Stocks are feet restraining devices that were used as a form of corporal punishment and public humiliation. The use of stocks is seen as early as Ancient Greece, where they are described as being in use in Solon's law code. The law describing its use is cited by the orator Lysias: "'He shall have his or her foot confined in the stocks for five days, if the court shall make such addition to the sentence.' The 'stocks' there mentioned, Theomnestus, are what we now call 'confinement in the wood'".
Village stocks in Bramhall, England.
The south prospect of the High Cross in Bristol (1728)
The Stocks at Belstone in Dartmoor, a Grade II listed monument.
Stocks in Keevil, Wiltshire.
Public humiliation or public shaming is a form of punishment whose main feature is dishonoring or disgracing a person, usually an offender or a prisoner, especially in a public place. It was regularly used as a form of judicially sanctioned punishment in previous centuries, and is still practiced by different means in the modern era.
South Korean gang leader Lee Jung-jae being shame-paraded by Park Chung Hee's military regime (1961).
Pillories were a common form of punishment.
Paris, 1944: French women accused of collaboration with Nazis had their heads shaved and were paraded through the streets barefoot.
Public foot whipping in Iran
