Shame as a disciplinary weapon constituted a crucial part of premodern British penal regime.But in contrast to the substantial studies of capital punishment,shaming penalties remains relatively unexplored by historians.This article fills this gap by exploring some of the very basic,but rather neglected questions about the nature,mechanism,and problems of shaming punishments in early modern Britain.It argues that the use of shame was not random;behind it was an often unspoken but shared idea that shaming punishments should direct at offences which were customarily deemed“shameful”.Shameful was not just a moral judgement;it represented a disapproving emotion towards the offender,and a moral emotion that the convict and audience were expected to have for the purposes of reformation and deterrence.However,from the eighteenth century,the growing infl iction of shame on offenders whose transgressions were not commonly deemed shameful degraded public shaming into a violent,chaotic,and counter-productive exercise unable to evoke or inculcate the moral sense of shame.These problems made shame a subject of debate among legal writers,who criticized the excessive use of shaming techniques,but continually recognized the importance of shame as a virtuous emotion and an important penal strategy.
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