bearing the date 1656. At Shore Cross, near Birkdale, the stocks
remain, also the iron ones at Thornton, Lancashire, described in Mrs.
Blundell's novel _In a North Country Village_; also at Formby they
exist, though somewhat dilapidated.

[54] _History of Skipton_, W.H. Dawson, quoted in _Bygone
Punishments_, p. 199.

Whether by accident or design, the stocks frequently stand close to
the principal inn in a village. As they were often used for the
correction of the intemperate their presence was doubtless intended as
a warning to the frequenters of the hostelry not to indulge too
freely. Indeed, the sight of the stocks, pillory, and whipping-post
must have been a useful deterrent to vice. An old writer states that
he knew of the case of a young man who was about to annex a silver
spoon, but on looking round and seeing the whipping-post he
relinquished his design. The writer asserts that though it lay
immediately in the high road to the gallows, it had stopped many an
adventurous young man in his progress thither.

The ancient Lancashire town of Poulton-in-the-Fylde has a fairly
complete set of primitive punishment implements. Close to the cross
stand the stocks with massive ironwork, the criminals, as usual,
having been accustomed to sit on the lowest step of the cross, and on
the other side of the cross is the rogue's whipping-post, a stone
pillar about eight feet high, on the sides of which are hooks to which
the culprit was fastened. Between this and the cross stands another
useful feature of a Lancashire market-place, the fish stones, an
oblong raised slab for the display and sale of fish.