Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg
Ganymede & Jack-Catch (the Hangman)

Whop1

Click images or captions to view pages

Ganymede & Jack-Catch
Ganymede & Jack-Catch (the Hangman)
Return

Between 1720 to 1740, sodomites were sentenced to the pillory almost every week. The pillory was usually situated atop a platform about five or six feet above the ground. Thus a person sentenced (typically for an hour at the pillory) could easily be seen by the surrounding mob. More importantly, the person at the pillory could more easily be targeted. The mob could molest the criminal. The mob yelled as it threw dirt, excrement, dead dogs, dead cats, dead rats, turnips, potatoes, cabbage-stalks, at the criminal. Butchers provided offal, blood, animal dung, fish entrails, rotten eggs. The mob threw brickbats, stones, etc.

Criminals at the pillory often died, if not at the pillory, then in prison a few days later. Stones often blinded the criminals, hurled with such force that the clothes were torn off their bodies.

While the entertainment of the mob took place before the pillory, the pickpockets worked the crowd, and prostitutes gathered customers, houses vacated by people in the mob, come to torture the criminal, were easily robbed. Thus was official justice served!

Some sodomites avoided the pillory when offered "Transportation", but there were other possibilities: hanging, being burned at the stake, being beheaded, being garrotted, or drowned in barrels of water.

Aristocrats and the wealthy often simply left London, escaping to the continent (France or Italy), or used expensive lawyers to establish claimes that they were mentally derranged (thus not subject to laws).

The pillory was abolished in 1816.

Back

© Copyright 2006 - 2018    The Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg Trust     Website Terms of Use