Drunkard's cloak

From 1655 Oliver Cromwell suppressed many of England's alehouses, particularly in Royalist areas, and the authorities made regular use of the cloak.

[4] An early description of the drunkard's cloak appears in Ralph Gardiner's England's Grievance Discovered, first published in 1655.

[5] A John Willis claimed to have travelled to Newcastle and seen men drove up and down the streets, with a great tub, or barrel, opened in the sides, with a hole in one end, to put through their heads, and to cover their shoulders and bodies, down to the small of their legs, and then close the same, called the new fashioned cloak, and so make them march to the view of all beholders; and this is their punishment for drunkards, or the like.

[6]Gardiner's account was reproduced in 1789 in John Brand's History of Newcastle-on-Tyne, accompanied by an early illustration of a drunkard's cloak.

[8] These occurrences, along with the observations of one 19th-century historian, who noted that no mention of the punishment was made in any local documentation, including the Newcastle Corporation accounts, prompted William Andrews to suppose in 1899 that the Drunkard's Cloak was a custom imported from the Continent, and that its use in England was confined to Newcastle.