Bygone Punishments Part 12

We give an ill.u.s.tration from a recent photograph by Mr. A. Whitford Anderson, of Watford, of the stocks and whipping-post at Aldbury, Hertfordshire. It presents one of the best pictures of these old-time relics which has come under our notice. We have no desire for the stocks and lash to be revived, but we hope these obsolete engines of punishments will long remain linking the past with the present.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

In closing this chapter we must not omit to state that in the olden time persons refusing to a.s.sist in getting in the corn or hay harvest were liable to be imprisoned in the stocks. At the Northamptonshire Quarter Sessions held in 1688, the time was fixed at two days and one night.

FOOTNOTES:

[36] Morris's "Obsolete Punishments of Shropshire."

[37] Dyer's "Folk-Lore of Shakespeare."

[38] Roberts's "Social History of the Southern Counties of England,"

1856.

[39] W. H. Dawson's "History of Skipton," 1882.

The Drunkard's Cloak.

Several historians, dealing with the social life of England in bygone times, have described the wearing of a barrel after the manner of a cloak as a general mode of punishing drunkards, in force during the Commonwealth. There appears to be little foundation for the statement, and, after careful consideration, we have come to the conclusion that this mode of punishment was, as regards this country, confined to Newcastle-on-Tyne.

In the year 1655 was printed in London a work ent.i.tled, "England's Grievance Discovered in Relation to the Coal Trade," by Ralph Gardner, of Chirton, in the county of Northumberland, Gent. The book is dedicated to "Oliver, Lord Protector." Gardner not only gave a list of grievances, but suggested measures to reform them. It will be gathered from the following proposed remedy that he was not any advocate of half measures in punishing persons guilty of offences. He suggested that a law be created for death to those who should commit perjury, forgery, or bribery.

More than one writer has said that Gardner was executed in 1661, at York, for coining, but there is not any truth in the statement. We have proof that he was conducting his business after the year in which it is stated that he suffered death at the hands of the public executioner.

Gardner, in his work, gave depositions of witnesses to support his charges against "the tyrannical oppression of the magistrates of Newcastle-on-Tyne." "John Willis, of Ipswich," he writes, "upon his oath said, that he, and this deponent, was in Newcastle six months ago, and there he saw one Ann Bridlestone drove through the streets by an officer of the same corporation, holding a rope in his hand, the other end fastened to an engine called the branks, which is like a crown, it being of iron, which was musled over the head and face, with a great gag or tongue of iron forced into her mouth, which forced the blood out; and that is the punishment which the magistrates do inflict upon chiding and scoulding women; and he hath often seen the like done to others."

"He, this deponent, further affirms, that he hath seen men drove up and down the streets, with a great tub or barrel opened in the sides, with a hole in one end to put through their heads, and so cover their shoulders and bodies, down to the small of their legs, and then close the same, called the new-fashioned cloak, and so make them march to the view of all beholders; and this is their punishment for drunkards and the like."

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRANK AND DRUNKARD'S CLOAK, NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE.]

Several other forms of punishment are mentioned by Gardner. Drunkards, we gather, for the first offence were fined five shillings, to be given to the poor, or in default of payment within a week, were set in the stocks for six hours. For the second offence they had to be bound for good behaviour. Scolds had to be ducked over head and ears in a ducking-stool.

"I was certainly informed," wrote Gardner, "by persons of worth, that the punishments above are but gentle admonitions to what they knew was acted by two magistrates of Newcastle: one for killing a poor workman of his own, and being questioned for it, and condemned, compounded with King James for it, paying to a Scotch lord his weight in gold and silver, every seven years or thereabouts, etc. The other magistrate found a poor man cutting a few horse sticks in his wood, for which offence he bound him to a tree, and whipt him to death."

The Rev. John Brand, in 1789, published his "History of Newcastle-on-Tyne," and reproduced in it Gardner's notice of the drunkard's cloak. Brand gives a picture of the cloak, and Mr. J. R.

Boyle, F.S.A., a leading authority on North Country bibliography, tells us that he believes it to be the first pictorial representation of the cloak. Our ill.u.s.tration is from Richardson's "Local Historian's Table Book." Mr. Walter Scott, publisher, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, has kindly lent us the block.

Dr. T. N. Brushfield, to whom we are under an obligation for several of the facts included in this chapter, read before the British Archaeological a.s.sociation, February 15th, 1888, a paper on this theme.

"It is rather remarkable," said Dr. Brushfield, "that no allusion to this punishment is to be found in the Newcastle Corporation accounts or other local doc.u.ments." We have reproduced from Gardner's volume the only testimony we possess of the administration of the punishment in England. There are many traces of this kind of cloak on the continent.

