Pillory
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Pillory. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
an instrument of punishment introduced into the colonies from England. It consisted of two heavy boards fastened edge to edge by means of a hinge. Three holes, one for the neck and one on either side for a wrist, were cut in the adjacent edges. The two planks were fastened like a guideboard to an upright post standing usually on a platform. The holes were about five feet from the platform, at such a height that the head and hands could be placed through them and held firmly. The culprit on whom this ignominious punishment was inflicted was obliged to stand in this painful position during the will of the magistrate. As might be supposed, anyone condemned to the pillory might be also pelted with rotten eggs and mud and subjected to the jeers of the rabble. In the case of the punishment of a popular hero by an obnoxious magistrate the populace crowded round, sheltered the prisoner from the sun, and did everything possible to make him feel that he was the hero of the company. Even women were punished in the pillory. The pillory was once common throughout medieval Europe. Putting in the pillory was the usual punishment meted out to the users of false weights, common scolds, perjurers, ribalders, and writers of seditious articles. The stocks, the pillory, the whipping post and the ducking-stool are associated in history. The pillory was abolished in England in 1837. Offenders were set in the pillory in Prince Edward Island as late as 1860. See Stocks
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
formerly a common instrument of punishment for persons convicted of forestalling, use of unjust weights, perjury, forgery, libel, etc. It consisted of a frame of wood, erected on a pillar or stand, and furnished with movable boards, resembling those of the stocks, and holes through which the offender's head and hands were put. In this position he was exposed for a certain time to public view and insult. The use of the pillory was abolished in France in 1832, in England in 1837, and in the United States in 1839.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Both accounts describe the pillory as already dead, and it stayed dead: no Western legal system has restored it, and surviving pillories are museum pieces and village-green curiosities. The one point that needs correcting is Collier's 1921 claim that the pillory ended "in the United States in 1839" — that date applies to federal punishments, while Delaware kept the pillory on its books until 1905 and its whipping post, the pillory's companion in Aiton's list, until 1972, with the last flogging there in 1952. England's abolition in 1837, given correctly in both entries, came after a first Act of 1816 had already cut the punishment back to cases of perjury. What survives most vigorously is the word: to pillory someone now means only to hold them up to public scorn, a sense that has found new life in arguments about online shaming.
Written for this edition, 2026.