some other sick prisoners in the room, and some other prisoners who attended on them as sick nurses, (malefactors, but not incapable of kindness, God be thanked!) always joined in the same report.
Charles Dickens. Great Expectations (1861)
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The drizzle came in, and a searching wind. It was cold, damp, and thoroughly miserable. Suitable, I supposed, for the malefactors it was meant to house.
Diana Gabaldon. Outlander (1991)
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The malefactor was fixed in a chair upon a scaffold erected for that purpose, and his head cut off at one blow, with a sword of about forty feet long.
Jonathan Swift. Gulliver's Travels Into Several Remote Regions of the World (1726)