parts of Scotland, which had been used for such iniquitous purposes.
These instruments were so constructed that by means of a loop which
passed over the head, a piece of iron having four points or prongs,
was forcibly thrust into the mouth, two of these being directed to the
tongue and palate, the others pointing outward to each cheek. This
infernal machine was secured by a padlock. At the back of the collar
was fixed a ring, by which to attach the witch to a staple in the
wall of her cell. Thus equipped, and day and night waked and watched
by some skillful person appointed by her inquisitors, the unhappy
creature, after a few days of such discipline, maddened by the misery
of her forlorn and helpless state would be rendered fit for confessing
anything in order to be rid of the dregs of her life. At intervals
fresh examinations took place, and they were repeated from time to time
until her “contumacy,” as it was termed, was subdued. The clergy and
Kirk Sessions appear to have been the unwearied instruments of “purging
the land of witchcraft,” and _to them, in the first instance, all the
complaints and informations were made_.—_Pitcairn_, Vol. I., Part 2, p.
50.
“Who has not heard of the Langholm witches, and ‘the branks’ to subdue
them? This was a simple instrument formed so as to fit firmly on the
head, and to project into the mouth a sharp spike for subjugating the
tongue. It was much preferred to the ducking-stool, ‘which not only
endangered the health of the patient, but also gave the tongue liberty
betwixt every dip!’ Scores of these ‘patients’ were burned alongside
Langholm castle; and the spot is fully as interesting as our own
reminder of the gentle days, Gallows Hill, at Salem.”
[69] By statute 33 of Henry VIII., C. 8, all witchcraft and sorcery
was to be felony without benefit of clergy. This act continued
in force till lately to the terror of all ancient females in the
kingdom.—_Commentaries._ As bad as the Georges are depicted, thanks
are due to two of them from women. By statute of George II., C. 5,
no future prosecution was to be carried on against any person for
conjuration, witchcraft, sorcery or enchantment.
[70] Towards the end of 1593 there was trouble in the family of the
Earl of Orkney. His brother laid a plot to murder him, and was said to
have sought the help of a notorious witch called “Allison Balfour.” No
evidence could be found connecting her with this particular offense or
with witchcraft in general, but it was enough in these matters to be a
woman and to be accused. She swore she was innocent, but she was looked
upon as a pagan who thus aggravated her guilt. She was tortured again
and again, but being innocent she constantly declared her innocence.
Her legs were put into the Casctulars—an iron which was gradually
heated until it burned into the flesh, but no confession could be wrung
from her. The Casctulars having utterly failed to make her tell a lie,
“the powers that be,” whom Paul tells us “are of God,” tortured her
husband, her son and her daughter, a little child of only seven years.
The “powers” knew the tenderness and love of a wife and mother, so
they first brought her husband into court and placed him by her side.
He was placed in the “long irons,” some accursed instrument. She did
not yield. Then her son was tortured; the poor boy’s legs were set in
“the boot,” the iron boot, and wedges were driven in, which forced home
crushed the very bone and marrow. Fifty-seven mallet strokes were
delivered upon the wedges, yet this failed. This innocent tortured
heroic woman would not confess to a lie. So last of all her baby
daughter was brought in, the fair child of seven short years. There was
a machine called the pinniwinkies, a kind of thumb screw which brought
blood from under the finger nails with a pain terribly severe. These
tortures were applied to the baby hands, and the mother’s fortitude
broke down and she would admit any thing they wished. She confessed
the witchcraft. So tired she would have confessed the seven deadly
sins, but this suffering did not save her to her family. She was burned
alive, with her last suffering breath protesting her innocence. This
account is perfectly well authenticated and taken from the official
report of the proceedings. Froude.—_Short Stories on Great Subjects._
[71] The same dark superstition shared the civil councils of Scotland
as late as the beginning of the 18th century, and the convictions
which then took place are chiefly to be ascribed to the ignorance and
fanaticism of the clergy.
