All the old punishments, from the Ducking Stool to the Stocks, proceeded upon the appeal to the moral sense of the community, and up to the middle, or probably nearer to the end of last century, the summary punishment of offenders took place, both in village and town, in the most public manner possible. Near the Old Prison House, standing a little eastward of the summit of the Cave, in Melbourn Street, which did duty for both civil parishes of Herts. and Cambs., stood the Royston pillory and also the stocks, but towards the end of the century the pillory disappeared, and stocks had to be set up in each parish. I can find no record of any actual punishments by the Melbourn Street pillory, but one of the last cases of punishment by pillory took place at Hertford, and was witnessed by Mr. Henry Fordham. Closely connected with, and as a part of the stocks was the whipping post, and this was very freely used until about 1800. In 1804 a prisoner was sentenced at Ely to be publicly whipped, besides imprisonment. In 1786, I find that George Rose was brought from Cambridge to Royston and whipped at the stocks. What his offence was is not stated, but that whipping was no trifle may be inferred from the following laconic entry in the Royston parish books:—-
"Relieved William C——, his back being sore after whipping him."
The offender had his wrists put through the rings on the upright posts of the stocks, which formed the whipping posts, and in this position he was flogged on his naked back "till his body was bloody." Vagrants had no small share of this kind of punishment. The following entry occurs in the Barkway parish papers:—
Hertfordshire to Witt.
To the Keeper of the House of correction at Buntingford.
This is to require you to Whip Elizabeth Matthewson upon her
naked Body, and for so doing this shall be your warrant.
G. Jennings.
In 1798 an item in the accounts for the same parish is charged for "the new iron for the whipping post."
The stocks for Royston, Cambs., stood in the middle of the broad part of Kneesworth Street, nearly opposite the yard entrance of King James' Palace, and just in front of some dilapidated cottages then occupying the site of Mr. J. R. Farrow's shop. Here they remained as a warning to evil doers till about 1830 or 1840. In Royston, Herts., after the abolition of the central prison-house in Melbourn Street, a cage was erected with stocks attached on the Market Hill, on the east side nearly opposite the Green Man, but they were removed at a later date to the Fish-hill, when an addition was made to the west side of the Parish-room, for the purpose, where the fire engines are now placed. An estimate in the parish books for the erection of a cage and stocks in Royston, Herts., at a cost of L10, in the year 1793, may perhaps fix the date at which each parish provided its own means of punishment of wrong-doers.
Though drunkenness was a vice infinitely more prevalent than it is to-day, it was not because local authorities did not at least show the form of their authority, but simply because they had no very efficient police system to back it up. It was customary for instance for the publican to have a table of penalties against "tippling" actually posted up in his licensed house, so that both he and his customers might see what might be the consequences, but as they often could not read they were probably not much the wiser, except for a common idea that the Parish Stocks stood outside on the village green, or in the town street. The common penalty for tipplers continuing to drink in an alehouse, was that such persons should forfeit 3s. 4d. for the use of the Poor, and if not paid to be committed to the stocks for the space of four hours; for being found drunk 5s., or six hours in the stocks. As to swearing, a labourer was liable to be fined 1s. for every oath, a person under the degree of a gentleman 2s., and for a gentleman 5s.
In times of disturbance, as at village feasts, it was no uncommon thing to see the stocks full of disorderly persons—that is, with two or three at once—and occasionally the constable's zeal in the use of this simple remedy outran his discretion. At the Herts. Assizes in 1779, before Sir Wm. Blackstone, a Baldock shoemaker, named Daniel Dunton, obtained a verdict and L10 damages against the chief and petty constable of Baldock for illegally putting him in the stocks.
There was, of course, an odd and comic side about the stocks as an instrument of punishment, which cannot belong to modern methods. An instance of this was brought home to the writer in the necessary efforts at ransacking old men's memories for the purpose of some parts of these Glimpses of the past. I was, for instance, inquiring of an old resident of one of our villages as to what he remembered, and ventured to ask him, in the presence of one or two other inhabitants, the innocent question—"I suppose you have seen men put in the stocks in your time!" but before the old man could well answer, a younger man present interposed, with a merry twinkle of the eye—"Yes, I'll be bound he has, he's been in hi'self!" I am bound to say that, from the frank manner in which my informant proceeded to speak of persons who had been in the stocks, the younger man's interruption was only a joke, but it taught me to be cautious in framing questions about the past to be addressed to the living, lest I should tread upon some old corns!
There was this virtue about the Parish Stocks, that it was a wholesome correction always ready. It was not necessary to caution a man as to what he might say, before clapping him in the stocks. Nor was much formality needed—he was drunk, quarrelling, fighting, or brawling, it was enough; and the man who could not stand was provided with a seat at the expense of the parish. Indeed, I am told that in one parish, near Royston, a farmer, who was himself generally in the same condition, finding one of his men drunk, would remark that one drunken man was enough on a farm, and would bundle the other drunkard off to the stocks without the least respect for, or care about, informing a magistrate thereof!