Although Scrooge's suggestion of prison as an alternative to charity is worthy of a blog in itself, it is the treadmill that is of particular interest here - not least because of the frightening amount of weight I have put on from Christmas excess. Created in 1818, the treadmill was the invention of Norfolk born engineer, William Cubitt and was used as a punishment in the English penal system for most of the nineteenth century until it was abolished from the penal arsenal by the Prisons Act 1898.