Curious Punishments of Bygone Days

In 1631, in June, this order was given by the General Court in Boston:

“That Philip Ratcliffe shall be whipped, have his eares cutt off, fined 40 pounds, and banished out of the limits of this jurisdiction, for uttering malicious and scandalous speeches against the Government.”

Governor Winthrop added to his account of this affair that Ratcliffe was “convict of most foul slanderous invectives against our government.” This episode and the execution of this sentence caused much reprehension and unfavorable comment in England, where, it would seem, whipping and ear-lopping were rife enough to be little noted. But the mote in our brother’s eye seemed very large when seen across the water. Anent it, in a letter written from London to the Governor’s son, I read: “I have heard divers complaints against the severity of your government, about cutting off the lunatick man’s ears and other grievances.”

In 1630 Henry Lynne of Boston was sentenced to be whipped. He wrote to England “against the government and execution of justice here,” and was again whipped and banished. Lying, swearing, taking false toll, perjury, selling rum to the Indians, all were punished by whipping.

Pious regard for the Sabbath was fiercely upheld by the support of the whipping-post. In 1643 Roger Scott, for “repeated sleeping on the Lord’s Day” and for striking the person who waked him from his godless slumber was sentenced to be severely whipped.

Women were not spared in public chastisement. “The gift of prophecy” was at once subdued in Boston by lashes, as was unwomanly carriage. On February 30, 1638, this sentence was rendered:

“Anne ux. Richard Walker being cast out of the church of Boston for intemperate drinking from one inn to another, and for light and wanton behavior, was the next day called before the governour and the treasurer, and convict by two witnesses, and was stripped naked one shoulder, and tied to the whipping-post, but her punishment was respited.”

Every year, every month, and in time every week, fresh whippings followed. No culprits were, however, to be beaten more than forty stripes as one sentence; and the Body of Liberties decreed that no “true gentleman or any man equall to a gentleman shall be punished with whipping unless his crime be very shameful and his course of life vitious and profligate.” In pursuance of this notion of the exemption of the aristocracy from bodily punishment, a Boston witness testified in one flagrant case, as a condonement of the offense, that the culprit “had been a soldier and was a gentleman and they must have their liberties,” and he urged letting the case default, and to “make no uprore” in the matter. The lines of social position were just as well defined in New England as in old England, else why was one Mr. Plaistowe, for fraudulently obtaining corn from the Indians, condemned as punishment to be called Josias instead of Mr. as heretofore? His servant, who assisted in the fraud, was whipped. A Maine man named Thomas Taylour for his undue familiarity shown in his “theeing and thouing” Captain Raynes was set in the stocks.

Slander and name-calling were punished by whipping. On April 1, 1634, John Lee “for calling Mr. Ludlowe false-heart knave, hard-heart knave, heavy ffriend shalbe whipt and fyned XIs.” Six months later he was again in hot water:

“John Lee shalbe whipt and fyned for speaking reproachfully of the Governor, saying hee was but a lawyer’s clerk, and what understanding hadd hee more than himselfe, also takeing the Court for makeing lawes to picke men’s purses, also for abusing a mayd of the Governor, pretending love in the way of marriage when himselfe professed hee intended none.”

In the latter clause of this count against John Lee doubtless lay the sting of his offenses. For Governor Winthrop was very solicitous of the ethics of love-making, and to deceive the affections of one of his fen-county English serving-lasses was to him without doubt a grave misdemeanor.

Those harmless and irresponsible creatures, young lovers, were menaced with the whip. Read this extract from the Plymouth Laws, dated 1638:

“Whereas divers persons unfit for marriage both in regard of their yeong yeares, as also in regarde of their weake estate, some practiseing the inveagling of men’s daughters and maids under gardians contrary to their parents and gardians likeing, and of maide servants, without the leave and likeing of their masters: It is therefore enacted by the Court that if any shall make a motion of marriage to any man’s daughter or mayde servant, not having first obtayned leave and consent of the parents or master soe to doe, shall be punished either by fine or corporall punishment, or both, at the discretions of the bench, and according to the nature of the offense.”

The New Haven Colony, equally severe on unlicensed lovemaking, specified the “inveagling,” whether done by “speech, writing, message, company-keeping, unnecessary familiarity, disorderly night meetings, sinfull dalliance, gifts or, (as a final blow to inventive lovers) in any other way.”

