Chapter 13

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.