In the 17th century, for example, children put to work in a kitchen would crank a spit with a slab of meat for hours, protected from the fire only by a bale of wet hay.
If that. But they did get to drink all the beer they wanted, so they had that going for them.
They could have been made to run in hamster wheels like turnspit dogs: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/05/13/311127237/turnspit-dogs-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-vernepator-cur
