Stocks

:See stock (disambiguation) for other meanings of the word stock

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The stocks are a device used for public humiliation, corporal punishment, and torture. The stocks are similar to the pillory and the pranger, as both consist of large, hinged, wooden boards. The difference is that in the stocks, the boards are placed around the legs or the wrists, whereas in the pillory they are placed around the arms and neck and fixed to a pole. Hence the stocks can be seen as a portable version of the pillory. However, the terms can be confused and many people refer to the pillory as the stocks.

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In the stocks, an offender's ankles would be placed and locked through two holes in the center of the board. Either before or after this the offender had his shoes and socks removed, exposing his bare feet. Prominently exhibiting the offender's bare feet was considered a form of humiliation.

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Typically, a person confined to the stocks was subjected to a variety of abuses, ranging from paddling and tickling of the feet (compare the excruciating oriental falaqa, a bastinado applied to the tender foot-soles) to being stoned to death.

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In the modern age, the stocks are still used in some countries as punishment and confinement devices.

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The stocks have also taken on a lighter image, as they are often found at Renaissance Fairs where the public can experience a form of "stocks entertainment" by watching actors locked in the stocks.

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An excellent example of stocks can be seen in Dromore, County Down, in Northern Ireland.

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Public humiliation: Public humiliation was often used by local communities to punish minor and petty criminals before the age of large, modern prisons (imprisonment was long unusual as a punishment, rather a method of coercion)....

Corporal punishment: Corporal punishment is the deliberate infliction of pain intended as correction or punishment. Historically speaking most punishments, whether in judicial, domestic or educational settings were corporal in basis. The practice is generally held to differ from torture in that it is applied for discipl...

Torture: Torture is the infliction of severe physical or psychological pain or grief as an expression of cruelty, a means of intimidation, deterrent, revenge or punishment, or as a tool for the extraction of information or confessions....

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