According to the passage, prisoners in the earliest English prisons most likely. had been involved in a violent crime
would be executed eventually
would be transported to overseas colonies
owed people money
had not committed a very serious offence
From the information given in the passage, we can infer that before the 18th century, Britain. used to send a lot of its criminals to overseas colonies
was faced with a high unemployment rate
would execute all those who had committed a crime
was more tolerant to its criminals than in the following centuries
had almost no prisons
The author points out that one thing instrumental in bringing about changes in the British prison system was the abolition of capital punishment in 1791
a rise in violent crime
the fiction works of Charles Dickens, describing the dirt and overcrowding
the written work of John Howard on the standards of prisons
a fall in the number of homeless people
170 WILLIAM TELL Early in the 14th century, the village of Altdorf in Switzerland was supposedly ruled by a tyrannical Austrian governor named Gessler, who placed a hat on top of a pole as a symbol of Austrian power. According to the legend, the people were ordered to bow to it as though it were the duke of Austria. A skilled crossbowman named William Tell refused to do this. Soldiers took him and his son Walter before Gessler. The cruel Gessler ordered Tell to shoot an apple off Walter's head at 100 paces.
Tell took an arrow from his quiver and slipped it under his belt. He took another and fired it from his bow. The arrow pierced the apple. Gessler asked Tell what the first arrow had been intended for. "To slay you, tyrant, had I killed my son." In a rage Gessler sent Tell to prison. Tell fled during a storm and soon after killed Gessler. Swiss legends place these events in the year 1307. In the country's actual history, in 1315, the men of the three forest-cantons - Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden - defeated an invading Austrian army. They then renewed and enlarged the Everlasting League, which helped lay the foundation of Swiss independence.
William Tell first appeared in Swiss literature in the second half of the 15th century. In 1804 the German poet Friedrich Schiller made the legend the subject of a drama, and the Italian composer Gioacchino Rossini used it in an opera in 1829.
