Noun-adjective reversal - was it ever in use in plain speech?
In some more or less archaic texts I found the order of noun and its adjective reversed at times, like:
I traveled through nights starless, and roads unmapped.
I wonder, is it a stylistic tool used only in poetic/artistic texts, or was it used in day-to-day speech or formal, but not poetic writing in the past?
I believe that adjectives have never been postposed in English, the only exceptions being those noted in the comments: titles and legal terms adapted from the French (court martial, major general, heir apparent) and adjectives and participles with their own postposed complements and adjuncts.
The mannerism is tolerable in some poetic registers, but otherwise has an artsiness that will make most readers cringe. Graves and Hodge, The Reader Over Your Shoulder, under ‘Principle P’† of ‘The Graces of Prose’, quote a passage from an article by Ivor Brown:
News comes of the death of a clown absolute . . . one of a dynasty adored . . . The clown absolute is quite a different person from the actor-droll.
G&H comment, ‘(Yes, quite a person different.)’
† ‘Even when the natural order of words is modified for the sake of emphasis, a sentence must not read unnaturally’
It looks like your question is about a noun being postpositively modified by an adjective or adjective phrase. (E.g. members [dissatisfied with the board's decision].) This is part of today's standard English -- as to how this usage was used in the past, you'll probably want others to provide you that info.
Here are some examples, w.r.t. today's standard English:
the only day suitable, years past, proof positive, matters financial, all things Irish
the people present, the cars involved, the students concerned, the city proper
the heir apparent, the body politic, the president elect, the devil incarnate, the poet laureate, a notary public
the house currently ablaze, all people now alive, the ones asleep
The above examples are borrowed from the 2002 reference grammar by Huddleston and Pullum et al., The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, pages 445-6.
EDITED: We use this type of construction often, but probably don't really realize that we do. For instance, "The only day suitable for us will be this coming Thursday."