Rare Dromore Punishment Stocks Co Down N Ir.

Описание: This is the rare set of stocks in Dromore Co Down. These old stocks are said to date from 1805. It was quite normal to use them as punishment for petty crime like stealing or poaching. Punishment by stocks was abolished in England in 1821. This punishment may have lasted longer in Ireland. These particular metal stocks were re-mounted to the southern side of the market house in 1910.
Stocks were employed by civil and military authorities from medieval to early modern times including Colonial America. Public punishment in the stocks was a common occurrence from around 1500 until at least 1748.
Some consider the stocks an example of torture and cruel and unusual punishment.[citation needed] Victims may be insulted, kicked, tickled, spat on, or subjected to other inhumane acts. In the Bible, the treatment of Paul and Silas, disciples of Jesus, was detailed in the Acts of the Apostles: "Having received such a charge, he put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks."
England's Statute of Labourers 1351 prescribed the use of the stocks for "unruly artisans" and required that every town and village erect a set of stocks.
Their last recorded use in the United Kingdom was in 1872 at either Adpar, Newcastle Emlyn, west Wales[8] or Newbury, Berkshire, England (11 June).