Stocks.—­Putting people in the stocks appears to have been a very ancient mode of punishment, for the Bible tells us that Jeremiah, the prophet, was put in the stocks by Pashur, and the gaoler who had charge of Paul and Silas at Philippi made fast their feet in a similar way.  Whether Shakespeare feared the stocks when he refused to go back to “drunken Bidford,” after sleeping off the effects of one carouse with the “Sipper’s Club” there, is not chronicled, but that the stocks were not unknown to him is evident by their being introduced on the stage in “King Lear.”  The Worcester Journal of Jan. 19, 1863, informs us that “this old mode of punishment was revived at Stratford-on-Avon, for drunkenness, and a passer-by asking a fellow who was doing penance how he liked it, the reply was—­’I beant the first mon as ever were in the stocks, so I don’t care a fardin about it.”  Stocks used to be kept at the Welsh Cross, as well as a pillory; and when the Corporation closed the old prison in High Street, Bordesley, they took over the stocks which formerly stood alongside the whipping-post, on the bank in front of the present G.W.R.  Station.  The last date of this punishment being inflicted in this town is 1844, when the stocks were in the yard of the Public Office in Moor Street.

Storms and Tempests.—­A great storm arose on Wednesday, November 24, 1703, which lasted three days, increasing in force.  The damage, all over the kingdom, was immense; and at no period of English history has it been equalled. 15,000 sheep were drowned in one part of Gloucestershire.  We have no record of the immediately local loss.—­In a storm on March 9, 1778, the windmill at Holloway Head was struck by lightning, the miller was hurt, and the sails shattered.—­January 1, 1779, there was a violent gale, which, while it wrecked over 300 vessels on our coasts did great damage as far inland as Birmingham—­Snowstorms were so heavy on January 23 and 24, 1814, that all communication between here and London was stopped for five days.—­There was a strong gale September 26, 1853, during which some damage was done to St. Mary’s Church, to the alarm of the congregation therein assembled.—­A very heavy storm occurred June 15, 1858, the day after the Queen’s visit, lasting for nearly three hours, during which time three inches of rain fell, one half in twenty minutes.—­Some property in Lombard Street was destroyed by lightning, June 23, 1861; and parts of Aston, Digbeth, and the Parade were flooded same time.—­There was a terrific thunderstorm, August 26, 1867; the rainfall being estimated at seventy-two tons per acre.—­During a heavy thunderstorm, June 17, 1875, the lightning set fire to a workshop in Great Charles Street:  killed a women in Deritend, and fourteen sheep and lambs at Small Heath.—­In a heavy gale, January 30, 1877, a chimney stack was blown down in Jennen’s Row, killing two men; and a wall was levelled in Harborne Road, on February 20, another poor fellow losing his