[72] Excommunication was both of temporal and spiritual effect, the
person under ban not only being deprived of absolution, extreme
unction, consecrated burial, etc., but all persons were forbidden
to deal with the recalcitrant. Under the strictest protestantism in
Scotland, the clergy held almost entire control. When a woman fell
under suspicion of being a witch, the minister denounced her from
the pulpit, forbade anyone harboring or sheltering her, and exhorted
his parishoners to give evidence against her. To the clergy and Kirk
Sessions were the first complaints made. It is scarcely more than 150
years since the last witch was burned in Scotland, having been accused
of raising a thunder storm by pulling off her stockings.—_Witchcraft
Under Protestantism._
[73] Many witches lost their lives in every part of England, without
being brought to trial at all, from injuries received at the hands of
the populace. Mackay.—_Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions._
[74] One of the most powerful incentives to confession was to
systematically deprive the suspected witch of her natural sleep. It was
said who but witches can be present and so witness of the doings of
witches, since all their meetings and conspiracies are the habits of
darkness. “The voluntarie confession of a witch doth exceede all other
evidence. How long she has been a witch the devil and she knows best.”
[75] Among the Lancashire witches was Old Demedike, four score years
old, who had been a witch fifty years, and confessed to possessing
a demon which appeared to her in the form of a brown dog.—_Summer’s
Trials._
[76] _Ibid._
[77] Which examination, although she was but very young, yet it was
wonderful to the Court in so great a presence and audience.—_Ibid._
Ties of the tenderest nature did not restrain the inquisitors. Young
girls were regarded as the best witnesses against their mothers, and
the oaths of children of irresponsible age were received as evidence
against a parent.—_Superstition and Force_, p. 93.
[78] When a reward was publicly offered there seemed to be no end of
finding witches, and many kept with great care their note book of
“Examination of Witches,” and were discovering “hellish kinds of them.”
[79] _Salem Witchcraft_ I, 393-4; 2, 373.
[80] I seemed to have stepped back to Puritan time, when an old
gentleman said to me. “I am descended from that line of witches;
my grandmother and 120 others were under condemnation of death at
New Bedford, when an order came from the king prohibiting farther
executions.”
[81] Salem, Mass., July 30, 1892.—The 200th anniversary of the hanging
of Rebecca Nurse of Salem village for witchcraft, was commemorated in
Danvers Centre, old Salem village, by the Nurse Monument Association.
The distinct feature of the occasion was the dedication of a granite
tablet to commemorate the courage of forty men and women, who at the
risk of their lives gave written testimony in favor of Rebecca Nurse in
1692.
[82] Howes.—_Historical Collection of Virginia_, p. 438.
[83] _Collection Massachusetts Historical Society_ for the year 1800,
p. 241.
[84] No prosecution, suit or proceedings shall be commenced or carried
on in any court of this state against any person for conjuration or
witchcraft, sorcery or enchantment or for charging another with such
offense.
[85] Under the church theory that all members of the witch’s family are
tainted, the husband of this unfortunate woman hid himself, fearing the
same fate.—_Telegram._
CHAPTER SIX
[1] He bought his bride of her parents according to the custom of
antiquity, and she followed the coemption by purchasing with _three_
pieces of copper a just introduction to his treasury and household
duties. Gibbon.—_Rome_, 4; 395.
[2] By the law of the _Twelve Tables_ woman possessed the right of
repudiation in marriage. These tables were a compilation of still older
laws or customs, a species of common law incorporated into statutes by
Lachis of Athens, daughter of one Majestes; and were so wise and of
such benefit to the people of Attica that the Romans received them as
natural laws in which there was more of patriotism and purity than in
all the volumes of Popinanus. H. S. Maine.—_Ancient Law._
[3] After the Punic triumphs the matrons of Rome aspired to the
common benefits of a free and opulent republic.... They declined the
solemnities of the old nuptials; defeated the annual prescription by an
absence of three days, and without losing their name or independence
subscribed the liberal and definite terms of a marriage contract. Of
their private fortunes they commuted the use and secured the property;
the estate of a wife could neither be alienated or mortgaged by a
prodigal husband. Religious and civil rites were no longer essential,
and between persons of similar rank, the apparent community of life was
allowed as sufficient evidence of their nuptials.... When the Roman
matrons became the equal and voluntary companions of their lords, their
marriage like other partnerships might be dissolved. Gibbon.—_Rome_,
4; 347.
[4] Uses or Usucapion, was a form of civil marriage securing the wife
more freedom than the form which held her “under his thumb” as his
daughter. It was as old or even older than the Twelve Tables, and
although for many centuries not considered quite as respectable a form
of marriage as that in which the wife became the husband’s slave with
divorce impossible, it eventually grew to be the customary form of
Roman marriage. Maine.—_Early History of Ancient Institutions_, p. 517.
