The Pillory
The pillory was another form of torture, although on rare occasions those subjected to such punishment were ‘rewarded’ by the crowd who laid flowers at their feet or even collected money for them. Stocks and pillories were used in parts of Europe for more than 1,000 years. They became common in England by the mid-fourteenth century. In 1351 a law (Statute of Labourers) was introduced requiring every town to provide and maintain a set of stocks. The pillory was a device made of a wooden or metal framework erected on a post, with holes for securing the head and hands in which the convicted person would face the wrath of the public.
A stock is simply a wooden board with one or more semicircles cut into one edge. Initially used for quacks and mountebanks, stocks were later used to control the unemployed. In 1287 Robert Basset, Mayor of London, punished bakers for making underweight bread. A number of them were put in the pillory, as was Agnes Daintie, for selling ‘mingled butter’. A statute passed in 1495 required that vagabonds should be set in the stocks for three days on bread and water and then sent away. A further statute of 1605 required that anyone convicted of drunkenness should receive six hours in the stocks. After 1637, it became the recognised punishment for those who published books without a licence or criticised the government. The pillory was abolished in England in 1837.
The status of the pillory was elevated from a punishment reserved for cheats, thieves and perjurers to one which also punished those involved in political disputes. This was due to the work of the Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud (1573-1645) and the Star Chamber in 1637.
In the same year a high profile case saw the brutal punishment of three Puritan preachers: William Prynne, Henry Burton and John Bastwick. In the growing discontent prior to the Civil Wars they were prosecuted by Star Chamber for publishing pamphlets attacking the rule of the bishops and criticising the doctrines of Archbishop Laud. All three were sentenced to stand in Palace Yard in the pillory and have their cheeks branded and ears cropped before being imprisoned for life. The following account gives a graphic description of what happened:
William Prynne, who had his ears lopped off in 1637.
Dr Bastwick spake first, and (among other things) said, had he a thousand lives he would give them all up for this cause. Mr Prynne... showed the disparity between the times of Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, and the times then [of King Charles], and how far more dangerous it was now to write against a bishop or two than against a King or Queen: there at the most there was but six months imprisonment in ordinary prisons, and the delinquent might redeem his ears for £200, and had two months’ time for payment, but no fine; here they are fined £5,000 a piece, to be perpetually imprisoned in the remotest castles, where no friends must be permitted to see them, and to lose their ears without redemption. There no stigmatizing, here he must be branded on both cheeks... The Archbishop of Canterbury, being informed by his spies what Mr Prynne said, moved the Lords then sitting in the Star Chamber that he might be gagged and have some further censure to be presently executed on him; but that motion did not succeed. Mr Burton spake much while in the pillory to the people. The executioner cut off his ears deep and close, in a cruel manner, with much effusion of blood, an artery being cut, as there was likewise of Dr Bastwick. Then Mr Prynne’s cheeks were seared with an iron made exceeding hot which done, the executioner cut off one of his ears and a piece of his cheek with it; then hacking the other ear almost off, he left it hanging and went down; but being called up again he cut it quite off. [Source: John Rushworth (1706, abridged edition) Historical Collections, volume two, pp. 293]
The following year, political radical and Leveller John Lilburne (1614-1657) was charged with printing and circulating unlicensed books. He was found guilty and fined £500, whipped, pilloried and imprisoned. He was whipped from Fleet Prison to Palace Yard. When he was placed in the pillory he tried to make a speech and distribute pamphlets...
Henry Burton, who was publicly mutilated in 1637.
The Quaker James Nayler rode into Bristol on a donkey in 1656, imitating Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. For this act the government, in December 1656, declared him guilty of blasphemy. Some MPs demanded that he should be stoned to death in accordance with the Old Testament penalty for blasphemy. Nayler was taken to the pillory at Westminster and then whipped through the streets to the Old Exchange, where he stood again in the pillory for two hours. He then had his tongue bored through with a red-hot iron and was branded on the forehead with the letter ‘B’ for blasphemer. He was then returned to Bristol and made to repeat his ride while facing the rear of his horse. Finally, he was taken back to London and committed to solitary confinement in Bridewell for an indefinite period.
Titus Oates (1649-1705) was an Anglican priest who claimed there was a Jesuit-led plan to assassinate Charles II in order to hasten the succession of the Catholic James. Oates’ story was a complete fabrication, but it was sufficient to create a scare as well as sending a number of innocent men to their deaths at Tyburn. These events sparked a wave of anti-Catholic persecution with thirty-five innocent people executed and hundreds of others suffering as a consequence of Oates’ claims. In sentencing Oates, Judge Withers said, ‘I never pronounce criminal sentence but with some compassion; but you are such a villain and hardened sinner, that I can find no sentiment of compassion for you’. Found guilty of perjury on two separate indictments, he was condemned in 1685 to public exposure on three consecutive days. According to his sentence, Oates was to stand every year of his life in the pillory on five different days: before the gate of Westminster Hall, at Charing Cross, at the Temple, at the Royal Exchange and at Tyburn. However, the government eventually made the infamous villain a pensioner.
James Nayler being punished in the pillory.
The crowd did not always respond in a brutal way. The Post Boy newspaper recorded that Tristrum Savage stood in the pillory in June 1702 at the ‘Chancery Lane end in Fleet Street, for publishing a scandalous paper, called, The Black List, and some people had the confidence to give him wine and money as he stood in the pillory’.
