STOCKS, WHIPPING-POSTS, AND OLD-TIME PUNISHMENTS
Near the village cross almost invariably stood the parish stocks,
instruments of rude justice, the use of which has only just passed
away. The "oldest inhabitant" can remember well the old stocks
standing in the village green and can tell of the men who suffered in
them. Many of these instruments of torture still remain, silent
witnesses of old-time ways. You can find them in multitudes of remote
villages in all parts of the country, and vastly uncomfortable it must
have been to have one's "feet set in the stocks." A well-known artist
who delights in painting monks a few years ago placed the portly model
who usually "sat" for him in the village stocks of Sulham, Berkshire,
and painted a picture of the monk in disgrace. The model declared that
he was never so uncomfortable in his life and his legs and back ached
for weeks afterwards. To make the penalty more realistic the artist
might have prevailed upon some village urchins to torment the sufferer
by throwing stones, refuse, or garbage at him, some village maids to
mock and jeer at him, and some mischievous men to distract his ears
with inharmonious sounds. In an old print of two men in the stocks I
have seen a malicious wretch scraping piercing noises out of a fiddle
and the victims trying to drown the hideous sounds by putting their
fingers into their ears. A few hours in the stocks was no light
penalty.
These stocks have a venerable history. They date back to Saxon times
and appear in drawings of that period. It is a pity that they should
be destroyed; but borough corporations decide that they interfere with
the traffic of a utilitarian age and relegate them to a museum or doom
them to be cut up as faggots. Country folk think nothing of
antiquities, and a local estate agent or the village publican will
make away with this relic of antiquity and give the "old rubbish" to
Widow Smith for firing. Hence a large number have disappeared, and it
is wonderful that so many have hitherto escaped. Let the eyes of
squires and local antiquaries be ever on the watch lest those that
remain are allowed to vanish.
By ancient law[50] every town or village was bound to provide a pair
of stocks. It was a sign of dignity, and if the village had this seat
for malefactors, a constable, and a pound for stray cattle, it could
not be mistaken for a mere hamlet. The stocks have left their mark on
English literature. Shakespeare frequently alludes to them. Falstaff,
in _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, says that but for his "admirable
dexterity of wit the knave constable had set me i' the stocks, i' the
common stocks." "What needs all that and a pair of stocks in the
town," says Luce in the _Comedy of Errors_. "Like silly beggars, who
sitting in stocks refuge their shame," occurs in _Richard II_; and in
_King Lear_ Cornwall exclaims--
"Fetch forth the stocks!
You stubborn ancient knave."
[50] Act of Parliament, 1405.
Who were the culprits who thus suffered? Falstaff states that he only
just escaped the punishment of being set in the stocks for a witch.
Witches usually received severer justice, but stocks were often used
for keeping prisoners safe until they were tried and condemned, and
possibly Shakespeare alludes in this passage only to the preliminaries
of a harsher ordeal. Drunkards were the common defaulters who appeared
in the stocks, and by an Act of 2 James I they were required to endure
six hours' incarceration with a fine of five shillings. Vagrants
always received harsh treatment unless they had a licence, and the
corporation records of Hungerford reveal the fact that they were
always placed in the pillory and whipped. The stocks, pillory, and
whipping-post were three different implements of punishment, but, as
was the case at Wallingford, Berkshire, they were sometimes allied and
combined. The stocks secured the feet, the pillory "held in durance
vile" the head and the hands, while the whipping-post imprisoned the
hands only by clamps on the sides of the post. In the constable's
accounts of Hungerford we find such items as:--
"Pd for cheeke and brace for the pillory 00,02,00
Pd for mending the pillory 00,00,06
Pd the Widow Tanner for iron geare for the whipping post 00,03,06"
Whipping was a very favourite pastime at this old Berkshire town; this
