Stocks - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition stocks

Definition :

Stocks. Two boards each with semi-circular holes, fitting together within posts, and padlocked together so as to confine the legs of a person just above the feet, anciently maintained at a public spot in every parish as a mode of ignominious confinement for petty offences. For drunkenness it was prescribed in default of distress for a fine, by 21 Jac. 1, c. 7, s. 4 (not repealed until 1872 by the Licensing Act of that year), and similarly for Sunday trading by the Sunday Observance Act, 1677 (still unrepealed). See SUNDAY.

The punishment of the stocks began to be disused about the beginning of the nineteenth century, but has not been expressly abolished; and stocks have been preserved in some country villages and towns; e.g., at Woodeaton in Oxfordshire and in the Town Hall of Much Wenlock in Shropshire.