ONE hundred and seventy years after its use was abolished in these islands, the "pillory" remains a stubbornly popular concept writes Frank McNally
ONE hundred and seventy years after its use was abolished in these islands, the "pillory" remains a stubbornly popular concept.
As I write this, bankers everywhere are being pilloried, if only - lucky for them - in the modern, figurative sense. But a glance at the Irish Timesarchive suggests that, in the past month alone, victims of the pillory have included the Indian government, the Newcastle striker Michael Owen, and - most recently - the less talented competitors on TV's Strictly Come Dancing.
Agents of the punishment these days typically include parliamentary oppositions, tabloid sports journalists, and reality-show judges such as Simon Cowell. In the actual pillory's heyday, however, when those convicted had their heads and hands locked into it for hours at a time, the public had a more direct role. And since the brickbat had not yet become a mere metaphor, the results were often fatal.
Some of the early pillories were erected for the special benefit of so-called "mountebanks". Not to be confused with latter-day financial institutions (although the comparison is tempting), mountebanks were originally vendors of quack medicines, and later conmen of any kind, who operated at fairs and other public gatherings.
They got their name from the bench, or "bank", or which they displayed their goods and which they usually mounted to deliver the sales patter. Found guilty of a fraud, they were similarly "elevated" on the pillory. But according to Chambers' Book of Days, the treatment was soon being applied to a wide variety of cheats: "Fabian records that Robert Basset, mayor of London in 1287, 'did sharpe correction upon bakers for making bread of light weight; he caused divers of them to be put in the pillory, as also one Agnes Daintie, for selling of mingled butter.'
"We find, too, from the Liber Albus,that fraudulent corn, coal, and cattle dealers, cutters of purses, sellers of sham gold rings, keepers of infamous houses, forgers of letters, bonds, and deeds, counterfeiters of papal bulls, users of unstamped measures, and forestallers of the markets, incurred the same punishment." In 1630sEngland, political crime was added to the list. When the Star Chamber banned certain publications, the class of person facing the pillory rose sharply.
By then, the punishment could also include "cropping", a fate that befell the puritan polemicist William Prynne: "Prynne, after standing several times in the pillory for having by his denunciations of lady actresses libelled Queen Henrietta. . . solaced his hours of imprisonment by writing his News from Ipswich, by which he incurred a third exposure and the loss of his remaining ear."
Two other men, Henry Burton and John Bastwick, were similarly punished, the latter for an attack on the bishops of Rome. The pillory was mounted in the palace yard and an onlooker described the scene: "The place was full of people, who cried and howled terribly, especially when Burton was cropped. Dr Bastwick was very merry; his wife, Dr Poe's daughter, got on a stool and kissed him. His ears being cut off, she called for them, put them in a clean handkerchief, and carried them away with her. Bastwick told the people the lords had collar-days at court, but this was his collar-day, rejoicing much in it."
The arbitrary nature of the pillory was demonstrated in 1703 by one of its luckier visitors, Daniel Defoe. His seditious pamphlet The Shortest Way with the Dissentershad earned the wrath of the government. So rather than endanger his printer and publisher, he gave himself up.
Sentenced to a series of exposures, he "stood unabashed. . . on the pillory in Cheapside - the punishment being repeated two days afterwards in the Temple, where a sympathising crowd flung garlands, instead of rotten eggs and garbage, at the stout-hearted pamphleteer, drank his health with acclamations, while his noble Hymn to the Pillory was passed from hand to hand, and many a voice recited the stinging lines: 'Tell them the men that placed him here/ Are scandals to the times;/ Are at a loss to find his guilt,/ And can't commit his crimes!'"
A later and less worthy victim of the punishment was polygamist George Miller. He had married at least 30 women, usually servants, helping himself to their meagre savings before absconding.
His modus operandiwas exposed in a 1790 pamphlet called "A Warning to the Fair Sex, or the Matrimonial Deceiver". But by then he had received his comeuppance. The frontispiece showed him in the pillory before "a crowd of women of the humbler class. . . pelting him with mud, which some are seen raking from the kennel".
The instrument's days were numbered by 1814, when one Lord Cochrane was unjustly sentenced to it for an alleged stock exchange fraud. A parliamentary colleague threatened to stand alongside him during his punishment, until the authorities backed down and sent Cochrane to jail instead.
From 1815 onwards, the pillory was used only for perjurers. But in 1837, an act of parliament abolished it entirely, thereby freeing the term to start a new career as just a colourful figure of speech.
• In yesterday's diary, I referred to the screening of The Last Confession of Alexander Pearceat the forthcoming Clones Film Festival as a "world première". I am advised that the correct term is "world exclusive preview". This sounds like the same thing; but is not, apparently, if you're an entertainment industry lawyer.