entry will suffice:--
"Pd to John Savidge for his extraordinary
paines this yeare and whipping of severall persons 00,05,00"
John Savidge was worthy of his name, but the good folks of Hungerford
tempered mercy with justice and usually gave a monetary consolation to
those who suffered from the lash. Thus we read:--
"Gave a poore man that was whipped and sent
from Tythinge to Tythinge 00,00,04"
Women were whipped at Hungerford, as we find that the same John
Savidge received 2d. for whipping Dorothy Millar. All this was
according to law. The first Whipping Act was passed in 1530 when Henry
VIII reigned, and according to this barbarous piece of legislation the
victim was stripped naked and tied to a cart-tail, dragged through the
streets of the town, and whipped "till his body was bloody." In
Elizabeth's time the cart-tail went out of fashion and a
whipping-post was substituted, and only the upper part of the body was
exposed. The tramp question was as troublesome in the seventeenth
century as it is to-day. We confine them in workhouse-cells and make
them break stones or pick oakum; whipping was the solution adopted by
our forefathers. We have seen John Savidge wielding his whip, which
still exists among the curiosities at Hungerford. At Barnsley in 1632
Edward Wood was paid iiijd. "for whiping of three wanderers." Ten
years earlier Richard White received only iid. for performing the like
service for six wanderers. Mr. W. Andrews has collected a vast store
of curious anecdotes on the subject of whippings, recorded in his
_Bygone Punishments_, to which the interested reader is referred. The
story he tells of the brutality of Judge Jeffreys may be repeated.
This infamous and inhuman judge sentenced a woman to be whipped, and
said, "Hangman, I charge you to pay particular attention to this lady.
Scourge her soundly, man; scourge her till her blood runs down! It is
Christmas, a cold time for madam to strip. See that you warm her
shoulders thoroughly." It was not until 1791 that the whipping of
female vagrants was expressly forbidden by Act of Parliament.
Stocks have been used in quite recent times. So late as 1872, at
Newbury, one Mark Tuck, a devoted disciple of John Barleycorn,
suffered this penalty for his misdeeds.[51] He was a rag and bone
dealer, and knew well the inside of Reading jail. _Notes and
Queries_[52] contains an account of the proceedings, and states that
he was "fixed in the stocks for drunkenness and disorderly conduct in
the Parish Church on Monday evening." Twenty-six years had elapsed
since the stocks were last used, and their reappearance created no
little sensation and amusement, several hundreds of persons being
attracted to the spot where they were fixed. Tuck was seated on a
stool, and his legs were secured in the stocks at a few minutes past
one o'clock, and as the church clock, immediately facing him, chimed
each quarter, he uttered expressions of thankfulness, and seemed
anything but pleased at the laughter and derision of the crowd. Four
hours having passed, Tuck was released, and by a little stratagem on
the part of the police he escaped without being interfered with by the
crowd.
[51] _History of Hungerford_, by W. Money, p. 38.
[52] _Notes and Queries_, 4th series, X, p. 6.
Sunday drinking during divine service provided in many places victims
for the stocks. So late as half a century ago it was the custom for
the churchwardens to go out of church during the morning service on
Sundays and visit the public-houses to see if any persons were
tippling there, and those found _in flagrante delicto_ were
immediately placed in the stocks. So arduous did the churchwardens
find this duty that they felt obliged to regale themselves at the
alehouses while they made their tour of inspection, and thus rendered
themselves liable to the punishment which they inflicted on others.
Mr. Rigbye, postmaster at Croston, Lancashire, who was seventy-three
years of age in 1899, remembered these Sunday-morning searches, and
had seen drunkards sitting in the stocks, which were fixed near the
southern step of the village cross. Mr. Rigbye, when a boy, helped to
pull down the stocks, which were then much dilapidated. A certain
Richard Cottam, called "Cockle Dick," was the last man seen in
them.[53]
[53] _Ancient Crosses and Holy Wells of Lancashire_, by H. Taylor,
F.S.A., p. 37.
