a glacier that is about to break apart. As the glacier does exactly that, Bond pulls a piece off the rocket car and proceeds to use it as a surfboard to surf the ensuing tidal wave. He also uses the car’s parachute to help him navigate the wave and strange-looking chunks of ice.

7 Terrible horror movie reveal

There are some truly terrifying moments in the horror movie, Mama. The film has a bleak beginning depicting a father taking his two young daughters into the woods with the intention of killing them, after he’d already murdered his estranged wife and colleagues. He is prevented from doing this by a shadowy figure that proceeds to kill him, before he can harm his children. When the children are eventually found five years later, many chilling scenes ensue, especially the jump scenes involving the youngest, Lily.

The shadowy figure, which followed them to their new home, is affectionately called ‘Mama’ by the children and mostly hidden for much of the film. However, when she is finally revealed the moment is overshadowed by bad CGI and the terrific buildup of suspense and terror evaporates in an instant.

6 The Hulkbuster

Marvel films are exceptionally popular around the world, but even this franchise hasn’t escaped the curse of bad CGI. Captain Marvel has the ‘floating Goose’, Bucky falls weirdly from a train in Captain America: The First Avenger, and a New York alley is turned into Norway in Thor: Ragnarok.

Some of the most notable CGI blunders in the Marvel multiverse comes in Avengers: Infinity War, which is unfortunate since many of the scenes feature excellent special effects. During the big fight scene in Wakanda, Bruce Banner uses the Hulkbuster suit which looks awesome right up until the suit opens and Banner’s head sticks out of the top. Because Banner’s head looks so small compared to the rest of the suit, it seems almost like he’s floating above it, instead of being secured inside it.

5 Is that a real bear?

TV shows typically have far less in the budget when it comes to special effects. And this is probably why the helicopters in Grey’s Anatomy always look so blurry and why explosions and fire in many shows look extremely fake.

Speaking of fire, in the popular Grey’s spinoff, Station 19, the characters face fire in just about every episode. But sometimes, just like Grey’s, they stand off against a different type of threat. The doctors of Grey Sloan Memorial had a run-in with a lion while the firefighters on Station 19 have had to contend with a tiger as well as bears.

While the CGI tiger wasn’t ‘as bad’, fans couldn’t get over how terrible the special effects were when it came to the bears. Words can’t really explain it, so it might be best to watch the video clip to experience the horror first-hand.

4 The problem with ageing

The recently remade IT films were kind of a swing-and-a-miss for hardcore horror fans who couldn’t take Pennywise seriously with his high-pitched voice and lame insults. And then there are the monsters who are ridiculous-looking instead of scary because of the CGI behind their design.

One of the biggest problems the filmmakers faced was Finn Wolfhard’s growth spurt between films. This led to the de-aging of his character, Richie Tozier’s face in the second film which makes for some unsettling viewing. His skin is unnaturally smooth and his airbrushed cheeks and thick glasses make for a very strange combination.

3 Oh deer

Post-apocalyptic TV show, The Walking Dead, has never really been known for strong CGI effects. But the series is so popular that fans willingly overlook the cheesiness of the special effects. However, during one episode even the most loyal fans took to Twitter to voice their disgust about a particularly bad CGI moment.

Rick Grimes is being chased by a horde of zombies in one scene and he needs a distraction, so he decides to take down a deer. The deer that appears in the scene looks like something that wandered out of a bad dream. Apart from looking almost translucent, it’s body is weirdly elongated in the middle. Suffice it to say, the memes on Twitter were as over-the-top as that scene.

2 Technology gone wrong

If ever there was a universally hated movie, Cats is it. Despite starring big Hollywood names, it received brutal reviews with some reviewers bluntly stating that it is the worst movie ever made. Most criticized were the special effects which left the ‘cats’ looking like they indulged into too much makeup while trying to keeping warm in furry costumes. It certainly didn’t help that the movie features dancing cockroaches and mice sporting human faces. The sloppy ‘digital fur technology’ remains the biggest gripe however, with fans fixating on the cat-people’s human feet and all the gaffes which saw some character’s ears CGI’d out.

Some reviewers went even further, saying that the musical wasn’t that great to begin with, therefore the movie should never have been made.