The New Haven magistrates had early given their word in favor of a whipping-post, in these terms:

“Stripes and whippings is a correction fit and proper in some cases where the offense is accompanied with childish or brutish folly, or rudeness, or with stubborn insolency or bestly cruelty, or with idle vagrancy, or for faults of like nature.”

In the “Pticuler” Court of Connecticut this entry appears. The “wounding” was of the spirit not of the body:

“May 12, 1668. Nicholas Wilton for wounding the wife of John Brooks, and Mary Wilton the wife of Nicholas Wilton, for contemptuous and reproachful terms by her put on one of the Assistants are adjudged she to be whipt 6 stripes upon the naked body next training day at Windsor and the said Nicholas is hereby disfranchised of his freedom in this Corporation, and to pay for the Horse and Man that came with him to the Court to-day, and for what damage he hath done to the said Brooks His wife, and sit in the stocks the same day his wife is to receive her punishment.”

In New York a whipping-post was set up on the strand, in front of the Stadt Huys, under Dutch rule, and sentences were many. A few examples of the punishment under the Dutch may be given. A sailmaker, rioting in drink around New Amsterdam cut one Van Brugh on the jaw. He was sentenced to be fastened to a stake, severely scourged and a gash made in his left cheek, and to be banished. To the honor of Vrouw Van Brugh let me add that she requested the court that these penalties should not be carried out, or at any rate done in a closed room. One Van ter Goes for treasonable words of great flagrancy was brought with a rope round his neck to a half-gallows, whipped, branded and banished. Roger Cornelisen for theft was scourged in public, while Herman Barenson, similarly accused was so loud in his cries for mercy that he was punished with a rod in a room. From a New York newspaper, dated 1712, I learn that one woman at the whipping-post “created much amusement by her resistance” – which statement throws a keen light on the cold-blooded and brutal indifference of the times to human suffering.

May 14, 1750, New York Gazette.

“Tuesday last one David Smith was convicted in the Mayor’s Court of Taking or stealing Goods off a Shop Window in this City, and was sentenced to be whipped at the Carts Tail round this Town and afterwards whipped at the Pillory which sentence was accordingly executed on him.”

In the same paper, date October 2, 1752, an account is given of the pillorying of a boy for picking pockets and the whipping of an Irishman for stealing deerskins. Another man was “whipt round the city” for stealing a barrel of flour. In January, 1761, four men for “petty larceny” were whipped at the cart-tail round New York.

In 1638 a whipping post was set up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, as a companion to the cage. For “speaking opprobriously,” and even for “suspitious speeches,” New Haven citizens were whipped at the “carts podex.”

Rhode Island even under the tolerant and gentle Roger Williams had no idle whip. “Larcenie,” drunkenness, perjury, were punished at the whipping-post. In Newport malefactors were whipped at the cart-tail until this century. Mr. Channing tells of seeing them fastened to the cart and being thus slowly led through the streets to a public spot where they were whipped on the naked back. Women were at that time whipped in the jail-yard with only spectators of their own sex.

In Plymouth women were whipped at the cart-tail, and the towns resounded with the blows dealt out to Quakers. In 1636, on a day in June, one Helin Billinton, was whipped in Plymouth for slander.

There was a whipping-post on Queen Street in Boston, another on the Common, another on State Street, and they were constantly in use in Boston in Revolutionary times. Samuel Breck wrote of the year 1771:

“The large whipping-post painted red stood conspicuously and prominently in the most public street in the town. It was placed in State Street directly under the windows of a great writing school which I frequented, and from there the scholars were indulged in the spectacle of all kinds of punishment suited to harden their hearts and brutalize their feelings. Here women were taken in a huge cage in which they were dragged on wheels from prison, and tied to the post with bare backs on which thirty or forty lashes were bestowed among the screams of the culprit and the uproar of the mob.”

The diary of a Boston school-girl of twelve, little Anna Green Winslow, written the same year as Mr. Breck’s account, gives a detailed account of the career of one Bet Smith, through workhouse and gaol to whipping-post, and thence to be “set on the gallows where she behaved with great impudence.”

