This little tale comes from Gare Hill. In 1864 James Elliot, Francis Smith, Henry Wheeler and John Way were up in court for committing a breach of the peace.
From the evidence of a woman named Elliot and her son, it appeared that the defendants and many more locals had paraded through the village over a period of 3 nights with images designed to represent Mrs. Elliot’s daughter and a man named George Stone who, it was alleged, ‘broke the moral law’. In other words they had been caught in a compromising position before marriage to the strong disapproval of their fellows.
The errant pair got off lightly. “Skimmington Riding’ was a custom dating back many centuries, an activity that went by various names and took various forms but the object was always the same – to ridicule and cause embarrassment to someone who had offended the moral sensibilities of their community – to cause the public humiliation of the victim under the eyes of their neighbours. The custom is known from early medieval times mainly in the West Country and probably pre-dates less exciting forms of community punishment like the pillory or the stocks.
In this case George and his lady friend appeared only in effigy but in earlier times the miscreant could be set astride a long pole carried by two men while the villagers followed on behind laughing, shouting and jeering to the accompaniment of ‘rough music’ or the banging together of anything that came to hand from kitchen utensils, bells and whistles to makeshift instruments. In fact the word Skimmington comes from a large wooden ladle which often featured in domestic disputes!
Other variations of this jolly custom included being set astride a horse or donkey facing towards its tail and paraded through the streets, their “crimes” becoming the subject of mime, and theatrical performances along with a litany of obscenities and insults. Often the parade would finish at the house of the offender and could be applied equally to either sex, from nagging wives to errant husbands.
In this case the revellers were shown leniency being bound over to keep the peace in the sum of £5 and the practice pretty much died out with the Public Order Act of 1882.
Mick Davis & David Lassman
