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| ISBN-13: | 9780752482293 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 01/31/2012 |
| Sold by: | INDEPENDENT PUB GROUP - EPUB - EBKS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 160 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
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Olde Nottinghamshire Punishments
By Ian Morgan
The History Press
Copyright © 2012 Ian MorganAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-8229-3
CHAPTER 1
THE HISTORY BEHIND IT ALL
It is a fact of life that rules and regulations, and the threat of punishment, bring order to everyday living, even though we often wish we could disregard them. A society without laws was deemed a society cursed with the inevitable threat of anarchy; thus, systems began to evolve that tried to protect victims from aggressors.
When the Romans invaded Britain, they brought with them their own laws and methods of law enforcement to keep the population in check, which usually entailed the locals being subjected to military discipline if an uprising occurred. Any type of civil law was solely for Roman citizens who basked in a sophisticated legal system, on the other hand the local tribe of Corieltauvi (Coritani) had no recourse to the legal system of the invaders and carried on using their own tried and tested methods. Only the Romanised Britons would eventually be able to take advantage of the foreign way of law and order.
With the demise of the Roman Empire and the withdrawal of its army from Britain in AD 410, the Angles and the Saxons, both Germanic tribes, came across from the continent to fill the void bringing with them a legal system that is in part at least, still with us today.
The Anglo-Saxons divided all men over the age of twelve into groups of ten called 'tithings', from which they elected a leader, the 'tithingman'. Ten tithings collected together to form 'hundreds' which were in turn grouped into Shires and overseen by the Shire Reeve – later to become the Sheriff. Under this sophisticated system, each tithing was responsible for law and order amongst its members with any guilty party taken before the courts. In order to make everything work, sanctions were imposed against any tithing that failed to hand over one of its number if they had broken the law.
For the system to be successful, the community had to pull together to act as a unified anti-crime force, and part of its duties was to assist any victim of crime by pursuing the alleged robber when the alarm had been raised. To alert his neighbours, a victim of crime would raise a 'hue and cry' by calling out for help. Anyone within earshot was obliged at that point to drop anything they were doing and chase after the thief. If the culprit got away, the Reeve would call for everyone to join a 'posse comitatus' to pursue and catch them. With no police force to bring malefactors to justice, it was a method of law enforcement that was to have quite a surprising success rate when it was correctly put to use over the succeeding centuries.
At Balderton in 1336, a carter who saw burglars breaking into Balderton Grange was killed by the intruders; the locals who came across the ghastly scene raised a hue and cry and the chase was on. The ill-fated burglars were caught at Hawton where they were then beheaded.
By the sixteenth century, the pursuit of criminals was on a more formal footing as constables had to take up the chase along with the locals to save the Hundred from liability for any wrongdoings, and it was under Elizabeth I that it became a requirement that the hue and cry must include horsemen as well as footmen. Not all constables believed they should be under obligation to take part as the Constable of Farndon let be known in April 1609. For his lack of public spirit he was fined 3s 4d 'because when the hue and cry was sent to him by the Constable of Barneby he neglected to raise it and pursue'. On the other hand, mischief makers were also caught trying to raise a false hue and cry as in July 1615 when two labourers were prosecuted for doing just that.
For the Saxons, the highest form of judgement they had was that of judgement by God. Unresolved or difficult issues could be judged using Trial by Ordeal when an accused person underwent physical hardships to prove their innocence. In 'Trial by Cold Water', the accused was given Holy water to drink before being thrown into a river or some other large body of water. If he floated he was guilty, and, if he sank, innocent.
'Trial by Hot Water' was a very painful exercise whereby a stone was put at the bottom of a boiling cauldron of water. The accused then plunged their hand into the water to retrieve the stone, badly burning their hand in the process. The wound was then wrapped and bandaged and left alone for three days. If, on examination, after three days the hand had healed or was showing signs of recovery, the accused was given the benefit of doubt and proclaimed not guilty. If, however, the hand was infected or showed no signs of healing, it was proof of guilt.
Possibly the worst Trial by Ordeal was that of 'Trial by Iron', which required a piece of red hot iron to be carried 9ft. As in 'Trial by Hot Water', the injured hand had just three days to show improvement or guilt was presumed.
Prisons and gaols did not exist so most crimes were punishable by fines – but some did carry the death penalty. Crimes carried out against the King or crimes that could not be compensated could lead to the offender being hanged, or sometimes drowning or beheading was seen to be more appropriate. The condemned had a slim chance of being saved if their friends and relatives were able to band together to find enough money to buy their freedom.
