Cruel Crime and Painful Punishment is crammed full of 7,000 yearsof law-makers and law-breakers with a rogue's gallery of pirates,witch-finders, highwaymen, torturers, traitors and tyrants. Want to know: Who was sentenced to death-by coffee? Where you could be whipped for flying a kite? Why a cockerel was burnt at the stake? Read on for horrible hangings, putrid prisons and terrible transportation. Find out the truth about brutal school beatings, test your local policeman, and see if you can escape beheading in the terrible Tower of London game. History has never been so horrible!