vertebrte of the convict, the old-time gibbet was merely two ui)rights with a cross beam, from which depended the rope and uoose. He was driven under it in a cart, the noose fastened about his neck and the cart driven ofi', leaving him to perish slowly of strangulation. Such malefactors were always hanged in chains and their bodies left swinging in the irons for months, a supposed ghastly and terrible warning to evil-doers. Sometimes the hangnuin would jump upon the shoulders or swing from the feet of the criminal in order to expedite the strangling process.

The stocks, the i)illory and the whipping-post were instruments of ])UQishnu'nt for lesser olfenscs. They were part of the judicial equi])ment of every county town or seat of government, and stood conveniently near to the court-house or jail, for in the early days both were usually situated in one building. Punishment by the pillory was much the more severe, the victim being in a standing position ; but even that by the stocks was exceedingly i)ainful, and it was not uncommon for men to swoon under the agony of either the pillory or the stocks. But while the colonists followed European precedent in the infliction of rigorous penalties, and their laws embraced many

THE STOCKS.

statutory crimes now abolished, yet they made no use of such instruments of torture as the rack, wheel, thumb-screw or pincers, found in all European prisons and even the ducking-stool seems not to have been employed outside of New England.