PILLORY. The pillory was a mode of punishment for crimes by a public exposure of the offender, used for many centuries in most of the countries of Europe under various names. In France it was called pillorie, and in more recent times carcan ; and in Germany, pranger. It was abolished in England in the year 1837, by the statute 1 Viet. c. 23.
In modern times the English pillory was a wooden frame or screen, raised several feet from the ground, and behind which the culprit stood, supported urine a platform, his head and arms being thrust through holes in the screen, so as to be exposed in front of it ; and in this position he remained for a definite time, sometimes fixed by law, but usually assigned at the discretion of the judge who passed the sentence. The form of the judgment was, that the " defendant should be set in and upon the pillory." In a case which occurred in 1759, an under-sheriff of Middlesex was fined fifty pounds and imprisoned for two months by the Court of King's Bench, because, in executing the sentence upon Dr. Shebbeare, who had been convicted of a political libel, he had allowed hint to be attended upon the platform by a servant in livery, holding an umbrella over his head, and to stand without having his neck and arms confined its the pillory. (Burrow's Reports, vol. ii. p. 791.) The public exposure of the offender as a punishment is liable to many ob jections, besides the inequality of its opera tion ; and the efficacy of all punishments which merely disgrace the offender, has been questioned by some of the most distinguished modern writers on criminal law. (Rossi, 7'ra at" de Droit Penal,
p. 483; Haus, Projet de Code Penal Beige, vol. i. p. 143.) In consequence of the recent direction of public opinion to this subject, punishments of this kind have been lately expunged from most of the modern systems of penal law in Europe. In England the pil lory was abolished in 1837, by the statute above referred to ; in France, the carcan was discontinued upon the re vision of the Code Pdnal in 1832 ; and in the numerous codes and schemes of codes which have appeared in the dif ferent states of Germany during the pre sent century, punishments by public ex posure of the person or otherwise tend ing generally to degrade the character have been omitted. (Entwiirfe fur Wfir temberg, Sachsen, Hannover, Baden, &c.) It is remarkable that the Bavarian code of 1813, which is generally founded on just and enlightened principles of crimi nal law, and which formed the com mencement of the series of improvements which have since taken place in Ger many, contains the objectionable pro vision that a criminal capitally convicted shall, in certain aggravated cases, un dergo a public exposure on the granger for half an hour, previously to his execu tion. (Strafgesetzbuch fiir Baiern, art. 6.)