lapsuskalamari
The "Whipping Post" at Great Gate
Location: The “Whipping Post”, Great Gate, Staffordshire, England, UK
Date of Photograph: pm 18 October 2007
OS Grid Reference: SK055400
Co-ordinates: 52:57:30N 1:55:06W
Elevation: 140.2 meters
English Criminal Law used to differentiate between Felonies, serious crimes like murder or arson that attracted transportation or capital sentences; and Misdemeanors, less serious property thefts or adulteries that invoked fines or corporal punishment. The latter was intended to be painful and humiliating but was not allowed to “endanger life or limb” and usually involved flogging the back with a cat to produce superficial laceration.
Whipping, specifically flogging, was abolished in England in 1964, but had been in decline for two hundred years and widely deprecated as a barbarous archaism, even in the 1780’s. All whipping of females was illegalised in 1820 and it is difficult to find evidence of the public flogging of males beyond the 1830’s.
Accordingly, the ubiquitous stocks and whipping posts of English villages are mostly fraudulent: The results of a baleful Victorian fashion for things Gothick and Olde-Worlde. Authentic punishments were usually extempore and so were their instruments. Regarded as shameful for both perpetrator and victim, English corporal punishment was usually unrecorded and never awarded the symbolic value it possessed in the German-speaking lands.
Nineteenth-century Ordnance Survey maps fail to show this expensive-looking “whipping post” at the dozy hamlet of Great Gate, publess and with a population of about fifty. Modern OS maps mark it as “whipping post” in Blackletter.
It is a sturdy sandstone obelisk that shows some signs of vertical fluting and tentative borings as if it is an old plague stone, an interpretation that could be substantiated by its liminal position, but its true origin is probably more prosaic.
Close inspection discloses an iron shackle whose hinge is actually at ground level above a kind of ashlar plinth concealed below windfall leaves. When I touched this restraint it fell open with a hyaline chime and I thought “low-grade puddled iron”. This substance was manufactured between 1784 and 1974. The upper shackle had broken away with a brittle fracture and it had been fastened into its socket in the stone with a grout of barely-corroded molten lead, typical of local gate-hangers’ work circa 1880 to 1930. None of this puts the post definitely into the fraud category, but equally none is suggestive of the hand-wrought fibrous iron workmanship using easily available local wood and ironstone, that you would expect of a pre-1850 date.
But the big problem is the position of the shackles: Either the victim would have to lie prone with his ankles manacled, or crouched on the plinth with his shoulder to the pillar. Whichever, it would be impossible to strike him an effective stripe, even if you groveled on the ground with him.
Notable is the little barn across the road on the right of the picture. It has one of the finest roofs I have seen anywhere. The walling is very good too though showing its age and some fine iron straps have redundantly reinforced it from inception. The roadward oaken door with iron hanger bolts is very costly and the whole ensemble is much too high-class for a small Staffordshire barn.
Adjacent to these features, but out of view, is a sandstone ashlar integrated school and master’s house of 1853. Were the barn and “whipping post” fashioned of its surplus materials, at the expense of some national charity or local aristocrat?
The "Whipping Post" at Great Gate
Location: The “Whipping Post”, Great Gate, Staffordshire, England, UK
Date of Photograph: pm 18 October 2007
OS Grid Reference: SK055400
Co-ordinates: 52:57:30N 1:55:06W
Elevation: 140.2 meters
English Criminal Law used to differentiate between Felonies, serious crimes like murder or arson that attracted transportation or capital sentences; and Misdemeanors, less serious property thefts or adulteries that invoked fines or corporal punishment. The latter was intended to be painful and humiliating but was not allowed to “endanger life or limb” and usually involved flogging the back with a cat to produce superficial laceration.
Whipping, specifically flogging, was abolished in England in 1964, but had been in decline for two hundred years and widely deprecated as a barbarous archaism, even in the 1780’s. All whipping of females was illegalised in 1820 and it is difficult to find evidence of the public flogging of males beyond the 1830’s.
Accordingly, the ubiquitous stocks and whipping posts of English villages are mostly fraudulent: The results of a baleful Victorian fashion for things Gothick and Olde-Worlde. Authentic punishments were usually extempore and so were their instruments. Regarded as shameful for both perpetrator and victim, English corporal punishment was usually unrecorded and never awarded the symbolic value it possessed in the German-speaking lands.
Nineteenth-century Ordnance Survey maps fail to show this expensive-looking “whipping post” at the dozy hamlet of Great Gate, publess and with a population of about fifty. Modern OS maps mark it as “whipping post” in Blackletter.
It is a sturdy sandstone obelisk that shows some signs of vertical fluting and tentative borings as if it is an old plague stone, an interpretation that could be substantiated by its liminal position, but its true origin is probably more prosaic.
Close inspection discloses an iron shackle whose hinge is actually at ground level above a kind of ashlar plinth concealed below windfall leaves. When I touched this restraint it fell open with a hyaline chime and I thought “low-grade puddled iron”. This substance was manufactured between 1784 and 1974. The upper shackle had broken away with a brittle fracture and it had been fastened into its socket in the stone with a grout of barely-corroded molten lead, typical of local gate-hangers’ work circa 1880 to 1930. None of this puts the post definitely into the fraud category, but equally none is suggestive of the hand-wrought fibrous iron workmanship using easily available local wood and ironstone, that you would expect of a pre-1850 date.
But the big problem is the position of the shackles: Either the victim would have to lie prone with his ankles manacled, or crouched on the plinth with his shoulder to the pillar. Whichever, it would be impossible to strike him an effective stripe, even if you groveled on the ground with him.
Notable is the little barn across the road on the right of the picture. It has one of the finest roofs I have seen anywhere. The walling is very good too though showing its age and some fine iron straps have redundantly reinforced it from inception. The roadward oaken door with iron hanger bolts is very costly and the whole ensemble is much too high-class for a small Staffordshire barn.
Adjacent to these features, but out of view, is a sandstone ashlar integrated school and master’s house of 1853. Were the barn and “whipping post” fashioned of its surplus materials, at the expense of some national charity or local aristocrat?