PART 1

NOTE: Usage of the stocks and pillory as a punishment device goes back to antiquity, but I am only going to speak about what I personally know best—late medieval and early modern Europe. I think the stocks and pillory are most associated with this era and geographic location in popular culture anyway. The term “stocks” didn’t come about until around 1325 CE, when it morphed from the older Anglo-Norman term ceps. The word “pillory” evolved from the Old French term pellori that dates back to about 1168 CE.[1]

Punishment in medieval and early modern Europe was very much a public and participatory activity. Before even being put into the stocks (or “pillory,” where the stocks are attached to a raised post so that the head and hands could be clamped, rather than the feet), the offender was paraded or dragged to the spot with pomp and humiliating songs. The stocks or pillory that were used (although stocks and the pillory are technically different, I am going to use the words interchangeably for the rest of the post) were usually in a place where the offender was well known (thereby adding to “loss of face” in one’s community) and/or in the location where the offender had committed the offense(s).[2] In addition to being pilloried in an area where the offender was well known, it was usually in the most heavily trafficked part of that area—often a marketplace.[3] Outsiders or strangers convicted of a crime, however, were much more likely to be pilloried than well-known local residents, who usually had to be repeat-offenders before they got the pillory.[4] The punishment could be so humiliating and the stain on one’s reputation so long-lasting that there are many recorded instances of offenders choosing to commit suicide rather than be subjected to the stocks.[5] Punishment in the pillory could last anywhere from one hour[6] to three days and nights, and could be a stand-alone punishment (along with a fine) or a prelude to imprisonment or execution.[7] Another option similar to stocks/pillories included the tumbrel (i.e., being forced to sit in a manure cart), which was less physically restrictive but in some ways more unpleasant.[8] In some places, like Sweden, some offenders were actually executed (burned to death) while in the stocks.[9] Jody Greene found one instance where an Englishman who was rather short accidentally (or perhaps not so accidentally) strangulated in the pillory because his feet couldn’t adequately reach the ground.[10]

[1] James Masschaele, “The Public Space of the Marketplace in Medieval England,” Speculum 77, no. 2 (April 2002): 401.

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[2] Helen Carrel, “The Ideology of Punishment in Late Medieval English Towns,” Social History 34, no. 3 (August 2009): 304-305.

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[3] Karin Sennefelt, “Citizenship and the Political Landscape of Libelling in Stockholm, c. 1720-70,” Social History 33, no. 2 (May 2008): 156.

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[4] Joachim Eibach, “Burghers or Town Council: Who was Responsible for Urban Stability n Early Modern German Towns?” Urban History 34, no. 1 (May 2007): 19-20.

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[5] Carrel, “The Ideology,” 304-305.

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[6] The American Catholic Historical Society, “Thomas Lloyd in the Pillory,” The American Catholic Historical Researches 21, no. 3 (July 1904): 122.

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[7] Carrel, “The Ideology,” 309.

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[8] Masschaele, “The Public Space,” 400.

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[9] Sennefelt, “Citizenship,” 161.

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[10] Jody Greene, “Public Secrets: Sodomy and the Pillory in the Eighteenth Century and Beyond,” The Eighteenth Century 44, no. 2/3 (Summer-Fall 2003): 204.

Addendum: I realize this is a really late addition to my comment replies from December, but I just came across another source that is relevant to the "raping in the stocks" issue you raised in your original post. In the journal of Frantz Schmidt, the city executioner in Nuremberg in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, Schmidt records that on November 1st, 1578, he "flogged with rods out of [the] town [of] Nuremberg" a "Joseph Bernmüllner, a begging beadle here ... [who had] attempted to rape a girl in the begging stockade." (Frantz Schmidt, The Executioner's Journal: Meister Frantz Schmidt of the Imperial City of Nuremberg, translated by Joel F. Harrington [Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016], 7). This provides at least one example of sexual assault being a risk for people (particularly women) in the stocks, but it also shows that authorities would not necessarily turn a blind eye to this kind of abuse.