The law of most colonies during the Revolutionary era prescribed a mandatory sentence of death by hanging for a number of serious offenses: murder, arson, rape, robbery, burglary, sodomy, piracy and treason. A judge could sentence a convict to hanging for lesser crimes at the judge's own discretion. Hangings usually took place in a public square near the center of town. In an ideal hanging, the jolt of the condemned man or woman's fall snapped the neck, resulting in instant death, but hangings often resulted in prolonged death by strangulation.
Stocks were a comparatively mild form of corporal punishment, the purpose being public humiliation rather than inflicting physical pain or suffering. This simple device consisted of two boards connected by a hinge with two holes cut at shoulder width. The offender sat on the ground in a public place with his ankles locked in the stocks for a prescribed period of time. Custom encouraged passers-by to shower the offender with insults, rotten eggs and vegetables, mud, dirt, fecal matter and urine.
Similar in design and concept to the stocks, the pillory stood on a raised platform. The convicted person sat with head and wrists held uncomfortably in place between two hinged boards. More severe forms of corporal punishment often accompanied a pillory sentence. A repeat offender might be lashed, branded or have ears nailed to the boards. Stones hurled by overzealous townsfolk occasionally were fatal.
Though it was never a court-ordered legal sentence, rebellious colonists employed tar and feathers to torture, intimidate and humiliate British magistrates, tax collectors and Tory loyalists. An angry mob of patriots would seize the victim of their ire and pour boiling hot pitch over his body, then cover him in a pillow's worth of feathers. The tarred and feathered government official or loyalist was then paraded through the town. Tarring and feathering worked so well as an intimidation tactic that when the infamous Stamp Act went into effect on November 1, 1765, no British tax collectors would enforce it.