When the Normans invaded and spread their influence throughout the countryside, they found that it was far more prudent to keep the majority of the Saxon system of law enforcement in place rather than to replace it with something that might not work. One major change that was introduced some years after the Conquest was the creation of High or Chief Constables and Petty Constables to keep order in their own locality.
High Constables first appeared after the Statute of Winchester of 1285, under Edward I, to enforce the law in the Hundreds. Whilst Petty or Parish Constables were seen as inferior to the High Constables, they had the task of arresting criminals and from the seventeenth century they had to follow the instructions of the Justices under whose control they now fell. The lack of a constable often led to social disorder, and, on 5 October 1612, the court was told by the inhabitants of Radford there were 'many nuisances and inconveniences' because of no constable being appointed. The court simply passed a judgement that one must be assigned, a task that was not always easy to fulfil. Petty Constables were unpaid and took on the responsibility for a whole year, an odious task that many men did their best to get out of. John Lupton of Worksop thought he had the perfect excuse to get exemption from serving as constable when he stood in front of the court on 4 October 1633. He explained how he could not serve his term of office because he was the keeper of the deer in Sherwood Forest, and he that he should be freed from the obligation of taking the duty of constable. The court declined to accept his reasoning, and he was forced to take the job as well as fulfil the needs of his full-time occupation.
The functions that the Petty Constables had to perform ranged from keeping order and apprehending suspected felons to making sure that the accused was presented for trial. During the time that the prisoner was held before trial, it fell upon the shoulders of the constable to look after his or her welfare very often at the constable's expense, a burden that made many a constable wish that his year in office was over. Charles White of Watnall was taken to court for not paying the constable's 'wages', a situation that could have wreaked havoc if all the gentlemen of the area had followed suit, especially as the unpaid constable could often be tempted with a bribe to look the other way when circumstances required it.
With a system in place that was, at best, inefficient, and, at worst, non existent, it fell to private enterprise to employ a more professional body of law keepers. Towards the latter part of the eighteenth century, with the increased urbanisation of the population and the resultant growth in the size of the towns, momentum grew for night watchmen to take on more of the responsibility for maintaining order in towns and cities. The 'Charlies', as they became nicknamed, were financed by local businesses to protect their own town during night time when burglars and thieves roamed the streets.
Nottingham, Mansfield, and Retford all had their own night watchmen to keep guard at night and the Retford Waits, as they were called, displayed a large silver badge on their arm as proof of their office and to show their authority in apprehending suspected malefactors.
A meeting held in Nottingham in 1788 decided that an arrangement of volunteers should police property, a system that was doomed to failure, so they tried again. This time, they employed the watchmen to look after the properties of the businessmen who paid their wages, another system with failings as the watchmen would decline to act if they saw burglars at work on the property of a non-subscriber to the scheme. In the end, the Watching and Warding Act of 1816 was passed whereby any inhabitant over the age of seventeen and party to the poor rate had to take part in protecting the town at night. Groups of twenty-five citizens would patrol the area to protect property, but such a large body of people invariably had the effect of warning any burglars that they were in the area as they made their way around non-too-quietly. Refusal to join in the guarding of the town had the potential to lead to a fine ranging anywhere from £2 all the way up to £10. In the end, Nottingham's watchmen would gain the enviable reputation of being an efficient body.
One of the difficulties facing both the constables and the night watchmen after detaining a criminal was what they should do with them. Gaols and prisons were generally used to house those awaiting trial and for the long term incarceration of debtors, but the big problem facing the lawmen was how to get the prisoners there. Some of those that were arrested were no more than drunkards that just needed to be locked up over night to sober up and so anyone captured invariably spent at least one night in the village lock-up, a secure building designed to hold prisoners until they could be delivered to court to face trial. Naturally enough, the drunkards were let out the following day to go back to work – hangover and all. Most towns and villages had their own lock-ups many of which have now gone, the only ones still standing in Nottinghamshire are at Tuxford, Farnsfield, Mansfield Woodhouse, and the remains of one at Edwinstowe. Tuxford's village lock-up was rather forward thinking for its day with two cells, each having its own privy. As crude and basic as most of them were, these small lock-ups did what was required of them for many years until the inception of a professional police force with secure facilities.
Those charged with offences were taken before one of three different types of court, each one dealing with crimes of a successively more serious nature. The lowest level of court was the Petty Sessions where minor offences were tried or where cases were to be judged to see whether a higher court should hear the trial. The Quarter Sessions followed, which, as the name suggests, took place at regular intervals four times a year. Crimes that were of a more serious nature were held there amidst the prospect of more harsh punishments. The highest of the three courts was the Assizes where the most serious and horrific crimes, from murder to robbery, were tried and with the severity and importance of the trials uppermost the location of the courts was limited to Retford, Newark and more frequently at Nottingham.
