CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS
The court records of any period in our American history are an
unfailing source of profit and delight to the historian. In the town
or state whose colonial records still exist there can ever be drawn a
picture not only of the crimes and punishments, but of the manners,
occupations, and ways of our ancestors and a knowledge can be gained of
the social ethics, the morality, the modes of thought, the intelligence
of dead-and-gone citizens. We learn that they had daily hopes and plans
and interests and harassments just such as our own, as well as vices
and wickedness.
In spite of Chancellor Kent’s assertion of their dulness and lack of
interest, the court records of Dutch colonial times are not to me dull
reading; quaint humor and curious terms abound; the criminal records
always are interesting; even the old _reken-boeks_ (the account-books)
are of value. These first sources give an unbiassed and well-outlined
picture, sometimes a surprising and almost irreconcilable one; for
instance, I had always a fixed notion that the early women-colonists
of Dutch birth were wholly a quiet, reserved, even timid group; not
talkative and never aggressive. It was therefore a great thrust at my
established ideas to discover, when poring over an old “Road Book” at
the Hall of Records in Brooklyn, containing some entries of an early
Court of Sessions, an account of the trial of two dames of Bushwyck,
Mistress Jonica Schampf and Widow Rachel Luquer, for assaulting the
captain of the Train-Band, Captain Peter Praa, on training-day in
October, 1690, while he was at the head of his company. These two
vixens most despitefully used him; they beat him, pulled his hair,
assaulted and wounded him, and committed “other Ivill Inormities, so
that his life was despaired of.” And there was no evidence to show
that any of his soldiers, or any of the spectators present, interfered
to save either Peter’s life or his honor. The offence which provoked
this assault is not even hinted at, though it may have arisen from the
troubled state of public affairs. Captain Praa was a man of influence
and dignity in the community, an exiled Huguenot, of remarkable skill
in horsemanship and arms. In spite of all this, it appears probable
that the sentiment of the community was in sympathy with the two
turbulent assaulters and batterers, for they were fined only six
shillings and three pounds respectively. They threw themselves on the
mercy of the Court, and certainly were treated with mercy.
There are, however, few women-criminals named in the old Dutch and
early English records, and these few were not prosecuted for any very
great crimes or viciousness; the chief number were brought up for
defamation of character and slander, though men-slanderers were more
plentiful than women. The close intimacy, the ideal neighborliness of
the Dutch communities of New York made the settlers deeply abhor all
violations of the law of social kindness. To preserve this state of
amity, they believed with Chaucer “the first vertue is to restraine and
kepen wel thine tonge.”
The magistrates knew how vast a flame might be kindled by a petty
spark; and therefore promptly quenched the odious slander in its
beginning; petty quarrels were adjusted by arbitration ere they grew
to great breaches. As sung the chorus of Batavian women in Van der
Vondel’s great poem:--
“If e’er dispute or discord dared intrude,
’Twas soon by wisdom’s voice subdued.”
In spite, however, of all wariness and watchfulness and patience, the
inevitable fretfulness engendered in petty natures by a narrow and
confined life showed in neighborhood disputes and suits for defamation
of character, few of them of great seriousness and most of them easily
adjusted by the phlegmatic and somewhat dictatorial Dutch magistrates.
In a community so given to nicknaming it seems strange to find such
extreme touchiness about being called names. Suits for defamation were
frequent, through opprobrious name-calling, and on very slight though
irritating grounds. It would certainly seem a rather disproportionate
amount of trouble to bring a lawsuit simply because you were called a
“black pudding,” or a _verklickker_, or tale-bearer, or even a “Turk;”
though, of course, no one would stand being called a “horned beast”
or a “hay thief.” Nor was “Thou swine” an offensive term too petty to
be passed over in silence. The terrible epithets, _spitter-baard_ and
“Dutch dough-face,” seem to make a climax of opprobriousness; but the
word _moff_ was worse, for it was the despised term applied in Holland
to the Germans, and it led to a quarrel with knives.
I wish to note in passing that though the Dutch called each other these
disagreeable and even degrading names, they did not swear at each
other. Profanity was seldom punished in New Amsterdam, for practically
it did not exist, as was remarked by travellers. Chaplain Wolley told
of “the usual oath” of one Dutch colonist,--the word “sacrament.”
