Spectacular Punishment and the Orchestration of Hate: The Pillory and Popular Morality in Eighteenth-Century England (From Hate Crime: The Global Politics of Polarization, P 177-220, 1998, Robert J. Kelly and Jess Maghan, eds. -- See NCJ-179424)

• NCJ Number: 179430
• Author(s): Antony E. Simpson
• Date Published: 1998
• Length: 44 pages
• Sale Source: Southern Illinois University Press
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Historical Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This essay examines the pillory, other punishments and popular morality in 18th-century England.

Abstract

England in the 1700's had a sophisticated legal system that enabled a small, dominant class to rule by using ritual to inspire fear and deference and by threatening awful public punishment for the most severe infractions. It was a transition between pre-modern, or repressive, and modern, or autonomous systems of law. The essay investigates the link between spectacular punishment and popular culture; the spectacle and secondary punishment; and the pillory -- spectacular punishment, community justice, popular values, and deaths in the pillory. The formal structure of the pillory channeled passionate feelings while subjecting those feelings to some social constraint. The legal system of 18th-century England demonstrated an advanced appreciation of the manipulation of hateful public feelings as a weapon of political power. Notes