An interesting historical article about the whipping post that used to stand in Tiverton, Rhode Island:

The next time you’re having that coffee chip ice cream cone at Gray’s Ice Cream in Tiverton, sit on the stone wall and ponder the unlucky fate met by several local women at the very same corner of the intersection. That was the location of the town’s whipping post, a rough-hewn thin granite obelisk dedicated to the moral reform of the area’s female population. In colonial times women could be whipped or publicly shamed for the same crime for which a man might receive only a fine.

One local legend from the early nineteenth century describes an incident in which “A woman, her back bared, was tied to the whipping post.” The local Governor, a man named Wilbour, read out the sentence: “The condemned prisoner shall be tied to an upright post and flogged according to the sentence of the Court.” The watching crowd of women became rebellious. After hearing their shouts, he added

“But ladies, if it happened that there should be no ‘upright post,’ then how could the law be carried out?” Supposedly, a hundred “willing hands” united in dislodging the offending stone and “since then no women have been publicly flogged in Rhode Island.”

Unfortunately, the whipping post is no longer in situ. There are theories as to why:

“According to the local rumors, the remedy of the whipping post was applied rather liberally to some of the best “old families” in town, some of whom may not wish to bring such sordid details back to light. Maybe this accounts for the stone’s strange disappearance…”

Now, “apparently the identity of the person who took the post in 1957 is an open secret among many of the older residents of Tiverton, but no one’s talking.” If you happen to have it in your dungeon, could you give it back?