The colonists were impatient of insulting actions as well as words.
Sampson said in “Romeo and Juliet,” “I will bite my thumb at them,
which is a disgrace to them _if they bear it_;” so “finger-sticking”
was a disgrace in colonial times _if unresented_, and it was actionable
in the courts. The man or woman who pointed the finger of scorn at a
neighbor was pretty sure to have the finger of the law pointed at him.
The curious practice of the Dutch settlers alluded to--the giving of
nicknames--may be partly explained by the fact that in some cases
the persons named had no surname, and the nickname was really a
distinguishing name. These nicknames appear not only in the records
of criminal cases, but in official documents such as the patents for
towns, transfers of estates, civil contracts, etc. In Albany, in 1655
and 1657, we find Jan the Jester, Huybert the Rogue, Jacobus or Cobus
the Looper, squint-eyed Harmen, the wicked Domine. On Long Island were
John the Swede, Hans the Boor, Tunis the Fisher. In Harlem was Jan
Archer the Koop-all (or buy-all). In New York, in English days, in
1691, we find Long Mary, Old Bush, Top-knot Betty, Scarebouch. These
names conveyed no offence, and seem to have been universally adopted
and responded to.
It would appear to a casual observer glancing over the court-records
of those early years of New York life under Dutch supremacy, that the
greater number of the cases brought before the magistrates were these
slander and libel cases. We could believe that no other court-room
ever rang with such petty personal suits; to use Tennyson’s words,
“it bubbled o’er with gossip and scandal and spite.” But in truth
slander was severely punished in all the colonies, in New England,
Virginia, Pennsylvania; and it is not to the detriment of the citizens
of New Netherland that they were more sharp in the punishment of such
offences, for it is well known, as Swift says, that the worthiest
people are those most injured by slander.
The slander cases of colonial times seem most trivial and even absurd
when seen through the mist of years. They could scarce reach the
dignity of Piers Plowman’s definition of slanders:--
“To bakbyten, and to bosten, and to bere fals witnesse
To scornie and to scolde, sclaundres to make.”
To show their character, let me give those recorded in which Thomas
Applegate of Gravesend, Long Island, took an accused part. In
1650, he was brought up before the Gravesend court for saying of a
fellow-towns-man that “he thought if his debts were paid he would have
little left.” For this incautious but not very heinous speech he paid a
fine of forty guilders. The next year we find him prosecuted for saying
of a neighbor that “he had not half a wife.” Though he at first denied
this speech, he was ordered “to make publick acknowledgement of error;
to stand at the publick post with a paper on his breast mentioning the
reason, that he is a notorious, scandalous person.” This brought him
to his senses, and he confessed his guilt, desired the slandered “half
a wife” to “pass it by and remit it, which she freely did and he gave
her thanks.” Next Mistress Applegate was brought up for saying that a
neighbor’s wife milked the Applegate cows. She escaped punishment by
proving that Penelope Prince told her so. As a climax, Thomas Applegate
said to a friend that he believed that the Governor took bribes. The
_schout_ in his decision on this grave offence said Applegate “did
deserve to have his tongue bored through with a hot iron;” but this
fierce punishment was not awarded him, nor was he banished.
When the tailor of New Amsterdam said disrespectful words of the
Governor, his sentence was that he “stand before the Governor’s door
with uncovered head, after the ringing of the bell, and to declare that
he falsely and scandalously issued such words and then to ask God’s
pardon.”
The magistrates were very touchy of their dignity. Poor Widow Piertje
Jans had her house sold on an execution; and, exasperated by the
proceeding, and apparently also at the price obtained, she said
bitterly to the officers, “Ye despoilers, ye bloodsuckers, ye have
not sold but given away my house.” Instead of treating these as the
heated words of a disappointed and unhappy woman, the officers promptly
ran tattling to the Stadt Huys and whiningly complained to the Court
that her words were “a sting which could not be endured.” Piertje
was in turn called shameful; her words were termed “foul, villanous,
injurious, nay, infamous words,” and also called a blasphemy, insult,
affront, and reproach. She was accused of insulting, defaming,
affronting, and reproaching the Court, and that she was in the highest
degree reprimanded, particularly corrected, and severely punished; and
after being forbidden to indulge in any more such blasphemies, she was
released,--“bethumped with words,” as Shakespeare said,--doubtless well
scared at the enormity of her offence, as well as at the enormity of
the magistrate’s phraseology.