[5] It was with the state of conjugal relations thus produced that the
growing Christianity of the Roman world waged a war ever increasing in
fierceness, yet it remained to the last the basis of the Roman legal
conception of marriage.—_Ibid._
[6] When the Chremes of Terence reproaches his wife for not obeying his
orders and exposing their infant, he speaks like a father and master,
and silences the scruples of a foolish woman. Milman.—_Note to Gibbons
Rome._
[7] “‘Usus’ had the very important consequence that the woman so
married remained in the eye of the law in the family of her father,
and was under his guardianship and not that of her husband. A complete
revolution had thus passed over the constitution of the family. This
must have been the period when a jurisconsult of the empire defined
marriage as a lifelong fellowship of all divine and human rights.”
[8] Reeves.—_Hist. Eng. Law_, p. 337.
[9] Maine says: No society which preserves any tincture of Christian
Institutions is likely to restore to married women the personal liberty
conferred on them by middle Roman laws.—_Ancient Law._
[10] Reeves says, while many great minds, as Lord Chief Justice Hale,
Lord John Somers, Henry Spellman, Dr. Brady and Sir Martin Wright
think feudalism came in with the conqueror, others, as Coke, Seldon,
Bacon and Sir Roger Owen are of opinion that tenures were common among
the Saxons. Blackstone, Dalrymple and Sullivan endeavor to compromise
the dispute by admitting an imperfect system of feuds to have been
instituted before the conquest.—_History of English Law_, Vol. I., p.
18-19.
[11] A certain bishop, wishing a person to take charge of his castle
during his absence, the latter asked how he should support himself. For
answer _the bishop_ pointed to a procession of tradesmen with their
goods then crossing the valley at their feet.
[12] Wives were bought in England from the fifth to the eleventh
century. Herbert Spencer.—_Descriptive Sociology of England._
[13] There was another law even more odious than Marquette; the
father’s right to the price of mundium, in other words, the price of
his daughter. Legouve.—_Hist. Morales des Femmes_, p. 104.
[14] Murder under the name of war, the ruin of women under the name of
gallantry, were the chief occupations of the nobility. Pike.—_Hist.
of Crime in England._ The chief qualification for success at courts
was the power of making and appreciating mirth. The infidelities of
women were commonly the narrator’s theme, and an exhortation to avoid
matrimony was the most common form of advice given by a man to his
friend. War and intrigue were regarded as the principal amusements
of life; the acquisition of wealth the only object worth serious
consideration. A consequence of this creed was that the husband
frequently set a price upon his wife’s virtue, and made a profit out of
his own dishonor. Fathers were ready to sell their daughters.—_Ibid._
[15] Both married and single found their worst foes in their
nearest friends. The traffic in women was none the less real in
Christian England than it is now in the slave marts of Stamboul or
Constantinople.—_Ibid._ One of the most recent illustrations of the
general regard in which woman is held throughout Christendom, is the
experience of the young California heiress, Florence Blythe, who
although but fifteen years old, was in constant receipt of proposals
of marriage both at home and from abroad. Her attorney, General Hunt,
said: “I do not think there is a woman living who has had the number of
written proposals that Florence has received, but in all the letters
woman is regarded as a chattel, a thing to be bought and sold. The
constant receipt of letters of this character, and the equally constant
attempt of adventurers to gain a personal interview with the child,
at last became unendurable, and to escape such insulting persecution,
Florence suddenly married a young man of her acquaintance living near
her.” These letters, among them, from sixty titled Europeans, lords,
counts, dukes, barons, viscounts, marquises and even one prince,
confirm the statement of August Bebel, that marriage sales of women
are still as common as in the middle ages, and are expected in most
Christian countries.
[16] A husband upon his return from the Crusades, finding his wife had
been untrue, imprisoned her in a room so small she could neither stand
erect nor lie at full length; her only window looking out upon the dead
body of her lover swinging in chains.
[17] The Shoshone Indian who hires his wife out as a harlot, inflicts
capital punishment on her if she goes with another without his
knowledge. Bancroft.—_Native Races_, I; 436.
[18] Therefore a single woman for whom no bid was offered, an “old
maid” was looked upon with contempt as being of no value in the eyes of
men.
[19] _Hist. of Crime in England_, Vol. I, p. 90.