Criminals were sentenced in lots. On September 9, 1787, in one Boston court one burglar was sentenced to be hanged, five thieves to be whipped, two greater thieves to be set on the gallows, and one counterfeiter set on the pillory.

Cowper’s account of the tender-hearted beadle is supplemented by a similar performance in Boston as shown in a Boston paper of August 11, 1789. Eleven culprits were to receive in one day the “discipline of the post.” Another criminal was obtained by the Sheriff to inflict the punishment, but he persisted in being “tender of strokes,” though ordered by the Sheriff to lay on. At last the Sheriff seized the whip and lashed the whipper, then turned to the row of ninepins and delivered the lashes. “The citizens who were assembled complimented the Sheriff with three cheers for the manly determined manner in which he executed his duty.”

So common were whippings in the southern colonies at the date of settlement of the country, that in Virginia even “launderers and launderesses” who “dare to wash any uncleane Linen, drive bucks, or throw out the water or suds of fowle clothes in the open streetes,” or who took pay for washing for a soldier or laborer, or who gave old torn linen for good linen, were severely whipped. Many other offenses were punished by whipping in Virginia, such as slitting the ears of hogs, or cutting off the ends of hogs’ ears – thereby removing ear-marks and destroying claim to perambulatory property – stealing tobacco, running away from home, drunkenness, destruction of land-marks; and in 1664 Major Robins brought suit against one Mary Powell for “scandalous speaches” against Rev. Mr. Teackle, for which she was ordered to receive twenty lashes on her bare shoulders and to be banished the country. Of course, for the correction of slaves the whip was in constant use till our Civil War banished slavery and the whipping-post from every state save Maryland and Delaware. This latter-named commonwealth has been much censured for countenancing the continuance of whipping as a punishment. It is, however, stiffly contended by Delaware magistrates that as a restraint over wife-beaters and other cruel and vicious criminals, the whipping post is a distinct success and of marked benefit in its influence in the community. It should also be remembered that these are not the only civilized states to approve of whipping for certain crimes. About thirty years ago, when garroting became so frequent and so greatly feared in England, the whipping-post was reestablished in England, and whipping once more became an authorized punishment.

There was one hard-hearted and unjust use of the whip which was prevalent in London and other English cities in olden times which I wish to recount with abjuration. At the time of public executions parents were wont to whip their children soundly to impress upon them a lesson of horror of the gallows. As trivial offenses, such as stealing anything in value over a shilling, were punishable by death, and capital crimes were over three hundred in number, executions were of deplorable frequency; hence the condition of children at that time was indeed pitiable. Whipped by most illogical parents, whipped by cruel teachers – even Roger Ascham used to “pinch, nip and bob” Queen Elizabeth when she was his pupil – whipped by masters, whipped by mistresses, it would seem that the moral force of the whipping-post for adults must have been very slight, after so many castigory experiences in youth.

VII

THE SCARLET LETTER

The rare genius of Hawthorne has immortalized in his Scarlet Letter one mode of stigmatizing punishment common in New England. So faithful is the presentment of colonial life shown in that book, so unerring the power and touch which drew the picture, it cannot be disputed that the atmosphere of the Scarlet Letter forms in the majority of hearts, nay, in the hearts and minds of all of our reading community, the daily life, the true life of the earliest colonists. To us the characters have lived – Hester Prynne is as real as Margaret Winthrop, Arthur Dimmesdale as John Cotton.

The glorified letter that stands out of the pages of that book had its faithful and painful prototype in real life in all the colonies; humbler in its fashioning, worn less nobly, endured more despairingly, it shone a scarlet brand on the breast of those real Hesters.

It was characteristic of the times – every little Puritan community sought to know by every fireside, to hate in every heart, any offence, great or small, which could hinder the growth and prosperity of the new abiding-place, which was to all a true home, and which they loved with a fervor that would be incomprehensible did we not know their spiritual exaltation in their new-found freedom to worship God. Since they were human, they sinned. But the sinners were never spared, either in publicity or punishment. Keen justice made the magistrates rigid and exact in the exposition and publication of crime, hence the labelling of an offender.

From the Colony Records of “New Plymouth,” dated June, 1671, we find that Pilgrim Hester Prynnes were thus enjoined by those stern moralists the magistrates:

“To wear two Capitall Letters, A. D. cut in cloth and sewed on their uppermost garment on the Arm and Back; and if any time they shall be founde without the letters so worne while in this government, they shall be forthwith taken and publickly whipt.”

