Experiencing the stocks: A glimpse into historical punishment practices

Many curious visitors to a Renaissance fair or a historical tourist trap have probably wondered what it was like to be locked up in the stocks. Then they try to imagine having their head and neck restrained while being pelted by old tomatoes. But in reality, punishment on the stocks was rarely so pleasant. Today, we're going to take a look at what it was actually like to be in the stocks. The stocks have been used in Europe since at least 820 CE. But the history of the device itself goes back much further. They're mentioned in the Old Testament's Book of Job as well as the New Testament's Acts of the Apostles. They became commonplace in England after a 1351 law required each town to own and maintain a set of stocks. These were originally built to punish laborers for demanding higher pay, but soon became the go-to sentence for a variety of offenses, begging, public inebriation, witchcraft, heresy, homosexuality, and helping enslaved persons to escape were common charges that could land someone in either the stocks or the pillory. But that is not all. According to author Alice Morse Earle's book, Curious Punishments of Bygone Days, authorities in England would use the stocks to punish crimes like treason, sedition, arson, blasphemy, as well as petty offenses like gambling, drunken, petty thievery, Sabbath breaking, fortune telling, vagrancy, wife beating, and we kid you not, performances by traveling musicians and ballad singers. Quick, somebody hide Gordon Lightfoot. Records tell of one man who was sentenced to the pillory for sending out false dinner invitations. Another man saw the same punishment for playing particularly harmful practical jokes that, evidently, no one else found as funny as he did. In 1671, a man named Thomas Withers from York, Maine was set into the pillory for surreptitiously endeavoring to prevent the providence of God by putting in several votes for himself as an officer at a town meeting. The same man was later put back in the pillory for putting large sums of money into a contribution box in a meeting to induce others to give largely and then taking his gift back. It's also known that the Spanish conquistadors in the New World frequently used stocks as a form of punishment against anyone who attempted to stand in the way of the consolidation of their settlements. And authorities in 19th century Latin America were still using the devices to punish indigenous miners who attempted to rebel against their bosses. Now, one thing we should clarify here is that the stocks and the pillory are not the same thing. While they are often confused with one another, they were two different devices that had different effects. Stocks restrained the feet with the offender sitting. The pillory restrained the head and hands with the offender standing. That being said, there were commonalities. Although pain was an element of being sentenced to either the stocks or pillory, and many did die due to the practice, the real objective of both was humiliation. This is similar to the idea behind towering and feathering, which we recently did a video on. Once a person was locked into the stocks or pillory, the public was encouraged to shame and insult them. And while police and soldiers were supposed to prevent them from being severely harmed, they didn't always succeed in their task. This was especially likely in cases where the offender was not well liked by the public. On the other hand, a sympathetic offender could be treated extremely well. When the 18th century author Daniel Defoe, the guy who wrote the widely beloved 1719 novel Robinson Caruso, was sentenced to the pillory, only flowers were thrown at him. And he was brought food and drink. Defoe was being punished for writing a book criticizing the king. The king, not surprisingly, hated the book. But many of his citizens loved it. Defoe's friends even took advantage of the spectacle to make some extra cash by selling copies of the book right on the spot. To quote the Simpsons' beloved principal Skinner, there's no justice like angry mob justice. And angry mobs love to get involved in punishing captives being held in the stocks or the pillory. Crowds present for a punishment involving either contraption frequently threw objects at the prisoner. While rotten tomatoes are the most famous projectile, spoiling food was really the least of the prisoners' worries. There have been accounts of crowds throwing offal from slaughterhouses, expired animals, and excrement at people charged with homosexuality. Particularly hated prisoners were attacked with dangerous objects like stones and broken glass. And predictably, more than one person perished from these types of bombardments. First person records of being in the pillory are very rare. But at least one exists from a Mr. Seville from England. After being put in it in 1800, Seville said he was fixed up against the side of a building facing the spectators. They pelted me with stones and all manner of filth. The local mayor even came to laugh at Seville. Although neither one was really a day at the beach, the pillory was intended to be a rougher form of punishment than the stocks. And when we say rougher, we're not kidding around. Once an offender had their neck and wrists through the holes, they would sometimes have their ears