Stocks
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Stocks, a device for punishing petty offenders, consisting of a frame in which the culprit's hands, or hands and feet, were confined while he remained seated. Required by law in some of the American colonies, stocks existed in every English town in which a court or magistrate sat. This Punishment was designed to publicly humiliate offenders and make vagrants known to honest citizens. Onlookers often added to the punishment by throwing things at the culprit, by pulling the stool from beneath him, or by tipping him backward so that he hung head down. As late as the early nineteenth century, American gentlemen sometimes amused themselves by baiting the victims.
Bibliography
Pestritto, Ronald J. Founding the Criminal Law: Punishment and Political Thought in the Origins of America. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000.
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Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology. Copyright © 2002, 2003 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
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