Many examples could be gathered from early court records of the wearing of significant letters by criminals. In 1656 a woman was sentenced to be “whipt at Taunton and Plymouth on market day.” She was also to be fined and forever in the future “to have a Roman B cutt out of ridd cloth & sewed to her vper garment on her right arm in sight.” This was for blasphemous words. In 1638 John Davis of Boston was ordered to wear a red V “on his vpermost garment” – which signified, I fancy, viciousness. In 1636 William Bacon was sentenced to stand an hour in the pillory wearing “in publique vew” a great D – for his habitual drunkenness. Other drunkards suffered similar punishment. On September 3, 1633, in Boston:

“Robert Coles was fyned ten shillings and enjoyned to stand with a white sheet of paper on his back whereon Drunkard shalbe written in great lres & to stand therewith soe longe as the Court finde meete, for abuseing himself shamefully with drinke.”

The following year Robert Coles, still misbehaving, was again sentenced, and more severely, for his drunkard’s badge was made permanent.

“1634. Robert Coles, for drunkenes by him comitted at Rocksbury, shalbe disfranchized, weare about his necke, & soe to hange vpon his outwd garment a D. made of redd cloth & sett vpon white; to continyu this for a yeare, and not to have itt off any time hee comes among company, Vnder the penalty of xls for the first offence & v£ for the second & afterwards to be punished by the Court as they think meete, alsoe hee is to weare the D. outwards.”

We might be justified in drawing an inference from the latter clause that some mortified wearers of a scarlet letter had craftily turned it away from public gaze, hoping thus to escape public odium and ostracism.

Paupers were plainly labelled, as was the custom everywhere in England. In New York, the letters N. Y. showed to what town they submitted. In Virginia this law was in force:

“That every person who shall receive relief from the parish, and be sent to the said house, shall, upon the shoulder of the right sleeve of his or her uppermost garment, in an open and visible manner, wear a badge with the name of the parish to which he or she belongs, cut in red, blue or green cloth, as the vestry or church wardens shall direct; and if any poor person shall neglect or refuse to wear such badge, such offence may be punished either by ordering his or her allowance to be abridged, suspended or withdrawn, or the offender to be whipped not exceeding five lashes for one offence; and if any person not entitled to relief, as aforesaid, shall presume to wear such badge, he or she shall be whipped for every such offence.”

The conditions of wearing “in an open and visible manner” may have been a legal concession necessitated by the action of the English goody who, when ordered to wear a pauper’s badge, demurely pinned it on an under-petticoat.

A more limited and temporary mortification of a transgressor consisted in the marking by significant letters or labels inscribed in large letters with the name or nature of the crime. These were worn only while the offender was exposed to public view or ridicule in cage, or upon pillory, stocks, gallows or penance stool, or on the meeting house steps, or in the market-place.

An early and truly characteristic law for those of Puritan faith reads thus:

“If any interrupt or oppose a preacher in season of worship, they shall be reproved by the Magistrate, and on a repetition, shall pay £5 or stand two hours on a block four feet high, with this inscription in Capitalls, A WANTON GOSPELLER.”

This law was enacted in Boston. A similar one was in force in the Connecticut colony. In 1650 a man was tried in the General Court in Hartford for “contemptuous carriages” against the church and ministers, and was thus sentenced:

“To stand two houres openly upon a blocke or stoole foure feet high uppon a Lecture Daye with a paper fixed on his breast written in Capitall Letters, AN OPEN AND OBSTINATE CONTEMNER OF GOD’S HOLY ORDINANCES, that others may feare and be ashamed of breakinge out in like wickednesse.”

The latter clause would seem to modern notions an unintentional yet positive appeal to the furtherance of time-serving and hypocrisy.

Drunkards frequently were thus temporarily labelled.

I quote an entry of Governor Winthrop’s in the year 1640:

“One Baker, master’s mate of the ship, being in drink, used some reproachful words of the queen. The governour and council were much in doubt what to do with him, but having considered that he was distempered, and sorry for it, and being a stranger, and a chief officer in the ship, and many ships were there in harbour, they thought it not fit to inflict corporal punishment upon him, but after he had been two or three days in prison, he was set an hour at the whipping post with a paper on his head and dismissed.”