The same morning perambulating of ale-houses was carried on at
Skipton, the churchwardens being headed by the old beadle, an imposing
personage, who wore a cocked hat and an official coat trimmed with
gold, and carried in majestic style a trident staff, a terror to
evil-doers, at least to those of tender years.[54] At Beverley the
stocks still preserved in the minster were used as late as 1853; Jim
Brigham, guilty of Sunday tippling, and discovered by the
churchwardens in their rounds, was the last victim. Some sympathizer
placed in his mouth a lighted pipe of tobacco, but the constable in
charge hastily snatched it away. James Gambles, for gambling on
Sunday, was confined in the Stanningley stocks, Yorkshire, for six
hours in 1860. The stocks and village well remain still at Standish,
near the cross, and also the stone cheeks of those at Eccleston Green
bearing the date 1656. At Shore Cross, near Birkdale, the stocks
remain, also the iron ones at Thornton, Lancashire, described in Mrs.
Blundell's novel _In a North Country Village_; also at Formby they
exist, though somewhat dilapidated.
[54] _History of Skipton_, W.H. Dawson, quoted in _Bygone
Punishments_, p. 199.
Whether by accident or design, the stocks frequently stand close to
the principal inn in a village. As they were often used for the
correction of the intemperate their presence was doubtless intended as
a warning to the frequenters of the hostelry not to indulge too
freely. Indeed, the sight of the stocks, pillory, and whipping-post
must have been a useful deterrent to vice. An old writer states that
he knew of the case of a young man who was about to annex a silver
spoon, but on looking round and seeing the whipping-post he
relinquished his design. The writer asserts that though it lay
immediately in the high road to the gallows, it had stopped many an
adventurous young man in his progress thither.
The ancient Lancashire town of Poulton-in-the-Fylde has a fairly
complete set of primitive punishment implements. Close to the cross
stand the stocks with massive ironwork, the criminals, as usual,
having been accustomed to sit on the lowest step of the cross, and on
the other side of the cross is the rogue's whipping-post, a stone
pillar about eight feet high, on the sides of which are hooks to which
the culprit was fastened. Between this and the cross stands another
useful feature of a Lancashire market-place, the fish stones, an
oblong raised slab for the display and sale of fish.
In several places we find that movable stocks were in use, which could
be brought out whenever occasion required. A set of these exists at
Garstang, Lancashire. The quotation already given from _King Lear,_
"Fetch forth the stocks," seems to imply that in Shakespeare's time
they were movable. Beverley stocks were movable, and in _Notes and
Queries_ we find an account of a mob at Shrewsbury dragging around the
town in the stocks an incorrigible rogue one Samuel Tisdale in the
year 1851.
The Rochdale stocks remain, but they are now in the churchyard, having
been removed from the place where the markets were formerly held at
Church Stile. When these kind of objects have once disappeared it is
rarely that they are ever restored. However, at West Derby this
unusual event has occurred, and five years ago the restoration was
made. It appears that in the village there was an ancient pound or
pinfold which had degenerated into an unsightly dust-heap, and the old
stocks had passed into private hands. The inhabitants resolved to turn
the untidy corner into a garden, and the lady gave back the stocks to
the village. An inscription records: "To commemorate the long and
happy reign of Queen Victoria and the coronation of King Edward VII,
the site of the ancient pound of the Dukes of Lancaster and other
lords of the manor of West Derby was enclosed and planted, and the
village stocks set therein. Easter, 1904."
This inscription records another item of vanishing England. Before the
Inclosure Acts at the beginning of the last century there were in all
parts of the country large stretches of unfenced land, and cattle
often strayed far from their homes and presumed to graze on the open
common lands of other villages. Each village had its pound-keeper,
who, when he saw these estrays, as the lawyers term the valuable
animals that were found wandering in any manor or lordship,
immediately drove them into the pound. If the owner claimed them, he
had certain fees to pay to the pound-keeper and the cost of the keep.
