Punishment for Miscreants
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1661: For many centuries, 'petty crimes' were punished by putting the perpetrator into the stocks so that others could ridicule and abuse them. However, there is a record in the cathedral Dean & Chapter Accounts for 1661-62 for this day, for 'Item for two Stocks locks for the Lourell Yard 2s 4d'. 'Lourell Yard' is the cloisters. So who would have been locked in these stocks, and what sin/crime might they have committed? And why do they need new locks? Is it vandals; has someone escaped from them or has it been so frequently used that the locks are worn out? History so often leaves us with unanswered questions. The stocks were a favoured punishment for small offences committed by the lower classes - upper-class miscreants were put in the pillory. Resisting a constable or 'riotous behaviour' could see you end up in the stocks. At this time, the offender could be brought into the church at morning prayers to say publicly that he was sorry. He would then be placed in the stocks until the end of evening prayers. The punishment was generally repeated on the next market day. The eighteenth and early nineteenth-century stocks were in the Market Place between the Guildhall and what is now Queensgate. (Mellows, W.T. and Gifford, Daphne H., Elizabethan Peterborough, Northampton Record Society, 1956)
Taken from The Peterborough Book of Days by Brian Jones, The History Press, 2014.