The notary Walewyn van der Veen was frequently in trouble, usually for
contempt of court. And I doubt not “the little bench of justices” was
sometimes rather trying in its ways to a notary who knew anything about
law. On one occasion, when a case relating to a bill of exchange had
been decided against him, Van der Veen spoke of their High Mightinesses
the magistrates as “simpletons and blockheads.” This was the scathing
sentence of his punishment:--
“That Walewyn Van der Veen, for his committed insult, shall here beg
forgiveness, with uncovered head, of God, Justice, and the Worshipful
Court, and moreover pay as a fine 190 guilders.”
This fine must have consumed all his fees for many a weary month
thereafter, if we can judge by the meagre lawyers’ bills which have
come down to us.
Another time the contumacious Van der Veen called the Secretary a
rascal. Thereat, the latter, much aggrieved, demanded “honorable and
profitable reparation” for the insult. The _schout_ judged this epithet
to be a slander and an affront to the Secretary, which “affected his
honor, being tender,” and the honor of the Court as well, since it was
to a member of the Court, and he demanded that the notary should pay
a fine of fifty guilders as an example to other slanderers, “who for
trifles have constantly in their mouths curses and abuses of other
honorable people.”
Another well-known notary and practitioner and pleader in the busy
little Court held in the Stadt Huys was Solomon La Chair. His
manuscript volume of nearly three hundred pages, containing detailed
accounts of all the business he transacted in Manhattan, is now in the
County Clerk’s Office in New York, and proves valuable material for the
historiographer. He had much business, for he could speak and write
both English and Dutch; and he was a faithful, painstaking, intelligent
worker. He not only conducted lawsuits for others, but he seems to
have been in constant legal hot water himself on his own account. He
was sued for drinking and not paying for a can of sugared wine; and
also for a half-aam of costly French wine; and he was sued for the
balance of payment for a house he had purchased; he pleaded for more
time, and with the ingenuous guilelessness peculiar to the law said in
explanation that he had had the money gathered at one time for payment,
but it had somehow dropped through his fingers. “The Court condemned to
pay at once,”--not being taken in by any such simplicity as that. He
had to pay a fine of twelve guilders for affronting both fire inspector
and court messenger. He first insulted the _brandt-meester_ who came to
inspect his chimney, and was fined, then he called the _bode_ who came
to collect the fine “a little cock booted and spurred.” The Court in
sentence said with dignity, “It is not meet that men should mock and
scoff at persons appointed to any office, yea a necessary office.”
He won one important suit for the town of Gravesend, by which the right
of that town to the entire region of Coney Island was established; and
he received in payment for his legal services therein, the munificent
sum of twenty-four florins (ten dollars) paid in gray pease. He kept
a tavern and was complained of for tapping after nine o’clock; and
he was sued by his landlord for rent; and he had a yacht, “The Pear
Tree,” which ran on trading trips to Albany, and there were two or
three lawsuits in regard to that. He was also a farmer of the excise
on slaughtered cattle; but, in spite of all his energy and variety of
employment, he died insolvent in 1664. The last lawsuit in which Lawyer
Solomon had any share was through a posthumous connection,--the burgher
who furnished an anker of French wine for the notary’s funeral claimed
a position as preferred creditor to the estate.
A very aggravated case of scorn and resistance of authority was that
of Abel Hardenbrock against the _schout_ de Mill. And this case shows
equally the popular horror of violations of the law and the confiding
trust of the justices that the word of the law was enough without
any visible restraining force. Hardenbrock, who was a troublesome
fellow, had behaved most vilely, shoving the _schout_ on the breast,
and wickedly “wishing the devil might break his neck,” simply because
the _schout_ went to Hardenbrock’s house to warn his wife not to
annoy further Burgomaster De Peyster by unwelcome visits. Hardenbrock
was accordingly seized and made a prisoner at the Stadt Huys “in
the chamber of Pieter Schaefbanck, where he carried on and made a
racket like one possessed and mad, notwithstanding the efforts of
Heer Burgomaster Van Brught, running up to the Court room and going
away next morning as if he had not been imprisoned.” It was said with
amusing simplicity that this cool walking out of prison was “contrary
to the customs of the law,” and a fine of twenty-five florins was
imposed.