[20] By the laws of the king of Wessex, who lived at the end of the
VIII century, the purchase of wives is deliberately sanctioned; in
the preface it is stated that the compilation was drawn up with the
assistance of the Bishop of Winchester and a large assemblage of God’s
servants.—_Ibid._
[21] Nothing, says Pike, was considered but the market value of the
woman, and the adulterer was compelled to expend the equivalent of
her original price on the purchase of a new bride, whom he formally
delivered to the injured husband. Nor were these laws merely secular,
they were enacted and enforced by all the dread power of the
church.—_Ibid._
[22] In the 14th century either the female character was utterly
dissolute, or the tyranny of husbands utterly reckless, when we find
that it was no uncommon circumstance that women were strangled by
masked assassins, or walking by the river side were plunged into it.
This drowning of women gave rise to a popular proverb: “It is nothing,
only a woman being drowned.” And this condition constituted the
domestic life of England from the 12th century to the first civil war,
when the taste of men for bloodshed found wider scope, and from the
murder of women they advanced to the practice of cutting one another’s
throats. Disraeli.—_Amenities of Literature_, Vol. I., p. 95.
[23] “And they were so covetous that for a little silver they sellen
’ein daughters, ’ein sisters and ’ein own wives, to putten ’ein to
lechery.”
[24] The Church from the earliest period furnished its full portion
to the codes of our simple forefathers, that of the first Christian
king being that for the property of God and the Church (if stolen)
twelvefold compensation was to be made. Thorpe.—_Ancient Laws and
Institutions of England._
[25] _Journal of Jurisprudence_, Vol. XVI., Edinburg, 1872.
[26] Until the maiden was wedded she was kept strictly under control,
and the kind of discipline which was enforced is well illustrated by a
letter written late in the reign of Henry VI. The writer was the widow
of a landholder, and she was corresponding with the brother of the
young lady whose case she describes and whom she is anxious to serve by
finding a husband. This young lady was under the care of her mother and
the following was her condition: She might not speak with any man, not
even her mother’s servants; and she had since Easter the most part been
beaten once in the week, or twice, and sometimes thrice in a day, and
her hand was broken in two or three places. Pike.—_History of Crime in
England._
[27] Britton.—_Introduction_, p. 39. Glanville.—_De Legibius Anglica_,
p. 158.
[28] Doubtless in all ages marriages were by far oftener determined
by pecuniary considerations than by love or affection, but proofs
are wanting to show that marriage was formerly made an object of
speculation and exchange in the open market with anything like the same
effrontery as today. In our time among the propertied classes—the poor
have no need of it—marriage barter is frequently carried on with a
shamelessness which makes the phrases about the sacredness of marriage,
that some people never tire of repeating, the emptiest mockery. August
Bebel.—_Woman in the Past, Present and Future._
[29] To make women the special objects of this torture, to teach them
hardness of heart in the office of executioners, was refinement of
atrocity.... It was for slaves and women that the greatest atrocities
were reserved.—_Hist. of Crime in England._
[30] Women in England had burned women to death in the 10th century;
they had been set on the stool of filth to be mocked as brewers of bad
ale in the 11th; on the stool of filth they had been jeered as common
scolds from time immemorial; they were legally beaten by their husbands
down to a comparatively recent period. In the 14th century they were
such as circumstances had made them; strong of muscle but hard of
heart, more fit to be mothers of brigands than to rear gentle daughters
or honest sons.—_Ibid._
[31] The elder Disraeli says: “Warton, too, has observed that the
style of friendship between males in the reign of Elizabeth would not
be tolerated at the present day.” Disraeli himself declares that “a
male friend, whose life and fortunes were consecrated to another male,
who looks upon him with adoration and talks of him with excessive
tenderness, appears to us nothing less than a chimerical and monstrous
lover.”—_Amenities of Literature_, Vol. II., p. 105.
[32] Poisoning or otherwise murdering husbands was a crime visited with
peculiar severity in almost all codes. Lea.—_Superstition and Force._
[33] Blackstone says it was to be no thicker than a man’s thumb, thus
an instrument of ever varying size. According to palmistry the thumb of
a self-willed or obstinate man, a cruel man, or of a murderer, is very
large at the upper portion or ball.
[34] Petit treason may happen in three ways: By a servant killing his
master, a wife her husband, or an ecclesiastical person (either secular
or regular) his superior, to whom he owes faith and obedience. The
punishment of petit treason in a man is to be drawn and hanged, and in
a woman to be drawn and burnt.—_Commentaries_, Vol. IV., p. 203-4.