If they were not claimed they became the property of the lord of the
manor, but it was required that they should be proclaimed in the
church and two market towns next adjoining the place where they were
found, and a year and a day must have elapsed before they became the
actual property of the lord. The possession of a pound was a sign of
dignity for the village. Now that commons have been enclosed and waste
lands reclaimed, stray cattle no longer cause excitement in the
village, the pound-keeper has gone, and too often the pound itself has
disappeared. We had one in our village twenty years ago, but suddenly,
before he could be remonstrated with, an estate agent, not caring for
the trouble and cost of keeping it in repair, cleared it away, and its
place knows it no more. In very many other villages similar happenings
have occurred. Sometimes the old pound has been utilized by road
surveyors as a convenient place for storing gravel for mending roads,
and its original purpose is forgotten.
It would be a pleasant task to go through the towns and villages of
England to discover and to describe traces of these primitive
implements of torture, but such a record would require a volume
instead of a single chapter. In Berkshire we have several left to us.
There is a very complete set at Wallingford, pillory, stocks, and
whipping-post, now stored in the museum belonging to Miss Hedges in
the castle, but in western Berkshire they have nearly all disappeared.
The last pair of stocks that I can remember stood at the entrance to
the town of Wantage. They have only disappeared within the last few
years. The whipping-post still exists at the old Town Hall at
Faringdon, the staples being affixed to the side of the ancient
"lock-up," known as the Black Hole.
At Lymm, Cheshire, there are some good stocks by the cross in that
village, and many others may be discovered by the wandering antiquary,
though their existence is little known and usually escapes the
attention of the writers on local antiquities. As relics of primitive
modes of administering justice, it is advisable that they should be
preserved.
Yet another implement of rude justice was the cucking or ducking
stool, which exists in a few places. It was used principally for the
purpose of correcting scolding women. Mr. Andrews, who knows all that
can be known about old-time punishments, draws a distinction between
the cucking and ducking stool, and states that the former originally
was a chair of infamy where immoral women and scolds were condemned to
sit with bare feet and head to endure the derision of the populace,
and had no relation to any ducking in water. But it appears that later
on the terms were synonymous, and several of these implements remain.
This machine for quieting intemperate scolds was quite simple. A plank
with a chair at one end was attached by an axle to a post which was
fixed on the bank of a river or pond, or on wheels, so that it could
be run thither; the culprit was tied to the chair, and the other end
of the plank was alternately raised or lowered so as to cause the
immersion of the scold in the chilly water. A very effectual
punishment! The form of the chair varies. The Leominster ducking-stool
is still preserved, and this implement was the latest in use, having
been employed in 1809 for the ducking of Jenny Pipes, _alias_ Jane
Corran, a common scold, by order of the magistrates, and also as late
as 1817; but in this case the victim, one Sarah Leeke, was only
wheeled round the town in the chair, and not ducked, as the water in
the Kenwater stream was too shallow for the purpose. The cost of
making the stool appears in many corporation accounts. That at
Hungerford must have been in pretty frequent use, as there are several
entries for repairs in the constable's accounts.[55] Thus we find the
item under the year 1669:--
"Pd for the Cucking stoole 01,10,00"
and in 1676:--
"Pd for nailes and workmanship about
the stocks and cucking stoole 00,07,00"
[55] The corporation of Hungerford is peculiar, the head official
being termed the constable, who corresponded with the mayor in
less original boroughs.
At Kingston-upon-Thames in 1572 the accounts show the expenditure:--
"The making of the cucking-stool . 8s. 0d.
Iron work for the same . . . 3s. 0d.
Timber for the same . . . 7s. 6d.
Three brasses for the same and three wheels 4s. 10d.
------------
£1 3s. 4d."
We need not record similar items shown in the accounts of other
boroughs. You will still find examples of this fearsome implement at
Leicester in the museum, Wootton Bassett, the wheels of one in the
church of St. Mary, Warwick; two at Plymouth, one of which was used in
1808; King's Lynn, Norfolk, in the museum; Ipswich, Scarborough,
Sandwich, Fordwich, and possibly some other places of which we have no
record.
