Overview of The Appearance of the Pillory in Eighteenth century Literature

Defined when used as a noun as, ‘A frame erected on a pillar, and made with holes and folding boards, through which the heads and hands of criminals are put’  in the 1756 edition of the second volume of Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language, and in much the same terms in the current online Oxford English Dictionary, the pillory was an instrument of punishment reserved for crimes of moral outrage, sexual deviance and those who dared to publicly ridicule the ruling government. Typically carried out on a raised platform in the central squares of market towns and London boroughs, it was a punishment which would often though not compulsively accompany a prison sentence and/or fine. A pillorying could be required to be carried out several times in different public squares depending on the severity of the offence. The time spent in the pillory varied, usually the punishment would be over and done with in a matter of hours, but could last for days on occasion. The victim would be pelted with rotten fruit, rotten eggs, stones, masonry, dead animals and all manner of nasty injurious projectile the vengeful crowd could get their hands on.

The pillory was a spectacle which inspired the work of many of the great writers, artists, and satirists of the eighteenth century. On top of its artistic impact, the pillory’s legitimacy apparatus of a civilised state was contested in the political sphere by literary men like Daniel Defoe as well as political figures such as Edmund Burke. Two of the century’s most famous satirists, Daniel Defoe and John Shebbeare, would find their heads and hands within the holes of the pillory for writing satiriacal pamphlets targeting the Anglican church leadership in Defoe’s case and criticising the old Hanoverian monarchy in the case of Shebbeare.

The pillory appears in eighteenth century literature as a device of satire through which to criticise a wide variety of topics, from institutions of social propriety such as the Anglican church, the monarchy and British legal system to contrasting forces disruptive to social order such as prostitution and female gambling. The pillory appears in literature in manners converse to and in line with its purpose in the real world. Writers like Swift and Defoe used the pillory to critique established authority and prevailing social order, Hogarth levelled the pillory at social outcasts as a deterrent against sexual deviance and satirists such as James Gillray and Richard Newton deployed the pillory in either direction in their simultaneous satirising of establishment figure Lord Justice Kenyon and the social pariahs embroiled in the scandal of female gambling in the 1790s.  

The Pillory, Satire and Pilloried Satirists

The pillory held an esteemed position in eighteenth century literary satire as both a satirised subject and as a medium through which to satirise greater political and religious forces in authority. This is evident in the work of Swift and in performative satire as witnessed by Shebbeare’s and Defoe’s ridiculing of the sentence as a joyous honour, and not least in literature (both self-composed and inspired) emanating from these fantastic occasions of comedic rebellion. The punishment was contested in satire, and in poetical acts of defiance by satirists who endured it. Edmund Burke exhibited this manner of manipulation of the sentence by Defoe and Shebbeare in an argument for the abolition of the pilloryfifty seven years before it was finally done away with in Britain. It could be said that the experience of the pillory by literary figures and their satirising of it in word and in deed served to discredit it as a form of punishment, a discrediting that predicated its eventual demise from British law.

Swift’s Use of the Pillory as Exemplar of Societal Barbarity, Medium of Insult, and Satirical Device:

The pillory receives a brief mention in Gulliver’s Travels. It features among an indictment of the depravity of the Yahoos. The harmonious land of the Houyhnhnms is contrasted with the vices of England with which the pillory was associated as well as speciously respectable members of English society such as attorneys, politicians and party leaders  ‘here were no gibers, censurers, backbiters, pickpockets, highwaymen, housebreakers, attorneys, bawds, buffoons, gamesters, politicians, wits, splenetics, tedious talkers, controvertists, ravishers, murderers, robbers, virtuosos; no leaders, or followers, of party and faction; no encouragers to vice, by seducement or examples; no dungeon, axes, gibbets, whipping-posts, or pillories. ’ (Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, 180).The pillory appears as an exemplar of the barbarity of the penal system but also as a means of insulting establishment figures by placing them in the same despicable list as the pillory and pilloried.

