The Law's Lumber Room (Second Series)

"The Law's Lumber Room…" is a treatise on the types of punishments of convicted criminals in Mediaeval and post-Mediaeval times in England, ranging from stocks, whipping posts, to even the dreaded gallows. «Our treatment of crime is the exact opposite of our forefathers'. Our criminal toils, is flogged, is hanged in private; the old idea was to make punishment as public as possible, for so penalty and effect (it was thought) were heightened and increased. The Pillory was the completest expression of this idea. A man was exposed for sixty minutes in the market-place at the busiest hour of the day, and the public itself was summoned to approve of and aid the punishment… Its form varied. The simplest was a wooden frame or screen, with three holes in it, elevated some feet above the ground. The culprit stood behind upon a platform, his head and hands caught in and stuck through the aforesaid holes. This was much like the stocks, save that there the patient sat instead of stood and had his feet enclosed instead of his head and hands. In popular phrase this was „to peep through the nut-crackers.“…Now (as at Dublin) it was the kernel of a large and imposing structure of stone. Now (as at Coleshill, in Warwickshire) it stood a deft arrangements of uprights, boards, and holes, and did triple duty—as stocks, as whipping-post, as Pillory.»