CONTENTS:

FORWARD 
CHAPTER I. THE BILBOES 
CHAPTER II. THE DUCKING STOOL 
CHAPTER III. THE STOCKS 
CHAPTER IV. THE PILLORY 
CHAPTER V. PUNISHMENTS OF AUTHORS AND BOOKS 
CHAPTER VI. THE WHIPPING POST 
CHAPTER VII. THE SCARLET LETTER 
CHAPTER VIII. BRANKS AND GAGS 
CHAPTER IX. PUBLIC PENANCE 
CHAPTER X. MILITARY PUNISHMENTS 
CHAPTER XI. BRANDING AND MAIMING 



FORWARD

In ransacking old court records, newspapers, diaries and letters for the 
historic foundation the books which I have written on colonial history, I 
have found and noted much of interest that has not been used or referred 
to in any of those books. An accumulation of notes on old-time laws, 
punishments, and penalties has evoked this volume. The subject is not a 
pleasant one, though it often has a humorous element; but a punishment 
that is obsolete gains an interest and dignity from antiquity and its 
history becomes endurable because it has a past only and no future. That 
men were pilloried and women ducked by our law-abiding forbears rouses a 
thrill of hot indignation which dies down into a dull ember of curiosity 
when we reflect that they will never be pilloried or ducked again.

An old-time writer dedicated his book to "All curious and ingenious 
gentlemen and gentlewomen who can gain from acts of the past a delight in 
the present days of virtue, wisdom, and the humanities." It does not 
detract from the good intent and complacency of those old words that the 
writer lived in the days when the pillory, stocks, and whipping-post stood 
brutally rampant in every English village.

Now, we also boast that, as Pope says:

"Taught by time our hearts have learned to glow
For others' good, and melt for others' woe."

And I too dedicate this book to all curious and ingenious gentlemen and 
gentlewomen of our own days of virtue, wisdom, and the humanities; and I 
trust that any chance reader a century hence -- if such reader there be, 
may in turn be not too harsh in judgment on an age that had to form 
powerful societies and associates to prevent cruelty -- nor to hardened 
and vicious criminals -- but to faithful animals and innocent children.