It is noticed in "Travels in Holland," by Sir William Brereton, under date of May 29th, 1634, as seen at Delft. John Evelyn visited Delft, on August 17th, 1641, and writes that in the Senate House "hangs a weighty vessel of wood, not unlike a b.u.t.ter-churn, which the adventurous woman that hath two husbands at one time is to wear on her shoulders, her head peeping out at the top only, and so led about the town, as a penance for her incontinence." Samuel Pepys has an entry in his diary respecting seeing a similar barrel at the Hague, in the year 1660. We have traces of this mode of punishment in Germany. John Howard, in his work ent.i.tled "The State of Prisons in England and Wales," 1784, thus writes: "Denmark.--Some (criminals) of the lower sort, as watchmen, coachmen, etc., are punished by being led through the city in what is called 'The Spanish Mantle.' This is a kind of heavy vest, something like a tub, with an aperture for the head, and irons to enclose the neck. I measured one at Berlin, 1ft. 8in. in diameter at the top, 2ft. 11in. at the bottom, and 2ft. 11in. high.... This mode of punishment is particularly dreaded, and is one cause that night robberies are never heard of in Copenhagen."

We may safely conclude that the drunkard's cloak was introduced into Newcastle from the Continent. The author of a paper published in 1862, under the t.i.tle of "A Look at the Federal Army," after speaking of crossing the Susquehanna, has some remarks about punishments. "I was,"

says the writer, "extremely amused to see a 'rare' specimen of Yankee invention, in the shape of an original method of punishment drill. One wretched delinquent was gratuitously framed in oak, his head being thrust through a hole cut in one end of a barrel, the other end of which had been removed; and the poor fellow 'loafed' about in the most disconsolate manner, looking for all the world like a half-hatched chicken. Another defaulter had heavy weights fastened to his wrists, his hands and feet being chained together." In conclusion, we are told that the punishments were as various as the crimes, but the man in the pillory-like barrel was deemed the most ludicrous.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PUNISHMENT OF A DRUNKARD.]

The early English settlers in America introduced many English customs into the country. The pillory, stocks, ducking-stool, etc., were frequently employed. Drunkards were punished in various ways; sometimes they had to wear a large "D" in red, which was painted on a board or card, and suspended by a string round the neck.

At Haddon, Derbyshire, is a curious relic of bygone times, consisting of an iron handcuff or ring, fastened to some woodwork in the banqueting hall. If a person refused to drink the liquor a.s.signed to him, or committed an offence against the convivial customs at the festive gatherings for which this ancient mansion was so famous, his wrist was locked in an upright position in the iron ring, and the liquor he had declined, or a quant.i.ty of cold water, was poured down the sleeve of his doublet.

Whipping and Whipping-Posts.

The Anglo-Saxons whipped prisoners with a whip of three cords, knotted at the end. It was not an uncommon practice for mistresses to whip, or have their servants whipped, to death. William of Malmesbury relates a story to the effect that when King Ethelred was a child, he on one occasion displeased his mother, and she, not having a whip at hand, flogged him with some candles until he was nearly insensible with pain.

"On this account," so runs the story, "he dreaded candles during the rest of his life to such a degree that he would never suffer the light of them to be introduced in his presence." During the Saxon epoch, flogging was generally adopted as means of punishing persons guilty of offences, whether slight or serious.

For a long time in our history, payments for using the lash formed important items in the munic.i.p.al accounts of towns or parish accounts of villages.

Before the monasteries were dissolved, the poor were relieved at them.

No sooner had they pa.s.sed away than the vagrants became a nuisance, and steps were taken to put a stop to begging; indeed, prior to this period attempts had been made to check wandering vagrants. They were referred to in the "Statute of Labourers," pa.s.sed in the year 1349. Not a few enactments were made to keep down vagrancy. In the reign of Edward VI., in 1547, an Act was pa.s.sed, from which it appears "that any person who had offered them work which they refused, was authorised to brand them on the breast with a V, hold them in slavery for two years, feed them during that period on bread and water, and hire them out to others." The Act failed on account of its severity, and was repealed in 1549.

It was in the reign of Henry VIII., and in the year 1530, that the famous Whipping Act was inst.i.tuted, directing that vagrants were to be carried to some market town or other place, "and there tied to the end of a cart naked, and beaten with whips throughout such market town, or other place, till the body shall be b.l.o.o.d.y by reason of such whipping."