1 Chucky baby

While it is understandable that real live babies couldn’t be used for TV show scenes during the coronavirus lockdowns, it is still quite disturbing to see the lengths that some shows went to in order to include infants in episodes.

Fans of Bull were excited for the show’s fifth season, only to be completely freaked out while watching the first episode. The beginning of the episode gave viewers a glimpse of Jason Bull’s baby girl, Astrid, who unfortunately resembled a creepy Chucky doll. Twitter quickly flooded with memes, with fans describing the obviously CGI baby as a zombie and quipping that it sounded like a cat.

Clearly, Bull hasn’t learned anything from the Renesmee fiasco.

What do you do if you’re the victim of a crime? In the 21st century, you call the police. They go out and arrest the criminal, and an impartial justice system deals with him from there. You can go about your life, secure in the knowledge that the law makes sense, and everyone can expect to be treated fairly. Or that’s the idea, anyway.

In England before the 19th century, that was not the way that things worked. From a modern perspective, everything looks backward and upside down. For starters, you didn’t call the sheriff when a crime was committed. The sheriff called you.

10 You Had To Arrest Criminals Yourself

There were no police officers in Anglo-Saxon England, or if you look at it another way, every able-bodied male between the ages of 15 and 60 was a police officer.^[1] If you saw a crime committed in your neighborhood, it was your job to “raise the hue and cry.” This literally meant shouting something like, “Stop, thief!” or “Murder!” at the top of your lungs. Doing so let your neighbors know it was time to jump into action. All of you had to work together to catch the criminal and bring him to court.

Every man was required to keep weapons at his house just for events like this. The more important a man was, the more expensive weapons he had to keep. Knights needed a chain mail shirt, an iron helmet, a sword, a knife, and a horse. The poorest people had to make do with a bow and arrows. If your arrest attempt failed, and the criminal got away, you and your neighbors had to pay a fine. This sounds unfair to us, but the Anglo-Saxons had a very strong sense of community responsibility. If one person broke the law, that meant the whole community had failed. It was everyone’s job to make sure that justice was restored.

9 You Had To Pay To Be In Jail

In modern times, the money spent to feed and house prisoners comes out of our taxes. This wasn’t true in the past. Back then, prisoners paid for their own upkeep. It didn’t matter if they were eventually found innocent—they still had to pay. Prisons could be a profitable business for the officials who ran them. The warden, or “keeper,” of Newgate Prison paid up to £5,000 to the government for the privilege of running the prison. He recovered his investment by making prisoners pay a fee when they entered Newgate and another one before they could leave.

Inmates paid to have leg irons put on and taken off. They paid for candles, soap, and bedding. If they died in the prison, their relatives had to pay a fee to get their bodies back.^[2] Prisoners also had to pay money to the other inmates. When new prisoners entered, the criminals who’d been there a while would tell them, “Pay or strip.” If the newcomers had no cash to hand over, they were forced to give up some of their clothing, which would then be sold. This system was particularly cruel to debtors, who were in prison precisely because they had no money.

8 You Could Be Executed For Practically Anything

This wasn’t originally the case in England. In 1688, only 50 crimes carried the death penalty. By 1815, the number had swollen to 288. Crimes you could be hanged for included stealing something worth more than five shillings (about $40 today), stealing from a rabbit warren, impersonating a pensioner, cutting down a young tree, damaging Westminster Bridge, and hunting while in disguise. The laws were so harsh that juries sometimes refused to convict defendants who were obviously guilty. Jurors didn’t want to see people executed over minor crimes, so they just set them free.

Most of the new capital crimes added during the 17th and 18th centuries were for theft. During that time, many people left farms in the country for London and other cities. The newcomers were looking for work, but they often didn’t find it. There was a growing number of very poor people in the cities. At the same time, new inventions in manufacturing were making a small number of people very rich. The rich citizens feared “the mob” of the poor and pushed for harsher and harsher punishments for those who stole.^[3]

7 The Criminal Code Often Made No Sense

Preindustrial English law operated by making terrifying examples of a small number of criminals. The hope was that people would remember these rare but frightening punishments and be too afraid to commit crimes.

This helps explain why it was a minor offense to pick fruit from someone else’s fruit trees but a capital crime to steal fruit that had already been picked. You could be executed for breaking a window to rob someone’s house if you did it after dark, but if you waited until after sunrise, breaking and entering was only a misdemeanor. Pickpocketing carried the death penalty, but kidnapping a child did not.