The pillory is put to more interesting use in the author’s earlier work. Swift opens his first satire, A Tale of a Tub, with an allegorical use of the pillory to satirise Christian ministers and Catholic priests alike. The work’s introduction satirically poses the question of how to best rise above a crowd to be heard in order to spread philosophy and ancestral wisdom. To this end, Swift alludes to a quote from Samuel Butler’s Hudibras ‘For charlatans can do no good until they're mounted in a crowd' (Butler, 90) and contrastingly quotes Virgil ‘evadere ad auras, hoc opus, hic labor est/escape to the air, this task is the toil,’ (Swift, A Tale of the Tub, 1)before coming up with three ‘Oratorical machines’ (Swift, 1) with which to solve the problem, ‘the pulpit, the ladder and the stage itinerant.’ (1)  Foregrounded by the insinuation of charlatans believing themselves of equal value to Virgil, it is in Swift’s description of the pulpit that the pillory appears in unflattering terms ‘from its near resemblance to a pillory, it will ever have a mighty influence on human ears.’ (1) 

The pillory’s appearance as a satirical device is preceded by the statement at the beginning of the paragraph ‘Of pulpits there are in this island several sorts, but I esteem only that made of timber from the Sylva Caledonia.’ (1) Sylva Caledonia is a likely inference of Scottish Presbyterianism if anything. This inference is coupled with the recommendation that the pulpit be the ‘only uncovered vessel in every assembly where it is rightfully used,’ (1)a likely further allusion to dissenters’ wearing of hats during conventicles as protest against the officious ceremony of Anglican and Catholic worship. Given that it was common practice for the victim’s ears to be nailed to the pillory and then torn from it in the subsequent pelting, the pillory here appears in a metaphor depicting the pulpit as having a like effect on ‘human ears.’ (1)  In other words, the pulpit has a like effect on the individual’s capacity to interpret what they hear. The congregation’s ears are entrapped in a single position by the pulpit, limiting and coercing their thoughts. Their instruments of hearing, and therefore ability to hear clearly and interpret evenly, are irreparably damaged by the like effect inflicted by pulpit and pillory. Though this use of the pillory as a satirical allegory is directed at pulpits of any Christian denomination, the bulk of the satire’s venom appears to be reserved for the pulpit of the dissenter.

The Pillorying of Daniel Defoe and A Hymn to the Pillory:

'HAIL! Hi'roglyphick State Machin' 

A venomous approach to dissenters in satire earned Daniel Defoe the dubious accolade of being the most renowned author of the eighteenth century to find himself in the pillory as well as writing about it. In contrast to Swift, an Anglican writer using the pillory to satirically insult dissenters, nonconformist Defoe used capital punishment to satirically insult extremist Anglicans in an anonymous pamphlet first published in 1702 entitled The Shortest Way With Dissenters. The pamphlet built on the contestation of occasional conformity (a policy which permitted dissenters to be members of the Church of England and hence hold public office) taking place in parliament at the time into an argument that dissenters should face mass execution as a more efficient alternative, ‘that the Posterity of the Sons of Error may be rooted out from the face of this land, for ever!’ (Defoe, The Shortest Way With Dissenters, 538) Defoe assumed the language of Tory sermons and pamphlets in circulation at the time which attacked dissenters. The pamphlets were written as part of a wave of anti-dissenter sentiment sweeping the nation in the wake of the accession of Queen Anne to the throne, a monarch less tolerant of dissenters than her predecessor William of Orange. Defoe’s resultant problems, pillorying and the satire revolving around the pillory inspired by the experience all came about because ‘The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters (1702), so brilliantly sustained its impersonation of a High Church extremist, it’s supposed narrator, that it was at first mistaken for the real thing’ (McWilliam). The embarrassing publicity caused led the High Tory Secretary of State, the Earl of Nottingham to issue a warrant for Defoe’s arrest, leading to imprisonment and conviction to the pillory.