Vagrants, after being whipped, had to take an oath that they would return to their native places, or where they had last dwelt for three years. Various temporary modifications were made in this Act, but it remained in force until the thirty-ninth year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when some important alterations were made. Persons were not to be publicly whipped naked, as previously, but from the middle upwards, and whipped until the body should be b.l.o.o.d.y. It was at this time that the whipping-post was subst.i.tuted for the cart. Whipping-posts soon became plentiful. John Taylor, "the water poet," in one of his works, published in 1630, adverts to them as follows:

"In London, and within a mile, I ween, There are jails or prisons full eighteen, And sixty whipping-posts and stocks and cages."

We give an ill.u.s.tration of the Waltham Abbey Whipping-Post and Stocks, as they appeared when they stood within the old wooden market-house, which was pulled down in 1853. The post bears on it the date 1598, and is 5 feet 9 inches high; it is strongly made of oak, with iron clasps for the hands when employed as a whipping-post, and for the feet when used as the stocks. It is rather more elaborate than others which have come under our notice. It will be observed the seat for the culprits placed in the stocks was beside one of the immense oak pillars of the market-house. They are now placed with the remains of the Pillory at the entrance of the schoolroom, on the south-west side of the church.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WALTHAM ABBEY WHIPPING-POST AND STOCKS.]

Some of the authorities regarded with greater favour the punishment at the whipping-post than at the cart tail. An old writer deals at some length with the benefit of the former. Says he: "If to put in execution the laws of the land be of any service to the nation, which few, I think, will deny, the benefits of the whipping-post must be very apparent, as being a necessary instrument to such an execution. Indeed, the service it does to a country is inconceivable. I, myself, know a man who had proceeded to lay his hand upon a silver spoon with a design to make it his own, but on looking round, and seeing the whipping-post in his way, he desisted from the theft. Whether he suspected that the post would impeach him or not, I will not pretend to determine; some folks were of opinion that he was afraid of _habeas corpus_. It is likewise an infallible remedy for all lewd and disorderly behaviour, which the chairman at sessions generally employs to restrain; nor is it less beneficial to the honest part of mankind than the dishonest, for though it lies immediately in the high road to the gallows, it has stopped many an adventurous young man in his progress thither." The records of the Worcester Corporation contain many references to old-time punishments. In the year 1656 was made in the bye-law book a note of the fact that for some years past a want has been felt "for certain instruments for applying to the execution of justice upon offenders, namely, the pillory, whipping-post, and gum-stoole." The Chamberlain was directed to obtain the same. We gather from the proceedings of the Doncaster Town Council that on the 5th of May, 1713, an order was made for the erection of a whipping-post, to be set up at the Stocks, Butcher-Cross, for punishing vagrants and st.u.r.dy beggars.

Notices of whipping sometimes appear in old church books. At Kingston-on-Thames, under date of September 8th, 1572, it is recorded in the parish register as follows: "This day in this towne was kept the sessions of Gayle Delyverye, and ther was hanged vj. persons, and xvj.

taken for roges and vagabonds, and whypped aboyt the market-place, and brent in the ears."

At the Quarter Sessions in Devonshire, held at Easter, 1598, it was ordered that the mothers of illegitimate children be whipped. The reputed fathers had to undergo a like punishment. A very strange order was made in the same county during the Commonwealth, and it was to the effect that every woman who had been the mother of an illegitimate child, and had not been previously punished, be committed for trial. Mr.

Hamilton, in his work on the "Quarter Sessions from Queen Elizabeth to Queen Anne," has many curious notes on the subject. The Scotch pedlars and others who wended their way to push their trade in the West of England, ran a great risk of being whipped. At the Midsummer Sessions, in the year 1684, information was given to the court showing that certain Scotch pedlars, or other petty chapmen, were in the habit of selling their goods to the "greate damage and hindrance of shopp keepers." The Court pa.s.sed measures for the protection of the local tradesmen, and directed the petty constables to apprehend the strangers, and without further ceremony to strip them naked, and whip them, or cause them to be openly flogged, and sent away.

The churchwardens' accounts of Barnsley contain references to the practice of whipping. Charges as follow occur:

1622. William Roggers, for going with six wanderers to Ardsley ijd.

Mr. Garnett, for makinge them a pa.s.s iijd.

Richard White, for whippeinge them accordinge to law ijd.

The constable's accounts of the same town, from 1632 to 1636, include items similar to the following:

To Edward Wood, for whiping of three wanderers sent to their dwelling-place by Sir George Plint and Mr. Rockley iiijd.

It appears from the Corporation accounts of Congleton, Cheshire, that persons were whipped at the cart tail. We find it stated: