STOCKS AND WHIPPING-POSTS

<< OLD CROSSES

OLD BRIDGES >>

confessor to do penance by going once a week, bare-footed and bare-legged, to a

cross near Wigan, two miles from the hall, and it is called Mab's Cross to this day.

You can see in Wigan Church the monument of Sir William and his lady, which

tells this sad story, and also the cross--at least, all that remains of it--the steps, a

pedestal, and part of the shaft--in Standisgate, "to witness if I lie." It is true that Sir

William was born ten years after the last of the crusades had ended; but what does

that matter? He was probably fighting for his king, Edward II, against the Scots, or

he was languishing a prisoner in some dungeon. There was plenty of fighting in

those days for those who loved it, and where was the Englishman then who did not

love to fight for his king and country, or seek for martial glory in other lands, if an

ungrateful country did not provide him with enough work for his good sword and

ponderous lance?

Such are some of the stories that cluster round these crosses. It is a sad pity that so

many should have been allowed to disappear. More have fallen owing to the

indifference and apathy of the people of England in the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries than to the wanton and iconoclastic destruction of the Puritans. They are

holy relics of primitive Christianity. On the lonely mountainsides the tired traveller

found in them a guide and friend, a director of his ways and an uplifter of his soul.

In the busy market-place they reminded the trader of the sacredness of bargains and

of the duty of honest dealing. Holy truths were proclaimed from their steps. They

connected by a close and visible bond religious duties with daily life; and not only

as objects of antiquarian interest, but as memorials of the religious feelings, habits,

and customs of our forefathers, are they worthy of careful preservation.

CHAPTER XIII

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 law50 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."

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 Queries52 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.

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

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.

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"

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.

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