For serious words against the government, which could be regarded
as treasonable, the decreed punishment was death. One Claerbout van
ter Goes used such words (unfortunately they are not given in the
indictment), and a judgment was recorded from each burgomaster and
_schepen_ as to what punishment would be proper. He was branded,
whipped on a half-gallows, and banished, and escaped hanging only by
one vote.
All classes in the community were parties in these petty slander suits;
schoolmasters and parsons appear to have been specially active.
Domine Bogardus and Domine Schaets had many a slander suit. The most
famous and amusing of all these clerical suits is the one brought by
Domine Bogardus and his wife, the posthumously famous Anneke Jans,
against Grietje von Salee, a woman of very dingy reputation, who told
in New Amsterdam that the domine’s wife, Mistress Anneke, had lifted
her petticoats in unseemly and extreme fashion when crossing a muddy
street. This was proved to be false, and the evidence adduced was so
destructive of Grietje’s character that she stands disgraced forever in
history as the worst woman in New Netherland.
Not only were slanderers punished, but they were disgraced with
terrible names. William Bakker was called “a blasphemer, a street
schold, a murderer as far as his intentions are concerned, a defamer, a
disturber of public peace,”--the concentration of which must have made
William Bakker hang his head in the place of his banishment. They were
also rebuked from the pulpit, and admonished in private.
Perhaps the best rebuke given, as well as a unique one, was the one
adopted by Domine Frelinghuysen, who had suffered somewhat from slander
himself. He had this rhyme painted in large letters on the back of his
sleigh, that he who followed might read:--
“Niemands tong; nog neimands pen,
Maakt my anders dan ik ben.
Spreek quaad-spreekers: spreek vonder end,
Niemand en word van u geschend.”
Which, translated into English, reads:--
“No one’s tongue, and no one’s pen
Makes me other than I am.
Speak, evil-speakers, speak without end,
No one heeds a word you say.”
The original Court of the colony was composed of a Director and his
Council. In 1656, in answer to complaints from the colonists, the
States-General ordered the election of a board of magistrates, in
name and function like those of the Fatherland; namely, a _schout_,
two burgomasters, and five _schepens_. The duties of the burgomasters
and _schepens_ were twofold: they regulated municipal affairs like a
board of aldermen, and they sat as a court of justice both in civil and
criminal cases. The annual salary of a burgomaster was fixed at one
hundred and forty dollars, and of a _schepen_ at one hundred dollars;
but as these salaries were to come out of the municipal chest, which
was chronically empty, they never were paid. When funds did come in
from the excise on taverns, on slaughtered cattle, the tax on land,
the fees on transfers, etc., it always had to be paid out in other
ways,--for repairs for the school-room, the _Graft_, the watch-room,
the Stadt Huys. It never entered the minds of those guileless civic
rulers, two centuries ago, to pay themselves and let the other
creditors go without. The early city _schout_ was also _schout-fiskaal_
till 1660; but the proper duties of this functionary were really
a combination of those pertaining now to the mayor, sheriff, and
district-attorney. In the little town one man could readily perform
all these duties. He also presided in Court. An offender could thus be
arrested, prosecuted, and judged, by one and the same person, which
seems to us scarcely judicious; but the bench of magistrates had one
useful power, that of mitigating and altering the sentence demanded by
the _schout_. Often a fine of one hundred guilders would be reduced to
twenty-five; often the order for whipping would be set aside, and the
command of branding as well.
Sometimes justice in New York was tempered with mercy, and sorely it
needed it when fierce English rule and law came in force. Felons were
few, but these few were severely punished. A record of a trial in 1676
reveals a curious scene in Court, as well as an astonishing celerity in
the execution of the law under English rule and in the English army.