Historian Frank McLynn summed the situation up nicely: “The criminal Code was unjust, irrational, and exceptionally severe.”^[4]

6 You Could Pay A Thief To Catch Another Thief

England had no professional police force until 1829. Before that, laypeople took turns acting as constables in their neighborhoods. The constable’s job was to chase and catch lawbreakers, not to investigate crimes. So what could you do if you didn’t know who had stolen your property? And how could you get that property back? One thing you could do was hire a kind of combination private detective and bounty hunter called a thief-taker. Thief-takers used their contacts in the underworld to find out who had your stolen goods. For the right price, they’d haul the thief in front of the sheriff and bring you your things back.

Some thief-takers were legitimate and performed a valuable service. However, it won’t come as a surprise that not everybody with extensive contacts in the underworld was honest. Some thief-takers operated on both sides of the law, taking citizens’ reward money on one hand and then demanding protection money from criminals on the other. Others convinced gullible people to commit crimes, only to turn around and arrest them in exchange for payment.^[5]

The most famous of the thief-takers was Jonathan Wild, the self-styled “Thief-Taker General.” At one time hailed as a crime-fighting hero, Wild was secretly “finding” goods that he himself had stolen. At the height of his career, he was both a London gang leader and an anti-crime consultant to the British government. Unsurprisingly, Wild’s advice to the Privy Council was that they should offer higher rewards to thief-takers. Wild was betrayed to the authorities by some members of his gang and executed in 1725. He was the inspiration for the character of Peachum in The Beggar’s Opera by John Gay.

5 You Could Have A Great Time At An Execution

If the public was frightened into submission by the spectacle of public executions, then no one seems to have told the execution-goers. In London in the 18th century, hanging days were holidays. Up to 200,000 people took the day off from work and lined the 5-kilometer (3 mi) path from Newgate Prison to the hanging scaffold at Tyburn.^[6] The event was supposed to be a kind of morality play, in which the deaths of criminals inspired people to be obedient to church and civil authorities.

The criminals themselves seldom acted the part of remorseful penitents, though. It was common to curse the courts and witnesses for the prosecution. Some people dressed in their finest clothes and behaved as if they were at a party in their own honor. Some were so drunk on the alcohol that sympathetic spectators gave them that they barely seemed to know what was going on.

Many of the spectators were drunk, too. They drank gin and ate snacks sold by enterprising peddlers. They bought good seats in public viewing stands and copies of what were supposed to be the dying speeches of the condemned. They threw things at unpopular prisoners and cheered the popular ones, especially those who faced death with courage and panache. Executions were so popular that they were written up as a tourist attraction in the 1740 Foreigner’s Guide To London.

4 You Could Be Jailed For The Rest Of Your Life For Owing Money

Being unable to pay your debts was a civil offense in England, but you could still end up in prison because of it. If someone sued you for the nonpayment of a debt, the court could order you to be jailed until the debt was paid. But if you couldn’t pay a debt while you were still working at your job, how were you going to pay it from inside a prison cell? Things got worse for you every day you spent in jail, because you had to pay the jailer for your upkeep while you were imprisoned. With each day that went by, you owed more money.^[7]

Debtors in prison had different strategies for paying their way out. Some got money from their families and friends; others found ways to work in prison. Some were able to renegotiate the terms of their debt with their creditors. And some just died in prison.

In 18th-century London, the poorest of the poor often ended up in the “common side” of Marshalsea prison. (Those who had more money could pay to stay in the more comfortable master’s side.) The prison officials weren’t required to provide food, so they didn’t. Charitable donations provided the only food poor prisoners got, and that wasn’t much. Inmates who got on the jailers’ bad side were sometimes beaten with clubs, tortured with heavy chains attached to their legs, or forced to stay in rooms where people were dying of smallpox. Deaths were very common.

If you didn’t die in debtor’s prison, you might have to stay there a long time. When London’s Fleet Prison finally closed, two of its debtors had been locked up for 30 years. Most people who went to debtor’s prison owed large sums of money, sometimes many times what they earned in a year. That wasn’t true of everyone, though. In one London prison in 1789, about a third of the debtors owed less than £20, which would be an amount up to $30,000–$40,000 today.

