Pillory

What is a pillory?

A pillory clamps the neck and wrists between two wooden planks, so you stand fixed and bent forward and can no longer ward anything off. In Dutch play spaces the same piece is also called schandpaal. It is one of the few pieces of dungeon furniture built directly from a real punishment.

What it looks like and how it feels

Two planks on a post, with three holes between them. The Dutch encyclopedia describes the classic build exactly like that: the two outer holes are the size of a wrist, the middle one the size of a neck. The top plank hinges open and locks shut.

Once it is closed, the rest of your body no longer plays a part. Not standing up straight, not shielding your face, not seeing who is behind you. This is bondage made of wood: there is nothing to pull on and nothing to wriggle out of.

The bill comes through the back and neck. Standing bent forward is a matter of minutes: the shoulders start to burn and the wrists go numb if the edges are sharp. There is more about that posture at predicament bondage and one bar prison.

Where it comes from

From a beam that criminals were chained to, and that is older than the word.

The Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands records bloc in that sense as early as between 1276 and 1300. The word kaak for the scaffold on which criminals were punished appears in 1363 in a text about “opten kaec staen ende den steen draghen”. That is where the Dutch expression “iets aan de kaak stellen”, to expose something publicly, comes from.

Schandpaal is by contrast a latecomer: the Afrikaans etymological dictionary dates the Dutch word to 1848 and describes it as a post with a wooden frame with holes for head and hands. Six years later, in 1854, the punishment was officially abolished in the Netherlands. So the word had barely settled in when the thing itself disappeared.

What I see myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years active in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. Of all the pieces in a play space, this is the one women look at longest before they say anything.

It comes down to the shape. A cross invites you in, a bench is just furniture, but a pillory stands there for an audience. Anyone who goes into it chooses to be stuck and to be watched, even when there is no one else in the room.

In practice it is less romantic than it looks. Five minutes is long, and it is almost always a piece for a short while, with something else alongside it. If you want to feel it once, it is part of what I can set up during a BDSM date.

What you can do yourself

• Agree on a time before it closes, and keep it shorter than you think you need.
• Check the edges of the holes. Rough or sharp edges at the wrists are what you still feel the next day.
• Stay present. Someone standing fixed and bent forward can catch nothing, not even herself.
• Arrange something she can stop with if talking gets hard: a key in the hand, a safeword or a sound.
• Check that the lock opens with one hand. If it does not, the piece should not be used.

Sources

• Blok and kaak 2. Etymologiebank (Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal), with the entries from M. Philippa, F. Debrabandere, A. Quak, T. Schoonheim & N. van der Sijs, Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands, 2003–2009. Give the Middle Dutch attestation of bloc as “a beam to which criminals were chained” between 1276 and 1300, and of kaeck as “scaffold, raised platform on which criminals were punished” in 1363, with the quotation “opten kaec staen ende den steen draghen”.
• Schandpaal. Etymologiebank, with the entry from G.J. van Wyk, Etimologiewoordeboek van Afrikaans, Supplement, Stellenbosch 2007. Gives the dating of the Dutch schandpaal to 1848 and the description as a post with a wooden frame with holes for head and hands, in which criminals were once locked, formed from schand (shame) and paal (post) because the convict was displayed in public to his shame.
• Schandpaal. Dutch-language Wikipedia; the article Schandblok redirects here. Gives the build of the usual pillory as two planks on a post with three holes between them, the two outer ones the size of a wrist and the middle one the size of the neck, the other Dutch names gerechtspaal, geselpaal and kaak, the origin of the expression “iets aan de kaak stellen”, and the official abolition of the punishment in the Netherlands in 1854. On Wikidata this article is tied to the entity Q241212, but that carries the English label whipping post, a different object; the sameAs of this page therefore points to Q10682443, pillory, whose description does match the block with holes for neck and wrists.

Related terms

• Dungeon. The room where this piece almost always stands.
• Cross and St Andrew’s cross. The piece next to it, which spreads you open instead of folding you double.
• Predicament bondage. Why a posture itself can already be the punishment.
• One bar prison. The same bent-forward stance, but with rope.
• Cage. Confinement without anything clamping.
• Human furniture. The reverse: a person as furniture instead of a person in furniture.
• Position training. Learning the same positions without wood around them.
• Public play. The being-watched this piece is all about.
• Bondage. The broader category, with the difference between rope and wood.