literally nailed to the device to restrict movement even further. In certain cases, specifically in Tennessee's legal code dating to 1824, an individual was placed inside with the ears nailed down. And after a few hours, their ears were removed altogether. And if that wasn't enough, people in the stocks or pillory often received some number of lashes. Those placed in the pillory would be kept there for hours, sometimes even a full day, bent over and standing. While it would take longer to grow uncomfortable in the stocks, it was not unheard of for a prisoner to spend days or even weeks in the device. Bad weather generally did not postpone punishment. Even through steady rain, people were kept in the stocks. While you'd think being locked up outside in the rain or the cold would be worse for the prisoner, it could often actually be easier. How is that possible? Well, the bad weather tended to keep crowds away. And what's getting rained on a little compared to having rocks and glass thrown at you by an angry mob? Hold the mob, I'll take the rain. The close relationship between church and state during the heyday of the stocks meant there was sometimes a religious aspect to the punishment. A captive could even find themselves being put in the stocks inside a church and forced to confess their sins. An English author known as Mr. Hamilton wrote, the offender had to come into the church at morning prayer and say publicly that he was sorry. He was then set in the stocks until the end of the evening prayer. Hamilton specified that this was the favored punishment for small offenses, like resisting arrest. He also noted that this in-church punishment wasn't usually the end of the ordeal, as the offender typically had to go through the whole thing again the following day in the market, as if this whole thing wasn't bad enough already. Being sentenced to the pillory also meant that the authorities were going to mess with your due. Yeah, when an offender was set into the pillory, their hair would rarely make it through unscathed. Men would have their hair and beard trimmed away from the neck, and women would have their long hair cropped down. In some cases, the person had their entire head shaved. Of course, if that was the worst thing that happened to them on that day, they would probably consider themselves lucky. The pain and humiliation of time in the stocks and pillory was awful, but it was sometimes just the beginning. After being inside the apparatus, the prisoner might be flogged, have their nose slit, or be branded with a hot iron to leave a permanent reminder of their actions. Because apparently, someone thought being locked up in the stocks and taunted by an angry crowd was something a criminal was likely to forget. Sometimes, a prisoner could even be imprinted on their face. Brands a prisoner might receive included a T for thief, an R for rogue, or an M for manslaughter. In 1633, English author William Pryne wrote a pamphlet expressing his Puritan beliefs. Among his many ideas, the pamphlet included long passages criticizing female actors and stage plays as immoral. Unfortunately for Pryne, his timing couldn't have possibly been any worse. Queen Henrietta Maria was an actor who performed in stage plays, so you can probably guess how receptive she was to the pamphlet. Long story short, Pryne was convicted of libeling the queen and sentenced to be held inside the pillory. Once there, Pryne's ears were cut off, and his nose was slit. Of course, most actors don't have the political power to answer the critics in this fashion, though they probably wish they did. You'd think Pryne would be overly cautious about offending the royal court again after this experience, but he wasn't. Another one of his pamphlets angered the ruling class in 1637, and he was put in the pillory yet again. This time, his face was marked with the letters SL, meaning seditious libeler. Some people are slow learners. By the end of the 18th century, changing cultural standards made the use of the pillory seem unusually cruel to a large segment of the population. The punishment then quickly declined in popularity over the following decades. France phased it out in 1832. In 1816, Britain abolished the pillory in all cases except perjury and subordination. A perjurer named Peter James Bossy became the last to stand in the pillory at the Old Bailey on June 22, 1830. It lasted for one hour. The country had mostly abandoned the stocks as well by 1837, although records show they were still being used in parts of England until at least 1872. And legally speaking, the change was never made official. In fact, the stocks and pillory are still technically legal in the UK even today. The United States finally started to do away with such punishments in 1839. Well, mostly. Delaware didn't actually abolish it until 1905. Delaware, the slowest state. In 1989, the town of Dermot, Arkansas did pass a curfew law that would punish an offender's parents with two days in the stocks. But the punishment was quickly remitted. Why? Well, for one, the city didn't have any stocks. And two, they didn't have any money in the budget with which to build one. And in 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, police in Chinoo, Columbia punished residents who broke quarantine by placing them in stocks for several hours. Hey, maybe they're making a comeback.