PRINCE EDWARD
“THE SCARLET LETTER” The Puritan Fathers had a very strict code of behaviour and woe betide anyone who broke it. For instance, running, jumping or skipping on the Sabbath Day were crimes that were punishable by imprisonment in the stocks, and if the fathers took a particularly serioLis view of the case, a flogging might also be awarded. The punishment of the stocks was a far more painful one that modern generations believe it to be, and it could rapidly become a most exquisite form of torture. So says Lillian Gish, star of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer epic, “The Scarlet Letter,” coming to the Prince Edward Theatre. As Hester Prynne, the heroine of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s immortal classic of Puritan intolerance and prejudice, Miss Gish spent a total of two hours in this ancient instrument of punishment. With one’s wrists and ankles thrust through holes in a stout plank, and only a matter of a few inches apart from one another, the back is unduly arched and soon a terrible stabbing pain is felt between the houldei; blades, then down the spine, along the back of the legs and finally practically every bone in the body. “Thank goodness, the stocks are not used now,” said Lillian at the end of her ordeal. “I’d be frightened to breathe in case I might be put in them on some pretext or other.
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Bibliographic details
Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 112, 2 August 1927, Page 15
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229PRINCE EDWARD Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 112, 2 August 1927, Page 15
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