emained there
all night. On the 9th August, 1822, two women were incarcerated in the
stocks in the market place at Stockport, for three hours, one for
getting drunk, the other for gross and deliberate scandal."

We give an illustration from a recent photograph by Mr. A. Whitford
Anderson, of Watford, of the stocks and whipping-post at Aldbury,
Hertfordshire. It presents one of the best pictures of these old-time
relics which has come under our notice. We have no desire for the stocks
and lash to be revived, but we hope these obsolete engines of
punishments will long remain linking the past with the present.

[Illustration]

In closing this chapter we must not omit to state that in the olden time
persons refusing to assist in getting in the corn or hay harvest were
liable to be imprisoned in the stocks. At the Northamptonshire Quarter
Sessions held in 1688, the time was fixed at two days and one night.

FOOTNOTES:

[36] Morris's "Obsolete Punishments of Shropshire."

[37] Dyer's "Folk-Lore of Shakespeare."

[38] Roberts's "Social History of the Southern Counties of England,"
1856.

[39] W. H. Dawson's "History of Skipton," 1882.

The Drunkard's Cloak.

Several historians, dealing with the social life of England in bygone
times, have described the wearing of a barrel after the manner of a
cloak as a general mode of punishing drunkards, in force during the
Commonwealth. There appears to be little foundation for the statement,
and, after careful consideration, we have come to the conclusion that
this mode of punishment was, as regards this country, confined to
Newcastle-on-Tyne.

In the year 1655 was printed in London a work entitled, "England's
Grievance Discovered in Relation to the Coal Trade," by Ralph Gardner,
of Chirton, in the county of Northumberland, Gent. The book is dedicated
to "Oliver, Lord Protector." Gardner not only gave a list of grievances,
but suggested measures to reform them. It will be gathered from the
following proposed remedy that he was not any advocate of half measures
in punishing persons guilty of offences. He suggested that a law be
created for death to those who should commit perjury, forgery, or
bribery.

More than one writer has said that Gardner was executed in 1661, at
York, for coining, but there is not any truth in the statement. We have
proof that he was conducting his business after the year in which it is
stated that he suffered death at the hands of the publ