Stocks and Pillories

[Big Lin]

www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/Heights/9417/history.html

This site is a mine of information about the practice of placing offenders in these devices as punishment.

It often led to the death of the individual who was locked up inside them.

Do not confuse this with the 'Aunt Sally' or 'Renfaire' type of event.

These devices were instruments of torture and death and it is incredible that their use lingered on till the nineteenth century.

[debs]

Lin, you might find this of interest. It's Daniel Defoe's experience in the Pillory.

July 29, 2008 The Fall and Rise of Daniel Defoe (1703)

While writers may be pilloried in print for their works, in the case of Daniel Defoe, the pillorying was literal. On this day, he began a three-day sentence in the stocks in London for the crime of writing a satirical pamphlet that too many powerful men too much too seriously.

For Defoe, the death of King William III in 1702 was a blow to his prospects. The Protestant businessman and pamphleteer had acted as the king's unofficial apologist, both in print and in verse, especially "The True-Born Englishman." But with the king's death and the ascention of Queen Anne, those who refused to accept the the Church of England, known as dissenters, began to be persecuted. High churchman spoke out against them, and a law was considered (later rejected) to keep dissenters from taking public office.

In response, Defoe, a dissenter himself, published "The Shortest Way with Dissenters." Written from the point of view of a High Churchman, it attempted to take their views to the extreme by advocating death for all dissenters.

Moses was a merciful meek man; and yet with what fury did he run through the camp, and cut the throats of three and thirty thousand of his dear Israelites that were fallen into idolatry. What was the reason? It was mercy to the rest, to make these examples! To prevent the destruction of the whole army.

How many millions of future souls, [shall] we save from infection and delusion, if the present race of Poisoned Spirits were purged from the face of the land!

Some High Churchmen loved it. One, a fellow at Cambridge, wrote that he had "such a value for the book that, next to the Holy Bible and the Sacred Comments, I take it for the most valuable piece I have. " The Dissenters, however, didn't see the joke either and railed against the author of "The Shortest Way."

Defoe, who admitted that he "cut the throat of the whole Party," found himself caught in the middle. A reward of fifty pounds was put up to anyone who found him, and here, as a result, we have a description of him, one of the few that we have available:

"He is a middle-sized, spare man, about forty years old, of a brown complexion and dark-brown coloured hair; but wears a wig; a hooked nose, a sharp chin, and a large mole near his mouth: was born in London, and for many years was a hose-factor in Freeman's Yard in Cornhill, and is now owner of the brick and pantile works near Tilbury Fort in Essex."

When his bookseller was thrown into Newgate prison, he turned himself in "to throw himself upon the favour of Government rather than others should be ruined by his mistake." He also published an apology of sorts, saying he only put into words what had already been written.

It didn't help, and he stayed in Newgate. Years later, he ruefully wrote that "I have seen the rough side of the World as well as the smooth; and have in less than half a year tasted the difference between the closet [office] of a King and the Dungeon of Newgate."

At the trial, he was convicted (of course), fined two hundred marks, ordered to stand in the pillory three times, after which he would be imprisoned "during the Queen's pleasure" (that is, for as long as she thinks best), and to post a seven-year bond to keep him in line. Worse, his pantile works were closed, threatening his family with poverty and starvation.

In those days, being sentenced to the pillory was like spinning the wheel of fortune. The punishment involved putting the miscreant in the stocks, in public, for a specified length of time. With the prisoner's arms and head locked in place and exposed, the crowd was free to do as they like: the throwing of dead cats and garbage, beatings, even ripping the clothes off the prisoner was not unheard of.

(In one particularly brutal pillorying in 1810, two men convicted of operating a male brothel were set in stocks that rotated. They were forced to walk in a circle, creating a sort of theater-in-the-round and enabling every one to take a shot at them. At the end of the brutal hour, one had been beaten nearly into unconsciousness. For what it's worth, it may be worth noting that the crowd that nearly killed the two prisoners was made up almost entirely of women.)

Such a prospect would unnerve any man, and there's evidence that Defoe tried to worm his way out of it, promising government officials that he would do anything to avoid it. But when it became apparent that he couldn't avoid his punishment, Defoe made the best of it he could. He wrote "A Hymn to the Pillory" and prepared to face his punishment.

However, the crowd had other ideas. Perhaps the feeling against dissenters was not running high at the time, or maybe the mob rather enjoyed Defoe taking public officials down a peg or two. But the story goes that Defoe's three days in the pillory, each day in a different part of London, was cause for celebration. Instead of garbage, Defoe was pelted with flowers. His health was drunk, and copies of "Hymn" were sold around him. (Some scholars question this story, but I'd rather believe it. Anyway, this is what we're told happened.)

After his sentence, Defoe was returned to Newgate, but he did not stay silent. In February 1704, he launched the Review, an eight-page publication that appeared upwards of three times a week for the next eight years. He also wrote a pamphlet criticizing the campaign against dissenters and pointing out that banning them from public office did not serve the country.

If his pen sent him to prison, his pen also was the cause of his release. An effective writer was always valuable to the government, and with the help of Queen Anne's minister, Robert Harley, the 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, Defoe was offered freedom if if he worked for the state as a propagandist and intelligent agent. He agreed. Before he left London on his first mission to Scotland, he was presented to Queen Anne, whose hand he kissed. Defoe's star was rising again, and still to come would be the novels that would secure his fame. As one biographer observed: "He had passed from the favour of one monarch to the favour of his successor through Newgate."

[knittina]

Actually your mentioning Daniel Defoe reminds me of one of the better Tyburn hangings ever shown on TV, a good BBC production of his Moll Flanders.

[Big Lin]

I actually think there's a lot to be said in favour of the stocks and pillories as a form of punishment! Obviously you'd have to have safeguards but it probably wouldn't be much worse than the average Renfaire for the offender and it would certainly give them a lot more to think about than an ASBO (anti-social behaviour order, an English attempt to control crime by 'naming and shaming' people - usually teenagers or kids - who commit acts like vandalism, petty theft, that sort of thing.)

[sadie1263]

Do any of you listen to the comedian Lewis Black? He has a bit on one of his albums where he talks about the people that ran Enron, Tyco, Worldcom.......well.....he gets to the three family members that stole 1 billion dollars from Adelphia.........and says that it wasn't until he heard about them that he understood how the French started chopping off people's heads. They spent 13 million building a golf course in their backyard and he doesn't understand how the people at their company didn't rise up and slay them.

I think stocks and pillories could be very handy for some of these guys!