Notes & Queries: Did the pillory deter criminals at the center ages? | personal record |

Can there be any research the medieval rehearse of placing wrongdoers inside stocks and tossing bad meals at them really worked as a discouraging factor to crime?

Placing folks in the pillory (the shares just bound your feet, the pillory the head and hands), an exercise that continued into about the belated eighteenth millennium, not becoming a gentle alternative, was actually an easy method of letting the public to pass judgment – and sentence – on transgressor. In the event that criminal activity wasn’t seen as a significant one anyone have only smooth veggie issue tossed at all of them, if the mob wanted to they can, and often performed, throw rocks and bricks, honestly injuring or eliminating the unpleasant captive. In
The Reverse regarding the Medal
, by that many meticulous of historical novelists
Patrick O’Brian
, Jack Aubrey is actually pilloried but escapes really serious damage when his shipmates turn up to stand shield around him. Anybody scanning this account could have undoubtedly that pillory was actually something you should be avoided without exceptions.

John French, Chepstow

Could there be any proof that any deterrent/punishment worked as prevention to a crime? I think it will be very hard to get reliable information for criminal activities maybe not dedicated.

suebian

Judicial abuse provides four main points: retribution (you harm all of us so weare going to damage you right back), safety (although we’re hurting you we’re safe), rehabilitation (becoming harmed may prevent you carrying it out once more) and deterrence (damaging chances are you’ll place other individuals off). The shares would primarily fulfill the first, have limited success using next, less nevertheless aided by the third additionally the last is debatable. But human instinct getting the goals, for many people, the very first, retribution, can be much because they worry to consider.

GentDirly

When we had been to create an enormous dam over the


Strait of Gibraltar


, would the Mediterranean dry out, or flooding?

The Mediterranean will be the rest for the Tethys water, which existed between the Indian and Atlantic seas between 20m and 14m years back. As Africa pushed north, the Mediterranean was actually (nevertheless is actually) compressed (the Alps were additionally produced by this technique). This Mediterranean ended up being, between around 6m and 4.5m years back, a massive sodium pond. Tectonic motions caused the remote body of water being increasingly saline, before evaporation triggered
near total drying out
.

Africa consistently go north (the Mediterranean will, in time, disappear as Africa “crunches” into European countries). Therefore a dam or any other tetonic uplift associated with closure over the strait of Gibraltar would result in a return from the sodium pond (even feedback with the mighty Nile would never compensate for evaporation).

The Atlantic bursting through strait after a 1.5m year absence must-have already been a mightily remarkable spectacle.

Paul Hancock, Ullapool, Wester Ross

Precisely what do partners who have been together a number of years talk about if they embark on trip collectively?

They speak about the long time they have been collectively. Obviously!

Emlvee

Where you can have lunch, followed by where you should have dinner.

f0stgameplayer

After 27 several years of marriage, we will discuss something through the suitable tempi when it comes down to symphonic andantes of Mozart and Haydn towards the condition regarding the dog’s intestine. We additionally spend lots of time maybe not speaking after all, away from material, perhaps not discomfiture: as Graves would put it, we “crown all of our really love with wreaths of myrtle”.

LadyEff

Did the Lone Ranger usually put on a mask?

How would we understand the Lone Ranger didn’t take his mask off whenever no body else had been around?

Robert Jackson, Dartington, Devon

I am not sure the reason why the Lone Ranger and William Tell show similar theme tune (N&Q, 4 Oct), but as a kid I became informed that an indication of music maturity had been playing the
William Tell overture
without screaming “Hi ho, Silver!”

Mur Cove, Millom, Cumbria

Any solutions?

My father, just who passed away 12 in years past, was actually a good trade unionist and an active person in the Communist party for half a century.Would MI5 have actually stored a file on him? If yes, could I find it?

Evelyn Mintrim, London NW2

Exactly what strengths perform trams have over busses?

Dennis Hawkins, Leominster

Why do many feminine Christian labels end up in “a”?

John Gavan, Berkhamsted