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 Queries[52] 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.