PUBLIC PUNISHMENTS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 17 October 1924, Page 8

PUBLIC PUNISHMENTS.

RELICS OF THE “GOOD OLD DAYS.” In the good old days our forefathers decided with a moment’s hesitation that public punishment was a much more efficacious thing than a private one (says an exchange). In Elgin it is duly recorded that one Christane I lines had to do penance at the “Pillar” on the Lord’s Day, clad in sackcloth and with a “mytre of paper on her head containing the cause of her sitting there.” The pillar was inside the Church of St. Giles, and poor Christane (one wonders what had been her sin!) found that when she entered the kirk she could not climb to her perch ‘because the ladder that stud at the pillar of repentance was tane the pillar of repentance was tane away. Did she stand shivering there at the foot of the pillar till some officious person fetched a ladder? And was her sin that of “the sclanderer?” In the church there is still preserved a “cut-tv stool” upon which “selnnderous” folks had to sit and do penance.

In the early times an extensive brewing trade was carried on in Elgin, and we find the town council seriously annoyed with the weakness of the ale brewed by some “brewsters’ wives.” Taking a leaf out of the Church’s book they decreed that if anv of those women made “washy or evil ale” she should he fined and set upon the “cock stale.” Despite this threat, we fiVid in 1633 that certain Elgin ladies broke the Jaw again. This time it was hv selling ale during time of divine ser■Ep. Their names were Christian .Teanour and Margaret Dunbar, “brewsters.” and they were ordered to stand •it “the nillar on Snudav next, and there confess their fault, with a promise of amendment, as also to pay half a merke.”

For makino- n “pennv bridal” to his daughter-in-law one William Sanders was censured Im +h ra Presbvte r v of Eloin. but report is sileut ac nunishnmnt. “To he nut +n the horn” ’r"s another form of ounisbnmr> + . Three ’’tests of the bom wore collided at the Mercnt Cross and t l '" mlni-if was doan oiitlri"* ’T’his shronoo tvm>\voc irtel-e/1 put he TiUcnetb Strarrhin. somo"'hera •'bo"r lpaA Im" -i'i Uoinrr that '-f clinoine: to the Church of Rome.