Three soldiers stole a couple of iron pots, two hoes, a pair of shears,
and half a firkin of soap. They were tried in the morning, confessed,
cast into “the Hole” in the afternoon, and in the evening “the Governor
ordered some persons to go to the prisoners and advise them to prepare
for another world, for that one of them should dye the next day.” On
the gloomy morrow, on Saturday, the three terror-stricken souls drew
lots, and the fatal lot fell to one Thomas Weale. The court of aldermen
interceded for him and finally secured his reprieve till Monday. The
peaceful Dutch Sunday, darkened and shocked by this impending death,
saw a strange and touching sight.
“In the evening a company of the chiefe women of the City, both
English and Dutch, made earnest suite to the Governor for the
Condemned man’s life. Monday in the morning the same women who came
the last night with many others of the better sort, and a greater
number of the ordinary Dutch women, did again very much importune the
Governor to spare him.”
These tender-hearted colonists were indorsed and supplemented by the
petition of Weale’s fellow-soldiers in the garrison, who pleaded the
prisoner’s youth and his past usefulness, and who promised if he were
pardoned never to steal nor to conceal theft. As a result of all this
intercession, the Governor “graciously” granted pardon.
This promise and pardon seem to have accomplished much in army
discipline, for thereafter arrests for crime among the soldiery were
rare. Five years later a soldier was accused of pilfering.
“The Court Marshall doth adjudge that the said Melchoir Classen shall
run the Gantlope once, the length of the fort: where according to
the custome of that punishment, the souldiers shall have switches
delivered to them, with which they shall strike him as he passes
between them stript to the waist, and at the Fort-gate the Marshall
is to receive him, and there to kick him out of the Garrison as a
cashiered person, when he is no more to returne, and if any pay is due
him it is to be forfeited.”
And that was the end of Melchoir Classen.
Gantlope was the earlier and more correct form of the word now commonly
called gantlet. Running the gantlope was a military punishment in
universal use.
Another common punishment for soldiers (usually for rioting or
drinking) was riding the wooden horse. In New Amsterdam the wooden
horse stood between Paerel Street and the Fort, and was twelve feet
high. Garret Segersen, for stealing chickens, rode the wooden horse
for three days from two o’clock to close of parade with a fifty-pound
weight tied to each foot. At other times a musket was tied to each foot
of the disgraced man. One culprit rode with an empty scabbard in one
hand and a pitcher in the other to show his inordinate love for John
Barleycorn. Jan Alleman, a Dutch officer, challenged Jan de Fries, who
was _bedridden_; for this cruel and meaningless insult he too rode the
wooden horse. In Revolutionary days we still find the soldiers of the
Continental Army punished by riding the wooden horse, or, as it was
sometimes called, “the timber mare;” but it was probably a modification
of the cruel punishment of the seventeenth century.
A sailor, for drawing a knife on a companion, was dropped three times
from the yard-arm and received a kick from every sailor on the ship,--a
form of running the gantlope. And we read of a woman who enlisted as a
seaman, and whose sex was detected, being dropped three times from the
yard-arm and tarred and feathered.
These women petitioners for Soldier Weale of whom I have told, were
not the only tender-hearted New Yorkers to petition for “mercy, that
herb of grace, to flower.” During Stuyvesant’s rule his sister,
Madam Bayard, successfully interceded for the release, and thereby
saved the life, of an imprisoned Quaker; and in September, 1713, two
counterfeiters were saved from the death penalty by the intervention of
New York dames. We read, “Most of the gentlewomen of the city waited
on the Governor, and addressed him earnestly with prayers and tears
for the lives of the culprits, who were accordingly pardoned.” When
two sailors rioted through the town demanding food and drink, and used
Carel Van Brugh so roughly that his face was cut, they were sentenced
to be fastened to the whipping-post, and scourged, and have gashes cut
in their faces; the wife of Van Brugh and her friends petitioned that
the sentence should not be carried out, or at any rate executed within
a room. Doubtless other examples could be found.
The laws of New Netherland were naturally based upon the laws and
customs of the Fatherland, which in turn were formed by the rules of
the College of XIX. from the Imperial Statutes of Charles V. and the
Roman civil law.