Likewise with Daniel Defoe, famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe (1719): in 1703, the government offered a reward of fifty pounds for the arrest of Defoe for being the author of a ‘scandalous and seditious’ pamphlet which lampooned the Church. Defoe gave himself up and was sentenced to be pilloried three times. On 29 July he stood in the pillory at Cheapside, two days later in the Temple, Fleet Street. Here he met with a sympathetic crowd who flung garlands, instead of rotten eggs and garbage at the pamphleteer and drank his health.
In June 1732 the robber John Waller was sentenced to stand twice in the pillory at Seven Dials, bareheaded, with his crime written in large characters. He did not reach his second stint in the pillory. Such was the indignation of the populace that they pelted him to death. The day after, the coroner’s inquest gave a verdict of ‘Willful murder by persons unknown’.
The attitude towards homosexuals was vicious, as newspaper accounts confirm. In January 1727 Robert Whale and York Horner were found guilty of sodomy and for keeping a ‘House for the Entertainment of Sodomites’. Their punishment was to stand in the famous pillory at Charing Cross. One month later the London Journal (7 February) reported that Peter Dubourg stood in the ‘Pillory at the Royal-Exchange, for attempting to commit Sodomy; and was severely treated by the populace’. In April 1727 Charles Hitchin, City Marshal, was committed to Newgate by Justice Haynes for the ‘odious and detestable Sin of Sodomy, committed on the Body of Richard Williamson’ (Daily Post). He was sentenced to stand in the pillory in the Strand. His punishment took place in May but his friends attempted to intervene. They barricaded the avenues leading to him with coaches and carts, rendering any ‘approaches by the Mob inaccessible’ (The Weekly Journal: or, The British Gazetteer, 6 May). However, the attempt to repel ‘the Fury of the Populace proved ineffectual. He was taken down at the usual Time, and carried back to Newgate, almost ready to expire, with the Fatigue he had undergone in the Rostrum, his Night-Gown and Breeches being torn in Pieces from his Body’. In October 1727 John Croucher stood in the ‘Pillory in New Palace Yard, for Sodomitical Practices, and was very severely treated by the Populace’ (The British Journal).
The hated Titus Oates stands in the pillory.
One of the most extreme displays of hostility came in 1810 against a group of men known as the Vere Street Coterie. Amos (alias Fox), James Cooke, Philip Ilett, William Thompson, Richard Francis, James Done, and Robert Aspinal were indicted for conspiring together at the White Swan, ‘for the purpose of exciting each other to commit a detestable offence’. The events unfolded when a ‘Molly House’, the White Swan on Vere Street, which runs off Oxford Street, was raided by Bow Street police on Sunday 8 July 1810 and twenty-three people, described as being of a ‘most detestable description’ were arrested. Many of these customers were men from respectable society and of high rank who were more than happy to mix sexually with those of a lower class.
News of the raid spread quickly and very soon a mob of people began to congregate around Bow Street, where the accused had been taken. In total, twenty-seven men were arrested, but in the end the majority of them were released and only eight were tried and convicted. The men had to face the hostility of the crowd who kicked, punched and threw mud at them as they tried to leave the police station.
Over the course of the following week, six of the convicted men were found guilty of attempted sodomy and were pilloried in the Haymarket. Amos was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment and to stand once in the pillory. Cooke, Ilett, Thompson, Francis and Done were each sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and the pillory, and Aspinal was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment.
The Times reported that the concourse of people that turned out ‘was immense... even the tops of the houses in the Haymarket were covered with spectators’. It was estimated that there were about 40,000 people gathered. It was also a very violent and unruly crowd who had to come to vent their anger and were equipped with various objects to throw. The article noted that the women were particularly vicious. So large was the mob that the City had to provide a guard of 200 armed constables, half who were mounted and half on foot, to protect the men from even worse mistreatment.
The men were conveyed from Newgate to the Haymarket in an open cart. They all sat upright but could not help but look on in fear and dread as they saw the sight of the spectators on the tops of the houses hurling a cacophony of hisses and boos, accompanied by a volley of mud which made the men fall flat on their faces in the cart.
An old watch house near the Old Bailey.
The mob formed a gauntlet along Ludgate Hill, Fleet Street, the Strand and Charing Cross, and they lost no time in pelting the men with their assortment of projectiles. By the time they arrived at the Haymarket at one o’clock in the afternoon, the pillory would only accommodate four, so two men were taken to St Martin’s Watch House to wait their turn. Once a space was formed around the pillory, a number of women were admitted to commence the proceedings. With great vigour they rained down a shower of dead cats, rotten eggs, potatoes and buckets filled with blood, offal, and dung, which had been brought by butchers’ men from St James’s Market. During the next hour of agony the men walked constantly round the pillory, which was on a fixed axis and swivelled.
The two remaining prisoners, Amos and Cooke, were then placed in the pillory, and were also pelted till it was scarcely possible to recognize a human shape. The cart then conveyed them through the Strand and to Newgate, the mob continuing to pelt them all the way. By the time they reached Newgate some of them were cut in the head and bled profusely.
The famous pillory at Charing Cross.
The Morning Chronicle blamed foreigners for such a crime committed by the prisoners:
We avoid entering into the discussion of a crime so horrible to the nature of Englishmen, the prevalence of which we fear we must ascribe, among other calamities, to the unnecessary war in which we have been so long involved. It is not merely the favour which has been shown to foreigners, to foreign servants, to foreign troops, but the sending our own troops to associate with foreigners, that may truly be regarded as the source of the evil.
Two men, forty-two-year-old John Newbold Hepburn, formerly an officer in a West India regiment, and eighteen-year-old Thomas White, a drummer boy, were convicted of the act of sodomy despite not being present at the White Swan during the night of the raid. Both of them received the death sentence and were executed at Newgate on 7 March 1811.