Old Somerset punishments

Like other parts of the country, Somerset in centuries past operated methods of punishment for all kinds of perceived crime and wrongdoing that we, in modern times, would regard as cruel and barbaric, in addition to penalties such as transportation to the colonies, or the various forms of imprisonment and fines which we still use to this day. Old records, especially newspaper reports and civic archives of all kinds provide a fascinating insight into some of the more esoteric methods of retribution, generally involving public humiliation.

One form was the cucking stool, which was a chair or commode in which the offenders, generally women, were placed, and often paraded around in public. Sometimes they were immersed in water, which led to the alternative term ‘ducking stool’.

Pillories and stocks are variants on the same theme. A pillory had a wooden frame with holes in which a person’s head and hands were placed while standing, whereas the stocks, usually wood, sat on the ground with holes for a person’s feet while seated. Both were designed for public punishment where the populace would mock and throw things at the unhappy victim.

Another vicious punishment was public whipping, either as a moving punishment or, when tied up to a whipping post.

The archives of communities all across the county reveal issues concerning the allocation of responsibilities for the costs of erecting, operating or repairing one or more of these punishment devices, or just as commonly, complaints about their disrepair, or even absence. Here are a few examples of the latter complaints relating just to cucking stools. For example, in Halse, it was in disrepair 1722 and demolished by 1738. In Huntspill, it was the churchwardens’s duty in 1706 to set up a cucking stool. The absence of a cucking stool in 1618 was the subject of a complaint at the manor court in South Petherton, but one must have been provided some time thereafter as the cost of its repair was laid on the parish rate in 1658. The constables of Bruton Hundred paid for a new cucking stool in 1689; it was stored in a close behind a tenement on the south side of High Street.

The range of ‘crimes’ warranting such public punishments was wide, and – especially relating to women and girls – could also cover conduct nowadays regarded as either acceptable, or merely moral misconduct, such as unmarried motherhood and adultery, or heresy and blasphemy, as well as what might now be described as anti-social behaviour.

For example, the annals of an early 18^th century Frome constable described a collier being confined in the stocks for an hour by the magistrates “for coming drunk before them and being very saucy,” and two lads, arrested for stealing apples, fined “2 Guineas and all expenses or be publicly whipped in the Market Place.” In Chard in 1857, “two dissolute characters” were “placed in the stocks for six hours in the market place, in default of payment of penalties inflicted upon them for drunkenness. The numbers who thronged the spot to see the offenders will, no doubt, take warning by so degrading a punishment.”

Around 1800, in West Monkton – whose stocks and whipping post can still be seen (see illustration) – two choir boys played truant and climbed the church tower. The Rector caught them and put them in the stocks. In the early 17^th century, quarter sessions records noted that a William Barrett was to stand in the pillory at Wells for two hours “for a slanderous libel.” In 1848 churchwardens at Abbas and Templecombe put four men in the stocks for playing pitch halfpenny on a Sunday. Axbridge’s 18th century records reveal various sentences of whipping for apparently petty crimes of theft, including a pair of gloves (1744), coal (1747), a pint mug (1751), and beef (1768).

Thankfully we live in different, more civilised times, where such cruel and humiliating punishments no longer exist.