The punishments were the ordinary ones of the times, neither more
nor less severe than those of the Fatherland or the other colonies.
In 1691 it was ordered that a ducking-stool be erected in New York
on the wharf in front of the City Hall. The following year an order
was passed that a pillory, cage, and ducking-stool be built. Though
scolds were punished, I have never seen any sentence to show that
this ducking-stool was ever built, or that one was ever used in New
York; while instances of the use of a ducking-stool are comparatively
plentiful in the Southern colonies. The ducking-stool was an English
“engine” of punishment, not a Dutch.
The colonists were astonishingly honest. Thieves were surprisingly few;
they were punished under Dutch rule by scourging with rods, and usually
by banishment,--a very convenient way of shifting responsibility.
Assaults were punished by imprisonment and subjection to prison fare,
consisting only of bread and water or _small beer_; and sometimes
temporary banishment. There was at first no prison, so men were often
imprisoned in their own houses, which does not seem very disgraceful.
In the case of François de Bruyn, tried for insulting and striking the
court messenger, he was fined two hundred guilders, and answered that
he would rot in prison before he would pay. He was then ordered to be
imprisoned _in a respectable tavern_, which sentence seems to have some
possibility of mitigating accompaniments.
In 1692 it was ordered in Kings County that a good pair of stocks
and a pound be made in every bound within Kings County, and kept
in sufficient repair. In repair and in use were they kept till this
century. Pillories too were employed in punishment till within the
memory of persons now living. The whipping-post was really a public
blessing,--in constant use, and apparently of constant benefit,
though the publicity of its employment seems shocking to us to-day.
The public whipper received a large salary. In 1751, we learn from an
advertisement, it was twenty pounds annually.
Some of the punishments were really almost picturesque in their
ingenious inventions of mortification and degradation. Truly it was
a striking sight when “Jan of Leyden”--a foul-mouthed rogue, a true
_blather-schuyten_--was fastened to a stake in front of the townhouse,
with a bridle in his mouth and a bundle of rods tied under each arm,
and a placard on his breast bearing the inscription, “Lampoon-riter,
false accuser, defamer of magistrates.” Though he was banished, I am
sure he never was forgotten by the children who saw him standing thus
garnished and branded on that spring day in 1664. In the same place a
thief was punished by being forced to stand all day under a gallows,
a gallows-rope around his neck and empty sword-scabbard in his hand, a
memorable figure.
And could any who saw it ever forget the punishment of Mesaack Martens,
who stole six cabbages from his neighbor, and confessed and stood for
days in the pillory with cabbages on his head, that “the punishment
might fit the crime;” to us also memorable because the prisoner was
bootlessly _examined by torture_ to force confession of stealing fowls,
butter, turkeys, etc.
He was not the only poor creature who suffered torture in New
Amsterdam. It was frequently threatened and several times executed.
The mate of a ship was accused of assaulting a sheriff’s officer, who
could not identify positively his assailant. The poor mate was put to
torture, and _he was innocent_ of the offence. The assailant was proved
to be another man from whom the officer had seized a keg of brandy.
Still none in New Amsterdam were tortured or pressed to death. The
blood of no Giles Corey stains the honor of New Netherland.
Sometimes the execution of justice seemed to “set a thief to catch a
thief.” A letter written by an English officer from Fort James on
Manhattan Island to Captain Silvester Salisbury in Fort Albany in 1672
contains this sentence:--
“We had like to have lost our Hang-man Ben Johnson, for he being taken
in Divers Thefts and Robbings convicted and found guilty, escaped his
neck through want of another Hangman to truss him up, soe that all the
punishment that he received for his Three Years’ Roguery in thieving
and stealing (which was never found out till now) was only 39 stripes
at the Whipping Post, loss of an Ear and Banishment.”
