STOCKS, WHIPPING-POSTS, &c.
There is, or was, at Walton-on-the-Hill, about three miles from the Liverpool Exchange, on the Preston road, an iron stocks. It stood close to the churchyard wall; and within at least two years (before January 1859) a person was confined there by order of the local magistrates of the district. I don't remember for what offence.—Notes and Queries, 2d series, vii. 39.
STOCKS, &c., AT BURNLEY.
The remains of the stocks and whipping-post are still standing close to the pedestal of the old Market-cross, in Burnley. The punishment of sitting in the stocks has frequently been inflicted on notorious drunkards within the last twenty years; but the writer has never known the whipping-post used. Both Padiham and Colne still retain the framework of these instruments of torture.
THE SCOLD'S BRANK OR BRIDLE.
Hanging up in the Warrington Museum may be seen a representation of a withered female face wearing the brank or scold's bridle; one of which instruments, as inflexible as iron and ingenuity can make it, for keeping an unruly tongue quiet by mechanical means, hangs up beside it. Almost within the time of living memory, Cicily Pewsill, an inmate of the workhouse, and a notorious scold, was seen wearing this disagreeable head-gear in the streets of Warrington, for half an hour or more.
