Drunkards were severely punished and were set in the stocks and whipped. On September 3, 1633, in Boston one Robert Coles was "fined ten shillings and enjoined to stand with a white sheet of paper on his back, whereon _Drunkard_ shall be written in great lynes, and to stand therewith soe long as the court find meet, for abusing himself shamefully with drinke." Robert Coles for "drunkenness by him committed at Rocksbury shall be disfranchised, weare about his neck, and so to hang upon his outward garment a D made of redd cloth & sett upon white; to continue this for a yeare, & not to have it off any time hee comes among company, under the penalty of one shilling for the first offense, and five pounds for the second, and afterwards to be punished by the Court as they think meet: _also he is to weare the D outwards_." Lists of names of common drunkards were given to landlords in some towns, and landlords were warned not to sell liquor to them. Licenses were removed and fines imposed on those who did not heed the warning. The tithing man, that most bumptious public functionary of colonial times, was at first the official appointed to spy specially on the ordinaries. He inspected these houses, made complaints of any disorders he discovered, and gave into the constable the names of idle drinkers and gamers. He warned the keepers of public houses to sell no more liquor to any whom he fancied had been tippling too freely. John Josslyn, an English visitor in Boston in 1663, complained bitterly thus: "At houses of entertainment into which a stranger went, he was presently followed by one appointed to that office, who would thrust himself into the company uninvited, and if he called for more drink than the officer thought in his judgment he could soberly bear away, he would presently countermand it, and appoint the proportion, beyond which he could not get one drop." The prisons found little occupation as compared with the pillory and the whipping post. The latter was the common corrector of drunkenness. We have an amusing description of what constitutes drunkenness, from Colonel Dodberry: "Now for to know a drunken man the better, the Scriptures describes them to stagger and reel to and fro; and so when the same legs which carry a man into the house can not bring him out again, it is a sufficient sign of drunkenness."