Curious Punishments of Bygone Days

{{Short description|1896 book by Alice Morse Earle}}

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{{one source|date=December 2013}}

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Image:Drunkards_Cloak.jpg" - an illustration from Curious Punishments of Bygone Days]]

Curious Punishments of Bygone Days is a history book published in 1896. It was written by Alice Morse Earle and printed by Herbert S. Stone & Company. Earle was a historian of Colonial America, and she writes in her introduction:

In ransacking old court records, newspapers, diaries and letters for the historic foundation of the books which I have written on colonial history, I have found and noted much of interest that has not been used or referred to in any of those books. An accumulation of notes on old-time laws, punishments and penalties has evoked this volume.{{Cite web|title=The Project Gutenberg eBook of Curious Punishments of Bygone Days, by Alice Morse Earle.|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34005/34005-h/34005-h.htm|access-date=2021-06-25|website=www.gutenberg.org}}

As the title suggests, the subject of the chapters is various archaic punishments. Morse seems to make a distinction between stocks for the feet, in the Stocks chapter, and stocks for the head, described in the Pillory article- which itself clashes with the modern day understanding of a pillory as a whipping post.{{fact|date=December 2013}}