3 You Could Be Arrested For Wandering Around While Poor

This had to do with how charity was distributed. A parish was a subdivision of a county and the basic unit of English government. Parishes charged a form of property tax called rates from all the local house owners. Part of the rate money went to help support poor people who lived in the parish. For the most part, citizens were fine with supporting their poor neighbors, but they didn’t want to have to look after the poor of other parishes. For that reason, poor people were discouraged from traveling. “Persons wandering abroad and begging” were labeled vagrants or vagabonds and could be subjected to punishments ranging from being put in the stocks to two years of slavery.

In 1695, two men named Peter Lawman and Francis Buckley were actually sentenced to death for vagabonding. Buckley was found with a pistol, which could have been part of the reason the sentence was so severe. There was virtually no practical difference between “vagabonds” and simple poor people, except that vagabonds were more likely to be strangers to the neighborhood.^[8]

The 1744 Vagrancy Act contained a long list of who was considered undesirable, including all kinds of travelers who had no steady employment. Some examples of prohibited people were “common players of interludes,” unlicensed peddlers, “persons pretending to be Gypsies,” and vaguest of all, “All persons wandering abroad and lodging in alehouses, barns, outhouses or in the open air, not giving a good account of themselves.” Essentially anyone without resources in the form of money or connections could be prosecuted as a vagrant, especially if they wandered far from home.

2 It Was Alarmingly Easy To Be Charged With Piracy

According to the Piracy Act of 1698, it was a crime to “receive, entertaine, or conceale” a pirate or to accept any of his stolen goods.^[9] Accessories to piracy could be punished with death.

This is precisely what happened to six Englishmen who had the misfortune of boarding Calico Jack Rackham’s ship in 1720. Their day started with them in a canoe looking for turtles. Then Rackham’s crew invited them on board to share a bowl of punch, and a few hours later, they were at anchor and drunk. While the pirates and their guests were indisposed, pirate-hunter Jonathan Barnet slipped up on them and captured the lot. Three months later, the punch-drinkers were on trial for their lives. They were condemned to death based on the facts that they were found armed and had helped Rackham row his ship. They were executed in February 1721. Likewise, in 1722, four men were hanged for being seen drinking and carousing with “Black Bart” Roberts’s crew.

The obvious moral of this story is to never drink with pirates, or if you must drink with pirates, don’t let anybody catch you. Essentially any felony committed on or in a body of water could count as piracy, and that fact sometimes resulted in surprisingly mundane “piracy” convictions. In 1768, a man named George Geery was executed for piracy after boarding a Dutch ship, assaulting one of its officers, and stealing several of his hats. The broad definition of piracy was still on the books in 1848, when several men were tried for piracy for trying to mutiny aboard a steamship. The cause of the mutiny? An argument over whether one particular sailor could bring his chickens aboard. All of the men were acquitted.

1 There Was No Real Equal Protection Of The Law

The whole legal system was stacked in favor of the rich and against the poor. You can see this in the way that power was distributed. Government officials got their positions one of two ways. One was patronage, in which officials were chosen for their jobs by a powerful friend, relative, or person who owed them a favor. The other was the sale of offices. Sometimes, men with money but no powerful friends bought their jobs. These jobs were then treated as private property, much like owning a piece of land. Those who paid for their offices charged for their services as a means of making back the money they’d invested.^[10] This was not considered corruption; it was just thought of as business as usual.

Judgeships were appointed offices that didn’t pay. Even if a poor person was offered the job of judge, they couldn’t have afforded to work for free. Likewise, you had to be a man of property to sit on a jury. If you had no money and didn’t know anyone who did, you stood virtually no chance of becoming an important decision-maker. You stood no chance at all if you happened to be a woman. Only men were allowed to have power in the realm of government and the law.

If a wealthy and important citizen was accused of a crime, it was often difficult to find witnesses for the prosecution. Nobody wanted to get on the bad side of a powerful person. On the other hand, defense witnesses could always be found, for a price. In the unlikely event that someone with a lot of money was arrested, the practice of allowing people to bring to prison the most luxurious comforts they could afford ensured that the accused didn’t suffer too much. The poor had no such advantages. Instead, they were imprisoned, fined, executed, and transported to prison colonies at far higher rates than their wealthy neighbors.

Ben Eggertsen is a freelance writer, former special education teacher, and amateur historian. He lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan.