page_title: Stocks
section_title: Form and application
hierarchical_section_title: Stocks / Form and application
caption_attribution_description: English: Men in Bramhall stocks, Bramhall
context_page_description: Stocks are restraining devices that were used as a form of corporal punishment and public humiliation.
context_section_description: The stocks, pillory, and pranger each consist of large wooden boards with hinges; however, the stocks are distinguished by restraining one's feet.
  The stocks consist of placing boards around the ankles and wrists, whereas, with the pillory, the boards are fixed to a pole and placed around the arms and neck, forcing the punished to stand.
  Some consider the stocks an example of torture and cruel and unusual punishment. Victims may be insulted, kicked, tickled, spat on, or subjected to other inhumane acts. In the Bible, the treatment of Paul and Silas, disciples of Jesus, was detailed in the Acts of the Apostles: "Having received such a charge, he put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks." The Old Testament's book of Job  also describes the stocks, referring to God:
  He puts my feet in the stocks, he watches all my paths.
  The stocks were employed by civil and military authorities from medieval to early modern times including Colonial  America. Public punishment in the stocks was a common occurrence from around 1500 until at least 1748. The stocks were especially popular among the early American Puritans, who frequently employed the stocks for punishing the "lower class".
  In the American colonies, the stocks were also used, not only for punishment, but as a means of restraining individuals awaiting trial.
  The offender would be exposed to whatever treatment those who passed by could imagine. This could include tickling of the feet. As noted by the New York Times in an article dated November 13, 1887, "Gone, too, are the parish stocks, in which offenders against public morality formerly sat imprisoned, with their legs held fast beneath a heavy wooden yoke, while sundry small but fiendish boys improved the occasion by deliberately pulling off their shoes and tickling the soles of their defenseless feet."
  England's Statute of Labourers 1351 prescribed the use of the stocks for "unruly artisans" and required that every town and village erect a set of stocks. Sources indicate that the stocks were used in England for over 500 years and have never been formally abolished.
  Finger pillories often went by the name of "finger stocks".
  Public stocks were typically positioned in the most public place available, as public humiliation was a critical aspect of such punishment. Typically, a person condemned to the stocks was subjected to a variety of abuses, ranging from having refuse thrown at them, tickling to paddling, whipping of the unprotected feet (bastinado).
  Their last recorded use in the United Kingdom was in 1872 at either Adpar, Newcastle Emlyn, west Wales or Newbury, Berkshire, England (11 June).
  In Toronto, Ontario, Canada, court records from 1811 required the building of a set of stocks for punishment.
  The Spanish conquistadores introduced stocks as a popular form of punishment and humiliation against those who impeded the consolidation of their settlements in the new world. They were still used in the 19th century in Latin America to punish indigenous miners in many countries for rebelling against their bosses.
caption: Village stocks in Bramhall, England.
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