as possible, and for this purpose were saturated with tar. On one
occasion the gibbet was fired and the tar helped the conflagration,
and a rapid and effectual cremation ensued. In many museums
gibbet-irons are preserved.

Punishments in olden times were usually cruel. Did they act as
deterrents to vice? Modern judges have found the use of the lash a
cure for robbery from the person with violence. The sight of
whipping-posts and stocks, we learn, has stayed young men from
becoming topers and drunkards. A brank certainly in one recorded case
cured a woman from coarse invective and abuse. But what effect had the
sight of the infliction of cruel punishments upon those who took part
in them or witnessed them? It could only have tended to make cruel
natures more brutal. Barbarous punishments, public hangings, cruel
sports such as bull-baiting, dog-fighting, bear-baiting,
prize-fighting and the like could not fail to exercise a bad influence
on the populace; and where one was deterred from vice, thousands were
brutalized and their hearts and natures hardened, wherein vicious
pleasures, crime, and lust found a congenial soil. But we can still
see our stocks on the village greens, our branks, ducking-stools, and
pillories in museums, and remind ourselves of the customs of former
days which have not so very long ago passed away.

[56] Act of Parliament 25 George II.




CHAPTER XIV