We have the records of an attempt at capital punishment in 1641; and
Mr. Gerard’s account of it in his paper “The Old Stadt-Huys” is so
graphic, I wish to give it in full:--
“The court proceedings before the Council, urged by the Fiscal,
were against Jan of Fort Orange, Manuel Gerrit the Giant, Anthony
Portugese, Simon Congo, and five others, all negroes belonging to the
Company, for killing Jan Premero, another negro. The prisoners having
pleaded guilty, and it being rather a costly operation to hang nine
able-bodied negroes belonging to the Company, the sentence was that
they were to draw lots to determine ‘who should be punished with the
cord until death, praying the Almighty God, the Creator of Heaven and
Earth, to direct that the lot may fall on the guiltiest, whereupon’
the record reads, ‘the lot fell by God’s Providence on _Manuel Gerrit,
the Giant_, who was accordingly sentenced to be hanged by the neck
until dead as an example to all such malefactors.’ Four days after the
trial, and on the day of the sentence, all _Nieuw Amsterdam_ left its
accustomed work to gaze on the unwonted spectacle. Various Indians
also gathered, wondering, to the scene. The giant negro is brought out
by the black hangman, and placed on the ladder against the fort with
two strong halters around his neck. After an exhortation from Domine
Bogardus during which the negro chaunts barbaric invocations to his
favorite Fetich, he is duly turned off the ladder into the air. Under
the violent struggles and weight of the giant, however, both halters
break. He falls to the ground. He utters piteous cries. Now on his
knees, now twisting and groveling on the earth. The women shriek.
The men join in his prayers for mercy to the stern Director. He is
no trifler and the law must have its course. The hangman prepares
a stronger rope. Finally the cry for mercy is so general that the
Director relents, and the fortunate giant is led off the ground by his
swarthy friends, somewhat disturbed in his intellect by his near view
of the grim King of Terrors.”
Up to February 21, 1788, benefit of clergy existed; that is, the
plea in capital felonies of being able to read. This was a monkish
privilege first extended only to priestly persons. In England it was
not abolished till 1827. The minutes of the Court of General Quarter
Sessions in New York bear records of criminals who pleaded “the
benefit” and were branded on the brawn of the left thumb with “T” in
open court and then discharged.
As the punishments accorded for crimes were not severe for the
notions of the times, it is almost amusing to read some fierce
ordinances,--though there is no record of any executions in accordance
with them. For instance, in January, 1659, by the Director-General
and Council with the advice of the burgomasters and _schepens_ it
was enacted that “No person shall strip the fences of posts or rails
under penalty for the first offence of being whipped and branded, and
for the second, of punishment with the cord until death ensues.” It
is really astonishing to think of these kindly Dutch gentlemen calmly
ordering hanging for stealing fence-rails, though of course the matter
reached further than at first appeared: there was danger of a scarcity
of grain; and if the fences were stolen, the cattle would trample
down and destroy the grain. Later orders as to fences were given which
appear eminently calculated to be mischief-making. “Persons thinking
their neighbors’ fences not good, first to request them to repair;
failing which to report to the overseers.” In 1674 all persons were
forbidden to leave the city except by city-gate, under penalty of
death; this was of course when war threatened.
The crime of suicide was not without punishment. Suicides were
denied ordinary burial rites. In Dutch days when one Smitt of New
York committed suicide, the _schout_ asked that his body be drawn on
a hurdle and buried with a stake in his heart. This order was not
executed; he was buried at night and his estates confiscated. When Sir
Danvers Osborne--the Governor for a day--was found dead by his own act,
he was “decently interred in Trinity churchyard.”
Women in New York sometimes made their appearance in New York courts,
as in those of other colonies, in another rôle than that of witness
or criminal; they sometimes sat on juries. In the year 1701, six good
Albany wives served on a jury: Tryntje Roseboom, Catheren Gysbertse,
Angeneutt Jacobse, Marritje Dirkse, Elsje Lansing, and Susanna Bratt.
They were, of course, empanelled for a special duty, not to serve on
the entire evidence of the case for which they were engaged.
Many old records are found which employ quaint metaphors or legal
expressions; I give one which refers to a custom which seems at one
time to have been literally performed. It occurs in a commission
granted to the trustees of an estate of which the debts exceeded the
assets. Any widow in Holland or New Netherland could be relieved of all
demands or claims of her husband’s creditors by relinquishing all right
of inheritance. This widow took this privilege; it is recorded thus:--
“_Whereas_, Harman Jacobsen Bamboes has been lately shot dead,
murdered by the Indians, and whereas the estate left by him _has
been kicked away with the foot by his wife who has laid the key on
the coffin_, it is therefore necessary to authorize and qualify some
persons to regulate the same.”