The towns of Nottinghamshire became equipped with their own courthouses to deal with the minor crimes – each one having cells inside the same building or nearby. Bingham, Mansfield, Retford, Southwell, Newark and Nottingham all had their own courthouses and the conditions in which the supposed offenders were kept was meant to be adequate rather than comfortable.
With courthouses and gaols improving with their dealing with felons and their punishments, it became increasingly obvious that the days of the Petty Constables and watchmen were numbered. The age of the hue and cry had been overtaken by an increase in population and the movement of labour away from the countryside and into the towns and cities. What was needed was a new way of policing an ever-increasing and unruly populace that needed to be kept in check.
Part of the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 required boroughs to set up a system of efficient policing; however, it was not until the Rural Constabulary Act of 1839, which allowed Justices of the Peace in England and Wales to set up rural police forces, that any real progress was made. This was not a compulsory measure and relied on the will of the Justices to follow it through, but the final piece of legislation that brought about a formal police force in Nottinghamshire was the 1856 County and Borough Police Act, which required every county to set up its own police force if it had not already done so.
In 1836, Newark, Retford and Nottingham had each set up borough police forces to combat the escalating crime wave rippling throughout the early Victorian Britain, and they were soon followed in 1840 by the Nottinghamshire Constabulary. This embryonic force began with just forty-two officers (a Chief Constable, eight Superintendents and thirty-three constables) for the whole county but within the year they had been joined by the Retford Borough Police, thereby increasing their numbers. It was becoming increasingly obvious that the policeman on the beat did not have the time or facilities to investigate many of the large crimes he attended, so, in 1854, Nottingham Borough Police set up the first criminal investigation department in the county.
The early days of the Nottingham Police had not run entirely smoothly as a number of incidents came to light. In 1838, Inspector Wilson was taken to task and reprimanded for being a little too enthusiastic over an investigation into a robbery whilst four constables were more than happy to receive £19 as a reward for capturing a known criminal – unfortunately, a watch house keeper by the name of George Spybey was dismissed for not doing his job properly and letting the man abscond.
For many years, Nottinghamshire was a mixture of separate forces until the Newark Borough Police joined the Nottinghamshire Constabulary in 1947, and, finally, in 1968, the Nottinghamshire Constabulary merged with the Nottingham City Police to make the police force that we know today.
CHAPTER 2CORPORAL PUNISHMENT
The old saying, 'If you can't beat them, join them' was not the sort that the courts and law enforcers wanted to see displayed amongst the criminal fraternity as they tried desperately to keep order in the towns and countryside. A more accurate axiom that they lived by would have been 'to stop them being joined, beat them', as they dished out large amounts of corporal punishment to all and sundry. The rough-and-ready justice of corporal punishment was designed to hurt and publicly humiliate those on the receiving end as well as acting as a deterrent for onlookers. In most cases, the spectacle of seeing someone in receipt of a good bashing, whacking or soaking more often than not offered the spectators with a good day out, and seldom prevented them from committing a crime.
The Cuck-Stool
In its early days the cuck-stool, or cucking stool, was used for distinctly different reasons to the ducking stool and only with the slow passage of time did these two types of punishment merge into one. Both sorts of stool followed a similar design whereby the unlucky perpetrator was tied in a chair like seat at the end of a long pole, very much like a see-saw. Unlike the ducking stool that was used to plunge the guilty in and out of decidedly cold water, the cuck-stool was used as a means of humiliating the culprit in front of their own doors or some other public place. The hopefully degrading spectacle of the ducking stool was mainly used for the silencing of scolds, who often tittle-tattled to the annoyance of their neighbours, but other crimes could also be punished in this way. Under a law passed by Henry VIII, any carders or spinners who had been found guilty of fraud were to be 'sett [sic] upon the pillory or cukkyng-stole, [sic] man or woman, as the case shall require'.
In January 1619, Anna Sugar of Arnold incensed the locals to such an extent that she was taken to court and sentenced to 'be dipped tomorrow in ye cuckstool [sic] for scolding', and all would have been well for Grace Heefield of Worksop if she had kept her thoughts to herself – instead, her wagging tongue led her to 'suffer penalty in the cuckstoole [sic]'.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Olde Nottinghamshire Punishments by Ian Morgan. Copyright © 2012 Ian Morgan. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgements,Foreword by Bev Baker,
Introduction,
One The History Behind it All,
Two Corporal Punishment,
Three Capital Punishment,
Four Punishing the Dead,
Five Social Strife,
Six Prisons, Prisoners and the Police,
Seven Churchly Goings-On,
Eight Right Royal Troubles,
Select Bibliography,