We find in museums, but not in common use, another terrible implement
for the curbing of the rebellious tongues of scolding women. It was
called the brank or scold's bridle, and probably came to us from
Scotland with the Solomon of the North, whither the idea of it had
been conveyed through the intercourse of that region with France. It
is a sort of iron cage or framework helmet, which was fastened on the
head, having a flat tongue of iron that was placed on the tongue of
the victim and effectually restrained her from using it. Sometimes the
iron tongue was embellished with spikes so as to make the movement of
the human tongue impossible except with the greatest agony. Imagine
the poor wretch with her head so encaged, her mouth cut and bleeding
by this sharp iron tongue, none too gently fitted by her rough
torturers, and then being dragged about the town amid the jeers of the
populace, or chained to the pillory in the market-place, an object of
ridicule and contempt. Happily this scene has vanished from vanishing
England. Perhaps she was a loud-voiced termagant; perhaps merely the
ill-used wife of a drunken wretch, who well deserved her scolding; or
the daring teller of home truths to some jack-in-office, who thus
revenged himself. We have shrews and scolds still; happily they are
restrained in a less barbarous fashion. You may still see some
fearsome branks in museums. Reading, Leeds, York, Walton-on-Thames,
Congleton, Stockport, Macclesfield, Warrington, Morpeth, Hamstall
Ridware, in Staffordshire, Lichfield, Chesterfield (now in possession
of the Walsham family), Leicester, Doddington Park, Lincolnshire (a
very grotesque example), the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, Ludlow,
Shrewsbury, Oswestry, Whitchurch, Market Drayton, are some of the
places which still possess scolds' bridles. Perhaps it is wrong to
infer from the fact that most of these are to be found in the counties
of Cheshire, Staffordshire, and Shropshire, that the women of those
shires were especially addicted to strong and abusive language. It may
be only that antiquaries in those counties have been more industrious
in unearthing and preserving these curious relics of a barbarous age.
The latest recorded occasion of its use was at Congleton in 1824, when
a woman named Ann Runcorn was condemned to endure the bridle for
abusing and slandering the churchwardens when they made their tour of
inspection of the alehouses during the Sunday-morning service. There
are some excellent drawings of branks, and full descriptions of their
use, in Mr. Andrews's _Bygone Punishments_.
Another relic of old-time punishments most gruesome of all are the
gibbet-irons wherein the bones of some wretched breaker of the laws
hung and rattled as the irons creaked and groaned when stirred by the
breeze. _Pour l'encouragement des autres_, our wise forefathers
enacted that the bodies of executed criminals should be hanged in
chains. At least this was a common practice that dated from medieval
times, though it was not actually legalized until 1752.[56] This Act
remained in force until 1834, and during the interval thousands of
bodies were gibbeted and left creaking in the wind at Hangman's Corner
or Gibbet Common, near the scene of some murder or outrage. It must
have been ghostly and ghastly to walk along our country lanes and hear
the dreadful noise, especially if the tradition were true
That the wretch in his chains, each night took the pains,
To come down from the gibbet--and walk.
In order to act as a warning to others the bodies were kept up as long
as possible, and for this purpose were saturated with tar. On one
occasion the gibbet was fired and the tar helped the conflagration,
and a rapid and effectual cremation ensued. In many museums
gibbet-irons are preserved.
Punishments in olden times were usually cruel. Did they act as
deterrents to vice? Modern judges have found the use of the lash a
cure for robbery from the person with violence. The sight of
whipping-posts and stocks, we learn, has stayed young men from
becoming topers and drunkards. A brank certainly in one recorded case
cured a woman from coarse invective and abuse. But what effect had the
sight of the infliction of cruel punishments upon those who took part
in them or witnessed them? It could only have tended to make cruel
natures more brutal. Barbarous punishments, public hangings, cruel
sports such as bull-baiting, dog-fighting, bear-baiting,
prize-fighting and the like could not fail to exercise a bad influence
on the populace; and where one was deterred from vice, thousands were
brutalized and their hearts and natures hardened, wherein vicious
pleasures, crime, and lust found a congenial soil. But we can still
see our stocks on the village greens, our branks, ducking-stools, and
pillories in museums, and remind ourselves of the customs of former
days which have not so very long ago passed away.
[56] Act of Parliament 25 George II.