There was a well-known Dutch saying which referred to this privilege,
_Den Sleutel op het graf leggen_, and simply meant not to pay the
debts of the deceased.
This legal term and custom is of ancient origin. In Davies’ “History
of Holland” we read of a similar form being gone through with in
Holland in 1404, according to the law of Rhynland. The widow of a great
nobleman immediately after his death desired to renounce all claim on
his estate and responsibility for his debts. She chose a guardian, and,
advancing with him to the door of the Court (where the body of the dead
Count had been placed on a bier), announced that she was dressed wholly
in borrowed clothing; she then formally gave a straw to her guardian,
who threw it on the dead body, saying he renounced for her all right
of dower, and abjured all debts. This was derived from a still more
ancient custom of the Franks, who renounced all alliances by the
symbolic breaking and throwing away a straw.
In other states of the Netherlands the widow gave up dower and debts
by laying a key and purse on the coffin. This immunity was claimed by
persons in high rank, one being the widow of the Count of Flanders.
In New England (as I have told at length in my book, “Customs and
Fashions in Old New England,”) the widow who wished to renounce her
husband’s debts was married in her shift, often at the cross-roads, at
midnight. These shift-marriages took place in Massachusetts as late as
1836; I have a copy of a court record of that date.
I know of but one instance of the odious and degrading English custom
of wife-trading taking place in New York. Laurens Duyts, an agent for
Anneke Jans in some of her business transactions, was in the year 1663
sentenced to be flogged and have his right ear cut off for selling
his wife, Mistress Duyts, to one Jansen. Possibly the severity of the
punishment may have prevented the recurrence of the crime.
After a somewhat extended study and comparison of the early court and
church records of New England with those of New York, I cannot fail to
draw the conclusion--if it is just to judge from such comparisons--that
the state of social morals was higher in the Dutch colonies than in the
English. Perhaps the settlers of Boston and Plymouth were more severe
towards suspicion of immorality, as they were infinitely more severe
towards suspicion of irreligion, than were their Dutch neighbors. And
they may have given more publicity and punishment to deviations from
the path of rectitude and uprightness; but certainly from their own
records no fair-minded person can fail to deem them more frail, more
erring, more wicked, than the Dutch. The circumstances of immigration
and the tendencies of temperament were diverse, and perhaps it was
natural that a reaction tending to sin and vice should come to the
intense and overwrought religionist rather than to the phlegmatic
and prosperous trader. In Virginia and Maryland the presence of many
convict-emigrants would form a reasonable basis for the existence of
the crime and law-breaking which certainly was in those colonies far in
excess of the crime in New Netherland and New York.
I know that Rev. Mr. Miller, the English clergyman, did not give the
settlement a very good name at the last of the seventeenth century;
but even his strictures cannot force me to believe the colonists so
unbearably wicked.
It should also be emphasized that New Netherland was far more tolerant,
more generous than New England to all of differing religious faiths.
Under Stuyvesant, however, Quakers were interdicted from preaching,
were banished, and one Friend was treated with great cruelty. The
Dutch clergymen opposed the establishment of a Lutheran church,
and were rebuked by the Directors in Holland, who said that in the
future they would send out clergymen “not tainted with any needless
preciseness;” and Stuyvesant was also rebuked for issuing an ordinance
imposing a penalty for holding conventicles not in accordance with
the Synod of Dort. Many Christians not in accordance in belief with
that synod settled in New Netherland. Quakers, Lutherans, Church of
England folk, Anabaptists, Huguenots, Waldenses, Walloons. The Jews
were protected and admitted to the rights of citizenship. Director
Kieft, with heavy ransoms, rescued the captive Jesuits, Father Jogues
and Father Bressani, from the Indians and tenderly cared for them.
No witches suffered death in New York, and no statute law existed
against witchcraft. There is record of but one witchcraft trial under
the English governor, Nicholls, who speedily joined with the Dutch in
setting aside all that nonsense.