kaa...
The Shoulder Strap

ENTERTAINMENT FOR

THE WHOLE FAMILY

Right on the Beach
*

SHADY REST HOTEL
Modern Coffee Shop

—ROOMS AND CABINS—

The Best Boats, Guides and Tackle Are All
Available to the Public at Our Boat House

Vancouver Island Coach Lines Depot

*

QUALICUM BEACH
JERRY KINKADE

VL

VILLAGE TOGGERY

Ladies’, Men’s, Children’s
Ready-to-Wear

Yard Goods - Wool - Household Effects
QUALITY AND VALUE
Qualicum Beach B.C.
Phone 350
Corfield Motors Limited
Sales -:- Service

Ford — Monarch Cars

Courtenay B.C.

COURTENAY CABS LTD.
— CALL 75 —

Radio Dispatched Cabs

Charter and Sightseeing Tours
Arranged

24-Hour Service Fully Insured

STOP...
RIVERSIDE

HOTEL

Courtenay

B.C.

Soe Hitchen ...
FURNITURE

“Your Satisfaction Is Our Success”
TELEPHONE 134 COURTENAY, B.C.

———— SS

TWENTY-FOURTH EDITION

THEY WERE CAREFUL IN THOSE DAYS
20} Se

* By W.B. W. WOODWARD x

OR MOST OF US, law-enforce-
F ment is a highly impersonal mat-

ter. We know that things do
happen to people caught in the com-
mission of various anti-social perform-
ances, and leave it at that. The whole
subject is withdrawn from everyday
life. We have no collective memory of
any other condition, and our country
holds no reminder of any.

Visitors to Old England, though,
can quickly make the acquaintance of
many relics of another day. Innumer-
able villages retain the stocks in

which petty malefactors repented
their misdeeds at leisure.
Various picturesque touches en-

livened the proceedings. For instance,
a rotten fish dangling around the
culprit’s neck indicated the nature of
his crime. Mischievous small boys and
vendors of decayed vegetables and
over-ripe eggs naturally collected in
his vicinity. Be it noted, too, that the
stocks usually stood in some very ex-
posed position, with no protection
whatever against sun, rain, or snow.
An occasional unoccupied gallows-
tree adorns some spot once frequented
by highwaymen. It isn’t on record that
these erections ever deterred the crim-
inally-disposed, but they were a great
comfort to the general public. No
man had really arrived until he ob-
tained a licence to both fortify his
house and erect a gollows. Returning
travelers regarded them in somewhat
the same way that a present-day Eng-
lishman views pubs and cinemas, or
the American his drug-stores and ice-
water. How often, too, do we employ
the expression “Gone West” without
ever thinking of Old London’s pro-
cession of the condemned Westward
from Newgate to the Tyburn Tree.
Ducking-chairs are comparatively

*

SMOKER’S
REVENGE

Ph. 170

INKSTER LUMBER
COMPANY

Samuel Bratt en-
joyed cigars but his
wife would not let
him smoke them in
the house. In his

will he has left her
£357,000 on condi-
tion that she smokes
five cigars a day.
Philadelphia court
has refused to up-
set the will.

* Courtenay

rare, but the odd one survives. Ford-
wich, near Banterbury, not only has
the stool but the actual crane by
which it was lowered into the river.
Both are picturesque adjuncts to the
old wooden courthouse.

The chair was commonly filled by
scolds who hen-pecked their husbands.
Breakers of the seventh command-
ment found themselves draped in a
white sheet and seated in the nearby
church. The time-worn “Penitents’
Bench” is only a curiosity, now, but
there it still remains before the altar.

The Westgate Towers of Canter-
bury hold another device for the
punishment of scolds and slanderers—
namely the scolds’ bridle. Once in-
stalled in this headgear, the culprit’s
tongue is immobilized by a cunningly-
constructed mouthpiece.

Various similar relics are scattered
about the country. Leominster, in
Herefordshire, prides itself on re-
taining the stool used in England’s last
official ducking—in 1809. Walton-on-
Thames has the oldest scold’s bridle,
dated 1663. At least one whipping-
post survives and, in the church at
Ashby-de-lazouche, is a finger-pillory.
An ingenious object is this last. In-
stead of the conventional large open-
ings, it has a series of slots of various
widths to accommodate different sizes
of fingers.

Other European countries  de-
veloped such contrivances to a much
higher degree. The customs of the
time knew little of humanitarianism,
but they had their own rude humor.
Popular entertainment and punish-
ment of crime frequently were the
same thing. The principle was ac-
cepted, and few were discouraged by
a change of roles from spectator to

star-performer. xk *

Yard & Factory: The Bridge, Courtenay

LUMBER DEALERS

Builders’ Supplies and Paints
Sash and Door Manufacturers

Page Forty-five