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Private Passions and Public Penance: Popular Shaming Rituals in Pre-Modern Britain

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Cultures of Shame

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Abstract

Throughout history, humiliation has always functioned as the essence of punishment. In the ‘official’ legal sphere during the early modern period and beyond, shaming mechanisms were used in abundance to penalise offenders. In particular we should call to mind instances of the gallows march and dying speech, the branding of petty criminals, the use of the pillory, or the whipping of convicts at appointed stations through a given community.1 All of these judicial-based punishments involved the spectacle of public shame in order to render the criminal penitent, to deter any like-minded contemporaries from criminal activity, and, of course, to reinforce the power of the judicial authorities of the day.

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Notes

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of History, Oxford Brookes University, UK

    David Nash (Professor of History)

  2. Oxford Brookes University, UK

    Anne-Marie Kilday (Assistant Dean (Teaching and Learning) and Principal Lecturer in History)

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  1. David Nash
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© 2010 David Nash and Anne-Marie Kilday

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Nash, D., Kilday, AM. (2010). Private Passions and Public Penance: Popular Shaming Rituals in Pre-Modern Britain. In: Cultures of Shame. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230309098_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230309098_2

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-35794-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-0-230-30909-8

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