pillories and stocks as prisons
What is a church without a pillar to flog insubordinates? What is a town market without a show?
Prisons has never been the same but they hardly differentiate in treatment – privileged part of the society showing others their disregard and indifference, often treating them as slaves and their property, and calling it justice. Whether these tools served to bring justice or to humiliate the opponents or any other political purposes, they are now lest mostly as beauty spots in towns, meeting points, landmarks or even serve as community hubs where everyone meets and spend their day out.
Some were small wooden structures, other were stone pillars and many of these had, at the top, a small house-shaped gatehouse, made of iron bars, where criminals were exposed to public shame. In some towns, the prisoners were tied to the iron rings and flogged or maimed, depending on the seriousness of the offense, the social status/class of the convict and the customs of the time or who the ruler was.
Names varied in different languages across Europe – it could have been pranger, pręgierz, picota, rollo, gogna, pelourinho, schandpaal, pillory; or fessel, cepo, dyby, kuna, tronco and stocks.
Beware –public shaming of your Cims “(…) can result in negative psychological effects and devastating consequences, regardless of the punishment being justifiable or not. It could cause depression, suicidal thoughts and other severe mental problems. The humiliated individuals may develop a variety of symptoms including apathy, paranoia, anxiety, PTSD, or others. The rage and fury may arise in the persecuted individual, themselves lashing out against innocent victims, as they seek revenge or as a means of release” – therefore this form of “justice” has never been successful and never worked.
So don’t overuse it or your justice system may cause more traffic on roads with only one road lane being used and clogged up, while other lanes being left empty.
Regardless this, may I present you this small set of 10 pillories and stocks – all for more fun and variation in your beautiful cities – this one serves as prisons with stats as below. Also included explanation to their names – taken from “Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue” (1811), which was based on an earlier book by Francis Grose, English antiquary, draughtsman, and lexicographer.
These have very short sentence length – of 1 week – in reality people spent few hours up to a day in a pillory. I couldn’t go lower than 1 game week, so instead I have increased jail capacity from 1 or 2 people (or 4 in some cases) to an average weekly amount convicts (plus some arbitrary number on top of it).
There is also a set of these made as:
– parks
– and props (coming soon)
All footprint – less than 1×1
Stats – click on the picture below for larger image:
pillories and stocks as prisons by macluk
