Stocks & Pillory: Think About What You Did

What happens when breaking the rules means being locked into a wooden frame while your entire town gets invited to make fun of you?

In this episode of Torture: A Dark History, Kevin Young and Dan Hourigan explore the history of two of Europe’s most infamous instruments of public punishment, the stocks and the pillory.

We’ll travel from ancient Judah and Rome into medieval Europe, following the evolution of public humiliation from a way to shame petty offenders into behaving themselves to a much harsher system where crowds could turn punishment into violence. Along the way, we’ll meet Perkin Warbeck, Daniel Defoe, Elizabeth Needham, and others who discovered that being put on display could be considerably more dangerous than simply humiliation.

We’ll also travel beyond Europe to look at similar forms of punishment, including China’s infamous cangue, before following the stocks and pillory across the Atlantic and into colonial America. From drunkards and scolds to thieves, fraudsters, slaves, and accused witches, almost anyone could find themselves spending a very unpleasant afternoon in public.

But what started as a form of community shame eventually became something much more dangerous. As criminal justice became more centralized, the punishment became harsher, the crowds became more vicious, and in some cases, simply being placed in the pillory could become a death sentence.

And because this is Torture: A Dark History, Kevin and Dan bring plenty of questionable humor to an episode about two wooden contraptions that prove humanity has always found creative ways to publicly embarrass people.

If you’re interested in the stocks, pillory, cangue, public humiliation, medieval punishment, colonial America, Daniel Defoe, Perkin Warbeck, Elizabeth Needham, historical torture, and the evolution of criminal justice, this episode is going to give you a whole new appreciation for the phrase “laughing stock.”

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