Daniel Defoe in the Pillory (1862) - Eyre Crowe 

True to his literary genius and penchant for satire, his 1703 pillorying served as an opportunity for Defoe to produce yet more satire by making a celebratory performance out of his pillorying and by producing satirical writing whilst imprisoned. Defoe composed A Hymn to the Pillory from behind bars. He managed to have this hymn smuggled out of Newgate and it was distributed amongst a supportive crowd at his pillorying, creating a poetic spectacle of a merry crowd that bellowed out his hymn and drank to his health rather than hurling insults. This was a pillorying in which Defoe was pelted with flowers rather than the masonry, excrement, and dead animals typically such occasions. His utilisation of the physical event of his pillorying and this work satirised the punishment itself and the corrupt bias of wider repressive societal forces of Toryism and Anglicanism.

The very act of repositioning the spectacle of a pillorying into a religious context served to effectively satirise the punishment. Defoe is effectively saying the crowds that attend a typical pillorying are a congregation engaged in false worship of state power, a biting criticism to make given that the curtailing of the false worship of dissenters in attendance of Anglican services was the genesis of the controversy. Defoe achieves this point by contrasting the form of worship providence would intend of the public with the angry braying crowd attending the pillory as a kind of ceremonial religious service ‘How the Inscrutables of Providence, Differ from our contracted Sence.’ (Defoe, A Hymn to the Pillory) The malice of the state and masses attending the pillory is likened to a religious fervour irrationally and immorally misdirected, in much the same manner in which the Anglican Tory establishment sought to curtail the practice of occasional conformity.

The satire of the pillory being presented as a golden cow type religious object is further developed by a play on the word ‘stool.’ The term has three definitions in Johnson’s dictionary. The first of these is ‘A seat without a back…’ (Johnson) however it is the last two definitions, ‘Evacuation by purgative methods’ (Johnson) and ‘Stool of repentence… in the kirks of Scotland, is somewhat analogous to the pillory. It is elevated above the congregation,’ (Johnson) which Defoe makes use of in his satirising of his pillorying. The stool of repentance was an elevated stool in Presbyterian churches in which those guilty of fornication were made to sit in every Sunday for a year to be lambasted and shamed by the minister and congregation. Defoe likens the pillory to this punishment by referring to it as a ‘penitential stool’ (Defoe)whilst also labelling it the ‘Stool of State.’ (Defoe)This converts the pillory’s intended use as a legal device of moral penitence into one of religious penitence, with the public square becoming the interior of a church, the under-sheriff becoming a commanding preacher and the crowd a scolding congregation, whilst satirising the whole ordeal as constituting the excrement of the state. The pillory is the most repugnant article to spring from the body of the state, it signifies ‘Contempt, that false New Word for shame’ (Defoe). Through this play on words, the pillory conveys the foul odour of state contempt rather than the shame of its victim, in a religious ceremony devoted to worldly hatred.

Figure 1.1

Black Stool (1784), David Allan. Through religious metaphor, Defoe likened the pillory to the stool of repentance, a a shaming device used in Scottish Presbyterian churches depicted above.

The opening line labels the pillory a 'Hi'roglyphick State Machin' (Defoe). This imparts traits of mystery and indecipherability to the pillory. The description begins to make sense once the criticisms levelled at the pillory and by extension the British state unfold. The pillory is a mysterious object difficult to decipher because of the incongruity between its underlying premise as an instrument of law and justice and its actuality as the pinnacle representation of mob partiality, or ‘The undistinguish'd Fury of the Street’ (Defoe) in Defoe’s words, as well a symptom of vindictive governance and the corrupt supremacy of politics over the law, ‘But who can judge of Crimes by Punishment, Where Parties Rule, and L[aw']s Subservient’(Defoe). In this contradiction of tendentious politics and mob barbarianism masquerading as statutory justice culminating in an innocent man being pilloried, the legality and just reasoning supposedly underpinning the pillory is thus obscured, making it a hieroglyphic object devoid of its intended comprehensible meaning, ‘Contempt, that false New Word for shame, Is without Crime, an empty Name…No Byass can the Rabble draw, But Dirt throws Dirt without respect to Merit, or to Law' (Defoe).

