Old England: A Pictorial Museum (page 46/52)

1731.—Gray’s Inn Hall.

o [more...] [$]

1732.—Clock at Hampton Court.

The clock does not appear to be mentioned in the book apart from this picture. It was installed at Hampton Court Palace in 1540, but the astronomical (or astrological) parts were lost in the early nineteenth century (both the mechanism and the face); although they were later found and reinstalled, this plate shows the clock without them in the early [...] [more...] [$]

1733.—The Whirligig

A cage for punishemt: the offender was put inside and then the cage was spun round rapidly, often for a long time (perhaps all day). This would make the victim sick or even unconscious. In the mean-time [...] [more...] [$]

1734.—Man and Woman in Stocks.

“A stockes to staye sure and safely detayne
Lazy, lewd leu[?]terers that lawes do offend.”(Harman’s ‘Caveat,’ &c.)

“The stocks are still, we believe, occasionally used [1845], though the sooner they too become obsolete the better.” (Vol II p. 119)

Stocks are a device to secure a person at the ankles, so that their feet stick through the holes and connot be removed until the stocks are unfastened. People would be fastened in the stocks for hours or days at a time, and held up to public ridicule. It was not uncommon for bystanders to throw things at the people in the stocks, and if the things they threw [more...] [$]

1735.—The Brank

“Scolds had their heads inclosed [sic] in a sugarloaf-shapred cap, made of iron hooping, with a cross at the top, and a flat piece of iron projecting inwards, that was laid upon the tongue; a string was attached behind, and by that the scold was led through the streets. The Brank (Fig. 1735), as this invention was named, seems to have been in common use, with minor modificaitons of form. Trifling offences were sometimes punished by the Whirligig (Fig. 1733), a round wooden cage turning on a pivot; the culprit being enclosed, and whirled around with such velocity [more...] [$]

1736.—Genings and Blunt

Nicholas Blunt was a Counterfeit Crank; that is, he pretended to be a sick person who went by the name of Nicholas Genings. The man pictured here (in and out of disguise) was caught, and “whip’t at a cart’s tail” through London. The account of ‘Caveat, or Warning for Common Cursetors, vulgarly called Vagabonds’ by Harman, quoted by the [...] [more...] [$]

1737.—Portraits of Poets At the time of Shakespeare

A montage of eight portraits of famous sixteenth-century men who were poets. The portraits have individual oval frames and sometimes oxtangonal inner frames, and there are vines and perhaps acanthus leaves around the whoe ghastly thing. The [...] [more...] [$]

1787.—Hunting.

Men hunting deer with dogs and horses. In the background a church steeple, reminding us that this is supposed to be a typical country scene. [$]