What It Was Actually Like To Be In The Stocks

Although pain was an element of being sentenced to the stocks or pillory, the primary objective was humiliation. The public was encouraged to shame and insult the captive. And while police and soldiers were supposed to prevent them from being severely harmed, it did happen in some cases where the offender was not well-liked by the public.

On the other hand, a sympathetic offender could be treated abnormally well. When author Daniel Defoe was sentenced to the pillory, only flowers were thrown at him, and he was brought food and drink. Defoe was punished for writing a book criticizing the king, which many citizens loved. His friends even sold copies of his book on the spot.

Crowds present for a punishment involving either contraption frequently threw objects at the prisoner. While rotten tomatoes are the most famous object, spoiling food was the least of the prisoner's worries. There have been accounts of crowds throwing offal from abattoirs, expired animals, and excrement at people charged with homosexuality.

Particularly hated prisoners were attacked with dangerous objects, like stones and broken glass. More than one person perished from these bombardments.

First-person records of being in the pillory are very rare, but at least one exists from a Mr. Savill from England. After being put in it in 1800, Savill 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 Savill.

The pillory was intended to be a more rough form of punishment than the stocks. Once an offender had their neck and wrists through the holes, they would sometimes have their ears nailed to the device to restrict movement further.

In certain cases, specifically in Tennessee’s legal code dating to 1824, an individual was placed inside with the ears nailed down; after a few hours, their ears were removed altogether.

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, but it was sometimes better for the punished individual; even through steady rain, people were kept in the stocks, but it often kept the crowds away.

The close relationship between church and state during this period meant there was sometimes a religious aspect to the punishment. This could include being put in the stocks inside a church and forced to confess one's 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.”

When someone was sentenced to 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.