Defoe’s business interests, his only income, were being laid to waste beyond the confines of Newgate whilst he composed the poem, ‘during his long absence his brick and tile factory failed, and with his old creditors still clamouring for payment he was again a bankrupt, languishing in Newgate prison’ (Richetti, 26). Defoe’s predicament meant he faces the likelihood of spending the remainder of his life in a debtor’s prison. The context in which the poem was written speaks volumes of the resilience of his character. Defoe’s pillorying and the poem devoted to it represent one of the pillory’s most poignant and memorable interactions with eighteenth century literature and a distinguished moment in Daniel Defoe’s literary career, as J. Paul Hunter notes, ‘the celebratory pillory poem represents one of Defoe’s most triumphant public moments; there is no other place in Defoe’s writing that shows him so fully and authentically displaying and explaining himself for his attitudes and public function or so genuinely joyous’ (Cambridge companion to Daniel Defoe, Hunter, 229).

The Pillorying of John Shebbeare and the Pillory as a Medium of Satire in Charles Churchill’s The Author:

Figure 1.3

Le Docteur Shebbeare au Pilori, Anon. An 1882 illustration of the pillorying of Dr. John Shebbeare taken from Le Magasin Pittoresque, a French magazine devoted to literature and politics. The illustration makes the error of depicting what is strictly a whipping post, however the historical accounts of the event clarify the pillory was the device used. The uncanny inclusion of the man holding an umbrella for Shebbeare and Shebbeare's upright posture concur with historical accounts(The European Magazine, and London Review: Volume 14, 84-86).

This was not the only notable instance of a figure of literary satire being pilloried and hijacking the event to convert it from one of public indignation into a spectacle of celebration, transforming the punishment into a satirical podium. In a similar dynamic of being sentenced to the pillory for a pamphlet in which he satirised the house of Hanover, satirist John Shebbeare was met with cheering crowds rather than the pillory’s archetypal ravenous mob. Shebbeare was permitted to stand upright between the upper and lower boards of the pillory by under-sheriff Arthur Beardmore, a Whig friend. Given the difficulty Shebbeare faced in keeping his hair dry whilst pilloried, Beardmore even went to the trouble of affording Shebbeare the luxury of his very own umbrella holder (who was a gallant Irishman, incidentally). (The European Magazine, and London Review: Volume 14, 84-86).

Figure 1.4

Excerpt from Charles Churchill's The Author, mentioning the pillorying of Dr. John Shebbeare.

Excerpt from Charles Churchill's The Author mentioning the pillorying of John Shebbeare:

This event, like its precedent, inspired further satirical literature. Rather than writing his own satirical retort to the sentencing, Shebbeare’s preformative satire is immortalised in the words of satirist Charles Churchill in his poem The Author, in which the event is mentioned as an act ‘To make most glaring contraries unite, And prove beyond dispute that black is white; To make firm Honour tamely league with Shame, Make Vice and Virtue differ but in name’ (Churchill, 15). As with Defoe’s hymn, the pillory’s conventional status as a tool of humiliation is turned on its head to project it as an ‘honour’ and ‘virtue’ to those unjustly sentenced to it. The Tory establishment are presented as having baseless morals, pillorying those worthy of reverence and making the pillory a reverent accolade in the process, resulting in the obscuring of the tenets justice.