Many Boston men were similarly punished. For defacing a public record one was sentenced in May, 1652, “to stand in the pillory two Howers in Boston market with a paper ouer his head marked in Capitall Letters A DEFACER OF RECORDS.” Ann Boulder at about the same time was ordered “to stand in yrons half an hour with a Paper on her Breast marked PVBLICK DESTROYER OF PEACE.”

In 1639 three Boston women received this form of public punishment; of them Margaret Henderson was “censured to stand in the market place with a paper for her ill behavior, & her husband was fyned £5 for her yvill behavior & to bring her to the market place for her to stand there.”

Joan Andrews of York, Maine, sold two heavy stones in a firkin of butter. She, too, had to stand disgraced bearing the description of her wicked cheatery “written in Capitall Letters and pinned upon her forehead.” Widow Bradley of New London, Connecticut, for her sorry behaviour in 1673 had to wear a paper pinned to her cap to proclaim her shame.

Really picturesque was Jan of Leyden, of the New Netherland settlement, who for insolence to the Bushwyck magistrates was sentenced to be fastened to a stake near the gallows, with a bridle in his mouth, a bundle of rods under his arm, and a paper on his breast bearing the words, “Lampoon-riter, False-accuser, Defamer of Magistrates.” William Gerritsen of New Amsterdam sang a defamatory song against the Lutheran minister and his daughter. He pleaded guilty, and was bound to the Maypole in the Fort with rods tied round his neck, and wearing a paper labelled with his offense, and there to stand till the end of the sermon.

This custom of labelling a criminal with words or initials expositive of his crime or his political or religious offense, is neither American nor Puritan in invention and operation, but is so ancient that the knowledge of its beginning is lost. It was certainly in full force in the twelfth century in England. In 1364 one John de Hakford, for stating to a friend that there were ten thousand rebels ready to rise in London, was placed in the pillory four times a year “without hood or girdle, barefoot and unshod, with a whetstone hung by a chain from his neck, and lying on his breast, it being marked with the words A False Liar, and there shall be a pair of trumpets trumpeting before him on his way.” Many other cases are known of hanging an inscribed whetstone round the neck of the condemned one. For three centuries men were thus labelled, and with sound of trumpets borne to the pillory or scaffold. As few of the spectators of that day could read the printed letters, the whetstone and trumpets were quite as significant as the labels. In the first year of the reign of Henry VIII, Fabian says that three men, rebels, and of good birth, died of shame for being thus punished. They rode about the city of London with their faces to their horses’ tails, and bore marked papers on their heads, and were set on the pillory at Cornhill and again at Newgate. In Canterbury, in 1524, a man was pilloried, and wore a paper inscribed: “This is a false perjured and for-sworn man.” In the corporation accounts of the town of Newcastle-on-Tyne are many items of the expenses for punishing criminals. One of the date 1594 reads: “Paide for 4 papers for 4 folkes which was sett on the pillorie, 16d.”

Writing was not an every-day accomplishment in those times, else fourpence for writing a “paper” would seem rather a high-priced service.

VIII

BRANKS AND GAGS

The brank or scold’s bridle was unknown in America in its English shape: though from colonial records we learn that scolding women were far too plentiful, and were gagged for that annoying and irritating habit. The brank, sometimes called the gossip’s bridle, or dame’s bridle, or scold’s helm, was truly a “brydle for a curste queane.” It was a shocking instrument, a sort of iron cage, often of great weight; when worn, covering the entire head; with a spiked plate or flat tongue of iron to be placed in the mouth over the tongue. Hence if the offender spoke she was cruelly hurt.

Ralph Gardner, in his book entitled England’s Grievance Discovered in Relation to the Coal Trade, etc., printed in 1665, says of Newcastle-on-Tyne:

“There he saw one Anne Bridlestone drove through the streets by an officer of the same corporation, holding a rope in his hand, the other end fastened to an engine called the branks, which is like a crown, it being of iron, which was musled over the head and face, with a great gag or tongue of iron forced into her mouth, which forced the blood out; and that is the punishment which the magistrates do inflict upon chiding and scolding women; and he hath often seen the like done to others.”