Nothing seems more revolting to our modern notions of decency than
the inhuman custom of punishing criminals in the open streets. From
the earliest days of the colonies the greatest publicity was given
to the crime, to its punishment, and to the criminal. Anna shows, in
her acquaintance with the vices of Bet Smith, a painful familiarity
with evil unknown in any well-bred child of to-day. Samuel Breck
wrote thus of the Boston of 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 them 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. A little
further in the street was to be seen the pillory with three or four
fellows fastened by the head and hands, and standing for an hour in
that helpless posture, exposed to gross and cruel jeers from the
multitude, who pelted them incessantly with rotten eggs and every
repulsive kind of garbage that could be collected."
There was a pillory in State Street in Boston as late as 1803, and
men stood in it for the crime of sinking a vessel at sea and
defrauding the underwriters. In 1771 the pillory was in constant use
in Newport.