What were stocks in the Middle Ages?

Answer 1

The stocks (Old English stocc, a trunk or wooden post) was a low-level punishment involving short-term arrest and public humiliation. Crimes such as drunkenness, swearing, vagrancy and desertion of duty might involve various amounts of time in the stocks.

Used throughout the middle ages, the stocks (very similar to the pillory) continued in use into the Victorian era.

The stocks involved being imprisoned outdoors, with the feet and sometimes the head and wrists fixed in an arrangement of hinged planks with holes provided. The victim was unable to move and was at the mercy of the local people, who would beat the victim with sticks and pelt him/her with anything that came to hand: stones, mud, faeces, rotten food and so on.

The pillory was an upright post with the hinged planks at the top, so the victim had to crouch uncomfortably for many hours with their head and hands trapped. The stocks normally had the planks set on the ground, so the victim was seated.

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