Punished for petty theft

Scene from EC's novel "Maragana Girl" - [link]

Earlier in Upper Danubia’s history, collaring was not the only way criminals were punished. Prior to the early 1900's, the Danubian police frequently used pillories to punish petty criminals whose crimes were not serious enough to warrant a formal sentence. The Danubian pillory was different from the ones used in England. Instead of restraining the offender’s head and hands, the Danubian version was designed to force the criminal to stand with his or her arms and legs spread, leaving their body completely exposed to passersby. The offender was stripped and restrained, usually for about 8 hours or so on Market Day.

In this picture a young woman accused of stealing fruit from an orchard was being punished in a provincial town. In Danubia it was legal for a hungry person to take a single piece of fruit from an orchard for immediate consumption. It was not legal to take anything more than that, and certainly not legal to take fruit out of an orchard to sell, which is what this prisoner was attempting to do. She was caught carrying fruit in a water bucket and the orchard owner claimed that it was not the first time he had seen her on his property with the bucket. Besides being naked, the young woman's braids were undone and her hair loosened. In traditional Danubian society, the worst humiliation a woman could be subjected to was having her hair loosened in public. Having her hair loosened was even worse than being stripped naked.

If a criminal was subjected to the pillory, usually he or she was not switched. However, the humiliation was considered just as bad or worse than wearing a collar. Normally a person subjected to the pillory was expected to perform public penance for several weeks following the punishment.

The major cities quit using pillories after World War I. However, many villages continued to use them until the introduction of electronic monitoring of collared criminals during the 1970’s. The last pillory sentence was given to a village shoplifter in 1978.

As foreign tourism became popular during the Dukov administration, interest in Danubian history, including pillories, renewed an interest in old judicial practices. Several towns frequented by tourists rebuilt their pillories, complete with the original chains and cuffs. Guides dressed in nineteenth century police uniforms explained the tradition to visitors.

Tourists could experience the pillory for themselves, by volunteering to get undressed and be restrained for 30 minutes. For many foreigners it was an intensely erotic experience to be chained naked and immobilized for a half an hour, completely exposed in a public location while crowds took their picture. Pillories became so popular with tourists that Danubian guidebooks always mentioned which towns had reconstructed pillories open to the public.