Frazer—The Dublin Stocks and Pillory. 459 
‘was responsible for maintaining at his own expense a pillory and cuck- 
ing-stool, which some consider equivalent to a tumbrel ; but I fancy the 
latter was altogether a different affair. At all events, the cucking- 
stool used for dipping scolds and ladies of doubtful character in filthy 
waters was a well-known mode of punishment for legal offences; but 
the parish stocks were by our ancestors considered to be another matter 
completely ; they were mercifully intended not to punish but ‘‘ to hold,” 
and were therefore to be paid for and maintained at the cost of the 
town. In a word, the stocks were intended as a means of temporarily 
detaining wandering human beings under gentle restraint, in the same 
manner that stray cattle were kept hungry and without water in the 
village pound. 
It was suggested to me that this notice of our early Dublin stocks 
would prove more interesting if I added a few brief memoranda about 
our Dublin pillory. 
The Dublin pillory has totally vanished, used for many years after 
the stocks had ceased to be employed there is not, so far as I can ascer- 
tain, a trace of a pillory in Ireland; still I am able to show you an 
accurate representation of what our Dublin pillory was like, with the 
appearance of, I believe, the last culprit who figured before a Dublin 
audience in its embraces. This was the notorious Watty Cox, the 
editor of a journal remarkable even in its day for forcible and not 
very decorous language. I owe this drawing to the kindness of Mr. 
Longfield, who copied it for me from the original woodcut in the last 
volume of Watty Cox’s magazine. You will perceive the place of 
exhibition was in front of the City Hall on Cork-hill; and as Cox him- 
self superintended the execution of the woodcut, we may presume the 
scene was fairly represented. At an earlier date I believe the pillory 
was erected at the junction of Werburgh-street and Castle-street, the 
victim facing Fishamble-street, but it was always a movable apparatus 
and probably kept in the Tholsel. 
The learned Coke states that everyone that hath a leet or market 
ought to have a pillory to punish offenders, such as brewers, bakers, 
forestallers, &¢. By old English law, a baker making bread of light 
weight was punished for his first offence by loss of his bread, at the 
second time of offending by imprisonment, and further delinquency 
was punished by the correction of the pillory. This carried with it a 
degree of odium and degradation to the oftender. I find in a legal 
record book, in manuscript, that eighty years ago a single individual 
in Ireland was sentenced to exposure on the pillory, imprisonment for 
six months, and transportation for seven years—cumulative punish- 
ments, all awarded to the same person. 
In the 56th year of George III., the pillory was restricted as a 
punishment to perjurers alone; and, finally, in the first year of Her 
Majesty Victoria’s reign, it was enacted :—‘‘ That from and after the 
passing of this Act (80th January, 1837) judgment shall not be 
given or awarded against any person or persons convicted of any 
offence, that such person or persons do stand in or upon the pillory. 
