One wretched delinquent was gratuitously framed in oak, his head being thrust through a hole cut in one end
"One wretched delinquent was gratuitously framed in oak, his head being thrust through a hole cut in one end of the barrel, and the poor fellow loafed about in the most disconsolate manner, looking for all the world like a half-hatched chicken." In the 16th century, the powers that be in England came up with a creative punishment for public intoxication: the Drunkard's Cloak. Possibly the brainchild of King James I, who allegedly liked coming up with unique punishments to fit different crimes, the Drunkard's Cloak involved sticking a drunk in a barrel with holes for their head and arms and then parading them around town, in the hopes that the humiliation would change their ways. But while the Drunkard's Cloak may have turned some drinkers into teetotalers, it eventually fell out of fashion Originating in 16th-century England, the Drunkard's Cloak was a public punishment for drunkenness that involved putting an empty barrel over the guilty party's torso, w...