failure to work on the plantations or breaking other duties specified in the Abolition Act. Emancipation legislation banned planters' use of the whip and the state formally took on the responsibility for disciplining labourers. However, planters could use the remanding of apprentices to workhouses as a means of exercising control over former slaves. The conditions within workhouses were grim and apprentices were subjected to hard labour and regular physical punishment. Treadmills were common features in these spaces and consisted of "wooden steps around a hollow cylinder on which a prisoner was made to step as the mechanism turned." The mechanism did not serve to produce any material good but the officials insisted that exhaustively running on the mechanism for several minutes reformed and disciplined prisoners. Widespread support for the use of treadmills also came from West Indian planters who were convinced that former slaves would not produce the same outputs if they were not adequately disciplined with corporal punishment. Photographs that depict the treadmills of the Jamaican workhouses illuminate that this punishment was not restricted to men. Women, who made up a majority of the field labour population in Jamaica and other colonies, were frequently sent to the workhouses and subjected to the treadmill. Apprentice experiences and resistance Once news of the Abolition Act made its way to the colonies, former slaves rejoiced and celebrated their freedom. However, the realization that emancipation would be gradual had a sobering effect. Ex-slaves protested the system of apprenticeship and demanded immediate, unqualified freedom. Because they had long laboured under slavery and performed the same tasks under apprenticeship, they denied the need for a transitional, supervised labour system. Freed people were eager to restructure their lives and devote time to family. They also sought to choose their own work hours, employers, and the type of labour they performed. Many apprentices across the West Indies refused to return to work and went on strike. For their failure to work, many were arrested, flogged under judicial authority, and sent to prison. Circumstances under apprenticeship were far from ideal for all labourers, but women often faced particular challenges. In the years leading up to emancipation, former masters offered incentives to pregnant women and new mothers for bearing children, because by law, women's offspring became the property of the master, thereby producing more wealth for their owner. Under apprenticeship, however, planters were no longer afforded access to women's