Close to the cross
stand the stocks with massive ironwork, the criminals, as usual,
having been accustomed to sit on the lowest step of the cross, and on
the other side of the cross is the rogue's whipping-post, a stone
pillar about eight feet high, on the sides of which are hooks to which
the culprit was fastened. Between this and the cross stands another
useful feature of a Lancashire market-place, the fish stones, an
oblong raised slab for the display and sale of fish.
In several places we find that movable stocks were in use, which could
be brought out whenever occasion required. A set of these exists at
Garstang, Lancashire. The quotation already given from _King Lear,_
"Fetch forth the stocks," seems to imply that in Shakespeare's time
they were movable. Beverley stocks were movable, and in _Notes and
Queries_ we find an account of a mob at Shrewsbury dragging around the
town in the stocks an incorrigible rogue one Samuel Tisdale in the
year 1851.
The Rochdale stocks remain, but they are now in the churchyard, having
been removed from the place where the markets were formerly held at
Church Stile. When these kind of objects have once disappeared it is
rarely that they are ever restored. However, at West Derby this
unusual event has occurred, and five years ago the restoration was
made.
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