Crossroads and Characters

30. JOUGS OR JAIL.

This Police Station was erected next to the school in 1906; the previous station and gaol had been in a house on Perth Road. But neither of these ever had the fearsome reputation of an earlier Dunning gaol, a small house standing in what is now St. Serf's churchyard. Underneath it was a stone arched vault called the pit which served as a cell. On the outside wall were jougs, an instrument of punishment in which an iron collar attached by two chains to the wall was fixed around a culprit's neck and padlocked. Lord Rollo had the power to sentence merchants who short weighted customers to spend time in the jougs instead of gaol, and there the prisoner was 'spat upon and reviled' by all passers by. When that early gaol was demolished in 1875 the jougs were moved to outside the church wall.