[35] But in treason of every kind the punishment of women is the same
and different from men. For as the decency due to the sex forbids the
exposing and publicly mangling their bodies, their sentence is to be
drawn (dragged) to the gallows and there be burnt alive.—_Ibid_, IV.,
p. 92.
[36] The daily press, in its minute record of events, all unwittingly
furnishes many a little item, whose primal reason only the student of
history can read. The Syracuse, N.Y., “Daily Standard,” of February
22, 1884, published from its exchanges the following incident: “An
eccentric old man in New Hampshire surprised his neighbors and friends
the other day by shouldering his gun and starting for the woods on the
morning of his wife’s funeral. On being urged to come back, he refused
saying: “She warn’t no blood relation of mine.”
[37] But now by the statute 30, George 3 c. 48, women convicted in all
cases of treason shall receive judgment to be drawn to the place of
execution, and there to be hanged by the neck till dead. Before this
humane statute women were sentenced to be burnt alive for every species
of treason.—_Commentaries_, p. 92.
[38] See decision _New York Court of Appeals_, January, 1892.
[39] ST. PETERSBURG, September 22—In April last Mrs. Aina Sainio,
wife of a professor in the State College at Travasteheuse, Finland,
was found guilty of poisoning her husband, and in accordance with the
mediaeval law, which is still in force there, she was sentenced to be
beheaded, and her body to be affixed to a beacon and burned. It was
charged that Mrs. Sainio had been unfaithful to her husband, carrying
on a liaison with one of the students at the college. She strenuously
denied this, and said her motive in killing her husband was to get the
insurance of $2,500 on his life as she was deeply in debt. The case
was carried to the Court of Appeals and today a decision was handed
down affirming the judgment of the trial court and adding to the
punishment. It transpired during the trial that Mrs. Sainio had forged
her husband’s name to checks for small sums some time before his death,
and for this offense the Court of Appeals ordered that her right hand
be cut off. Then she will be decapitated, her body fastened to a stake
covered with inflammable material and set on fire.
[40] Reported in the _London Telegraph_.
[41] _Telegraphic Report_ from Providence, R.I., September 24, 1892.
[42] Mrs. Judge Seney’s trouble.—A deserted wife suing the woman who
enticed her husband away from her. TIFFIN, O., February 14—Judge Dodge
gave his decision yesterday in the novel case of the former Mrs. George
E. Seney against the present Mrs. George E. Seney. Judge Seney is one
of the well known lawyers of Ohio, and author of a “Civil Code” that
bears his name. He married his first wife, Mrs. Anna Seney, in 1858,
and for fourteen years they lived happily together. At about that time
Mrs. Seney and Miss Walker became very intimate friends, and continued
to be so until, as is alleged, Mrs. Seney ascertained that Miss Walker
was undermining the affections of her husband. A separation between Mr.
and Mrs. Seney soon followed, and subsequently the Judge married Miss
Walker. Mrs. Seney, therefore, instituted a suit against her successor,
claiming damages to the amount of $10,000 for the seduction of her
husband.—_New York Sun._
[43] James Howard, thirty-five years old, was taken from jail at
Texarkana, Ark., on Wednesday night by a mob and lynched. He was under
arrest for horrible cruelty to his fourteen-year-old wife. The woman
says that he frequently tied her feet together while she was in a state
of nudity, and hanging her up by the feet beat her unmercifully and
threatened to kill her if she told anyone of his cruelties. On the
first of November, Howard took a common branding iron, used to brand
live stock, and heating it red hot branded a large letter “H” on his
wife’s person in two places while she was tied to a bed.
[44] “Pall Mall Gazette,” 1888.
[45] “Westminster Review,” September, 1887.
[46] Cato, the Roman (pagan), censor three centuries before the
Christian era, said: “They who beat their wives or children lay
sacrilegious hands on the most sacred things in the world. For myself,
I prefer the character of a good husband to that of a great senator.”
[47] The bill failed of passing upon the ground that the lash belonged
to the dark ages, degrading a man by its infliction.
[48] An English lady, _Mrs. Margaret Bright Lucus_, in writing a
description of this implement said: “This country has even now but
little to boast in her laws regarding woman, and your country is
burdened with similar evil laws; the Franchise is most important.”
[49] The Museum at Reading, England, contains among its curiosities a
bridle formerly used to stop the mouths of scolding women in that town.
[50] Sometimes called Timbrel, or Gum Stole.