The pillory is a device to humiliate, to shame human. The crowd would throw objects at the victim, such as rotten vegetables, dead animals or feces. Stones and other blunt objects were thrown as well, which could result in painful injuries or death.
Physical torture has somehow gone away in many countries, but similar mental torture is still the norm everywhere. On social media, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, newspapers and other places, they still put up people in the pillory. Human haven’t changed much or at all.
Daniel Defoe in the pillory, 1862 line engraving by James Charles Armytage after Eyre Crowe