Elizabethan England

Bloody Painful: Crime and Punishment

in Elizabethan England

This article’s purpose is to express the danger of breaking the law in England. Most of the punishments of our time are deemed cruel and unusual. The death penalty can no longer be enacted in cases of theft or highway robbery. The following paragraphs will describe the various instruments of punishment (torture) of the period.

One out of the ordinary punishment of this era is the drunkard's cloak. It is a punishment for public drunkenness; the name of it is somewhat misleading. The flaw in the name comes from the fact that the cloak is less a cloak and more a barrel. The drunk was forced to don a barrel and wander through town while the villagers jeer at him. Holes were cut in the barrel for the person's hands and head, causing it to become like a heavy, awkward shirt.

Another punishment is the brank, also known as the bride's scold. The brank is a punishment enacted on women who gossiped or spoke too freely. It was a large iron framework placed on the head of the offender, forming a type of cage. There was a metal strip on the brank that fit into the mouth and is either sharpened to a point or covered with spikes so that any movement of the tongue was certain to cause severe injuries to the mouth. The woman was then led by a city official through the streets of town by a chain, then usually tied to a whipping post or pillory to stand in view of the cruel and verbally abusive public.

Yet another punishment for criminals is the pillory. The pillory is a wooden post with a wooden block on top with holes in it for the person's hands and head to be placed in. The heads and hands were then locked into place while the person was forced to stand in public display for the decided sentence. In some cases the pillory was combined with a whipping post and stocks to make a one stop, public punishment device.

Also among the list of Elizabethan punishment methods is the stocks. The stocks were similar to the pillory in that a part of the body was locked between two slabs of wood, but in the case of the stocks the feet were locked in the device instead of the hands and feet. The stocks were a proposed method of punishment for drunkenness. The offender will be fined to five shillings or six hours in the stocks. The stocks are often used as a method of holding a criminal until a more severe sentence can be ...

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...ey dyed their hair blonde, which was the favorite hue. Women spent whole days sitting in the sun because they believed that the sun added a golden glint. Women who bleached their hair dried it from the terrace tops of their houses. When dying their hair, women wore hats without the crowns and with a brim, over which the hair was spread. The brim protected the wearer from the sun. The women also wore quantities of false hair, which was usually made from peasants' hair or formed by white and yellow silk. All of these things women did to their hair were hotly condemned, and some women were denounced for "ungodly exploitation" of themselves.

The women wear many accessories in their hair. The most popular of all accessories is the hair net. Women wear thread nets of silk, but poor women who also want to keep up fashion wear nets made of crepe. Sometimes hair is worn loose, filling in the pouch-like bag. The nets are then decorated with gold trimmings and jewels. Hairpins and hair combs are added to the net to give the hair a better look. Pointed hats are sometimes worn over the hair nets to emphasize the look.