Figure 1.5

Burke, Edmund's article entitled 'On the Punishment of the Pillory' 

This mention in Churchill’s poem and the event that spawned it resonated with author and political theorist Edmund Burke. Burke was morally opposed to the pillory, a position made much ahead of his time in parliament. Along with the case of two men convicted of attempted sodomy being murdered by the crowd during their pillorying, he cited Shebbeare’s case and quoted a passage from The Author to argue that the pillory made a mockery of the law by enabling the possibility of either an outpouring of public reverence or a death sentence depending on the reaction of the mob (with neither possibility being the intention of the sentence). Put in his words ‘while they are considered under the head of misdeameanours, do not, in the name of law and humanity, suffer them to be murdered… the punishment is altered from what the law intends it, and where it is for crimes, of which the populace hardly understand the meaning, or are of a popular nature, the culprit is in one instance very little taken notice of, and in the other he is considered as standing in an honourable point of view – witness Shebbeare’s standing in the pillory.’ (Burke)

The Pillory's Relationship With Sexuality in William Hogarth's A Harlot's Progress

The Pillorying of Deviant Heterosexuality:

As Edmund Burke’s article made clear, the pillory a typical punishment in cases of sexual crimes. This connection received ample attention from writers and artists of the century who were transfixed by notable cases of criminals pilloried for sexual offences. The pilloried and the pillory feature prominently in A Harlot’s Progress between plates III and IV. Through Hogarth’s choice of shape and positioning, plate III’s circular items adorning Christianity, robbery, atheism and witchcraft inside the Drury Lane brothel are transmuted into the four holes of a Bridewell prison pillory.

The utilisation of the pillory itself as a symbol of order and leveller of social deviance is enlarged in a more subtle yet sinister fashion by the opening plate’s depiction of Elizabeth ‘Mother’ Needham.  A notorious keeper of an upmarket Covent Garden bawdy house, Needham’s life came to a brutal end through the severe pelting she received on the pillory following her conviction for keeping a disorderly house. This occurred in the same year Hogarth produced the work’s original paintings, as Neil McWilliam notes ‘in April 1731, while Hogarth was hard at work on the Harlot, the noted procuress Elizabeth Needham was placed in the pillory in Park Place, where she suffered such severe physical abuse that she died four days later as a result of her injuries. (McWilliam)

Four circular objects line the wall on the left-hand edge of plate III. Proceeding from left to right, these are the saint’s medallion (representing Christianity) to the left of the top of the chair, the circular rimmed portraits of Moll’s idols, highwayman captain MacHeath (representing robbery) of Gaye’s Beggar’s Opera and notorious atheist Dr Sacereval (representing atheism), and a witch’s hat (representing witchcraft) hung on the wall above the bed. These four unevenly sized and spaced circular objects running along the left-hand wall in plate III are replaced by the evenly sized and spaced holes of the pillory which line the left-hand wall of Bridewell prison on the left edge of plate IV. The holes incidentally correspond in size to the saint’s medallion of the previous plate. This indicates a religious reckoning and divine levelling of the brothel and Mother Needham’s sexual excess through the transformation of four variously sized circular shapes adorning religion, criminality, atheism and witchcraft into four pillory holes of uniform size positioned in the same region of each plate.

In plate IV, two of the holes now adorn emptiness whilst the other two adorn the human suffering and entrapment of the pilloried convict. Their even spacing conveys a levelling of human and superhuman attempts to defy moral doctrine surrounding sexuality. What were circles honouring sexual deviance, witchcraft, theft, and atheism are now corralled within the perimeter of the pillory rings. The confinement of the man’s wrists may also allude to imprisoning captivity of sexual instinct and the folly Hogarth sees it as resulting in. The religious reckoning of the pillory is further symbolised in that these eight shapes and the images and ideas that they adorn appear in similar horizontal positions in each plate, however their presence is elevated vertically in plate IV, indicating that these forces of vice and sin are brought closer to god by the judgement of the pillory.

Figure 2.1                                                                                          Figure 2.2

William Hogarth, A Harlot's Progress, Plate III                                   William Hogarth, A Harlot's Progress, Plate IV. The pillory appears

                                                                                                           on the top left of the plate.

