Bilboes (always plural) were iron restraints placed on a person's ankles or wrists. They were used to restrain prisoners and slaves, and for public corporal punishment for men and women alike.
Bilboes consisted of a pair of "U"-shaped iron bars (shackles) with holes in the ends, through which a bolt was inserted. The bolt had a large knob on one end, and a slot in the other end into which a wedge was driven to secure the assembly. Bilboes were made in many sizes, ranging from large ones suitable for a large man's ankles, to ones small enough to fit children.[1]
Bilboes used as public punishment combined physical discomfort with social humiliation; they were popular in England and America in the colonial and early Revolutionary periods (such as in the Boston Bay colony) until they were superseded by the use of stocks. They were used in England to "punyssche transgressours ageynste ye Kindes Maiesties lawes". According to legend, the device was invented in Bilbao, Spain, and was imported into England by the ships of the Spanish Armada for use on prospective English prisoners. However, the Oxford English Dictionary notes that the term was used in English well before then. Bilboes appear occasionally in literature, including Hamlet (Act V, Scene 2: "Methought I lay worse than the mutinies in the bilboes") and the journals of Captain Cook.[2]
Bilboes were used to restrain slaves on slave ships. Components forming more than 80 bilboes have been recovered from the Henrietta Marie, an English slave ship that wrecked in the Florida Keys in 1700 after delivering slaves to Jamaica. Bilboes were also found in the Molasses Reef Wreck, a Spanish wreck in the Turks and Caicos Islands from very early in the 16th century, which may have been a slave ship hunting Lucayans in the Bahamas. Bilboes were used to fasten two slaves together, so that the 80 plus bilboes found on the Henrietta Marie would have restrained up to 160 slaves. Bilboes were usually not placed on every slave transported, nor were they left on for all of a voyage. Only the slaves that were strongest and presumably most likely to revolt or escape were kept in bilboes for all of a voyage.[3]