Preindustrial cities placed public torture in their busiest sectors for audiences

Evidence

To a modern human, the most distasteful of the preindustrial city’s public activities would perhaps be the punishments and executions. The stocks, the pillory, and the whipping post were all standard urban features. Most often located in the city’s busiest sector, their associated activities were expected to attract an appreciative audience. Colonial Boston had three well-patronized whipping posts, and whipping was one of the more popular spectator sports in America at the time (Miller, 1966:256). Public punishment was not, however, limited to the pain of the lash or the indignity of the stocks and pillory. Sjoberg reports that in “the medieval city of Prato, thieves and prostitutes were birched naked through the streets” (1960:248). — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 179

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Urbanization drove executions out of public view into prisons — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 1663