IN THE STOCKS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 247, 19 October 1933, Page 6

IN THE STOCKS.

OUR EARLY DAYS. PRIMITIVE PUNISHMENT. (By J.C.) New Zealand historians who set out to describe the conditions of life in the days of our beginnings should not forget one old English institution which was established in the foundation of the three early settlements, Auckland, Wellington and New Plymouth. This was the town stocks Sor the public punishment of petty offenders against the law. Very little about this method of correction can be gleaned from the files of the first newspapers preserved in the Parliamentary and civic libraries. The facts I have put together here were narrated chiefly by two pioneer residents of Wellington and New Plymouth some years ago. There was a set of stocks in Auckland, at a very early period; I believe the spot where it stood was near the early-days gaol at the corner of the Queen Street gully, as it was then, and the meandering road that is now Victoria Street West. Possibly some of our old-settled families could give some details—of course, not necessarily from their forbears' personal experiences! The only newspaper reference to these stocks that I can recall was a letter in an Auckland newspaper from an indignant citizen who was shocked by the sight oil a woman imprisoned in the stocks.

Wellington's Public Stocks. In Wellington the stocks were on the Thorndon flat, about where Pipitea Street and Mulgrave Street join, not far from the present site of St. Paul's pro-Cathedral. A pioneer settler, the late Mr. John Waters, of Pipitea Street, who arrived from England when a small boy, in the barque Slains Castle, described them to me. "The town stocks," ho said, "are among my earliest childhood memories—the tattooed Maoris at the beach settlement and the stocks up on the flat. I arrived with my parents in January, 1841, and they were there then; they were set up at the very beginning of the Wellington settlement at Thorndon. The spot was only a few yards from our home. They were in the open, and we youngsters on our way to a little school in Thorndon always used to go and see who was in the stocks, and we got a lot of fun out of the men sitting there with their legs in chancery. Generally they were drunks and other petty offenders put in for a couple of hours or so. It wasn't worth while putting them in gaol. On Monday morning there were always two or three fellows there with their ankles pinioned. There was one character in particular whom we could usually make sure of seeing on the Monday. He got very drunk and rowdy on Sunday—which was an open day for the public-houses, just like the week days—and had to be locked up and do penance in the public view."

In New Plymouth. New Plymouth, too, had its stocks. The Devon people who IViunded the settlement, in 1841, had probably the last set of stocks used in the British Empire. They were constructed and used at the order of the first magistrate of Taranaki, an old naval officer. An early settler of the province described them. The stocks, he said, consisted of two lonsr planks each two inches thick. The top plank was eight or nine inches wide and the lower one (twice that width. In each plank, lying horizontally, were cut half-circles, corresponding exactly to each other, of a convenient size to fit round a man's ankles. The top plank was fastened to the bottom one at one end by a strong iron hinge, and the planks when closed together were secured by a strongly-locked ba.sp. Along the length of these stocks, on one side, was a wooden bench, on a level with the 'holes. The culprit was seated on this bench, his feet passed through, and the top half lowered and locked, and there he was, with legs extended'to their full .length. The bench on which he sat was without a hack. Half an hour of this was trying, but when it was continued for two hours or more the prisoner beca.me painfully cramped, and then it was a real punishment.

Those New Plymouth stocks stood near'the first, gaol, which was at the foot o5 a mound near the signal and pilot station; the site was Inter on that of Fort Niger, a naval camp established in the first Tararoaki war, 1800, by a party from H.M.s. Nieer. The present railway station is iii the vicinity. The old settler who described them snid tb°.t thev contained either five or" seven leg holes. The odd number, lie declared, was made exnressly to suit a certain chronic drunk who had a wooden leg. The memory of the early days punishment, apparatus is preserved in a soncf which was comnosed by Mr. TTursthoiise and swnqr at the gathering of the Taranaki Farmers' Club in the early 'forties. Two lines of this ditty ran: Wn'vo ehnrclips for the orthodox. And for tlio sinners piols and stocks. By the time the Canterbury and Otago settlements were founded this primitive method of public-view correction had been discontinued in the old landis. and it was the lock-up and disrging t'he <raolor's back garden and other odd jobs for the minor offender.