The Role of Mother Needham’s Pillorying and in A Harlot's Progress:

Mother Needham makes her appearance in blatant fashion in plate I, procuring Moll into prostitution on the street. She is identified by a large syphilitic mole above her left eye, and another smaller black mark just below this. This seems to be her only appearance in the work. However, Hogarth leaves hints as to her presence or at the very least her influence within plates III and IV by imparting Needham’s physical features onto Moll’s servant and the Bridewell jailer’s wife. It is the connection made between these hints and the pillory in plate IV that is important in terms of how the pillory appears in the work as it serves to place the pillory as the shadow reflecting the arch vice that Needham embodies. Mother Needham’s mole and smaller the black mark beneath it appear above the left eye of the servant accompanying Moll in the bawdy house and prison in plates III and IV. Along with the items of witchcraft this servant is introduced alongside in plate III, this conveys a sense of supernatural transfiguration between plates III and IV’s servant and plate I’s Mother Needham.

This concept of transfiguration is further supported by how the servant’s and Mother Needham’s hair appear in these plates. Mother Needham’s hair appears in curly ringlets in plate I, the imprisoned servant’s hair is straight and tied back in plate IV. The servant’s hair is a hybrid of the two styles in the plate III bawdy house, oddly appearing in ringlets on the right side of her head and straight and tied back on the left. This liquidity of features is developed further to encompass the jailer’s wife stood with her back to the pilloried convict in plate IV. In the depiction of Bridewell, the servant’s dual hairstyles witnessed in plate III reappear on opposing sides of the plate just as they appeared on opposing sides of the servant’s head in plate III, with the Needham-like curly hair reappearing on the head of the jailer’s wife and disappearing from the servant’s head. The servant in plates III and IV and the jailer’s wife in plate IV are each imparted with Needham’s features. The flat-nosed servant appears with Needham’s curly hair in plate III and shares her syphilitic marks in either plate, and the jailer’s wife dawns Needham’s hooked nose and curly hair in plate IV.

Figure 2.3

Elizabeth 'Mother' Needham procures Moll into prostitution. Needham was pilloried and died from the injuries she sustained from the experience four days later whilst Hogarth was at work on A Harlot's Progress. She was convicted for keeping a disorderly house.

In relation to the pillory, the importance of transfiguration between the three expressed by a commonality of physical features is crystallised when the invisibility of mother Needham’s right eye in the opening print, plate III’s items of witchcraft and influential Greek witch mythology are considered. The connection between these elements culminates in an embodiment of Needham being reflected by the shadow of the pillory in plate IV. In ancient Greek mythology, the Graeae were three witches who shared one eye (Roman and Roman, 181). In plate I, Mother Needham’s face is turned away, making her right eye invisible. The servant’s right eye is shut in plate III and the jailer’s wife’s right eye is closed in a jovial wink in plate IV, concurring with the myth of a single shared eye among three witches invoked by the items of witchcraft present in plate III.

This link is important in understanding how the pillory appears in the work as it culminated in Needham as represented by the body of the jailer’s wife being mirrored by the body of the pilloried convict behind her, with the arms rifling through Moll’s clothing suggesting theft and sexual undress being reflected by the pilloried arms on the convict behind her. As well as the figurative levelling of deviant social forces witnessed in the transgression of circular shapes between plates III and IV, the pillory forms the shadow of Mother Needham as she is figuratively embodied in the form of the jailer’s wife through the Hogarth’s adaptation of Greek witchcraft mythology. This expresses her fatal pillorying as judgement for her role as accomplice of the jailer in condemning young women to Bridewell as well as the message that despite seemingly supernatural powers (she evaded punishment for years before being caught.) Needham ultimately stands as a reflection of the pillory that killed her and exemplifies its inscription ‘Better to work Than stand thus’ (Hogarth).