AN EVIL DAY--FLOGGING-TIME IN NEW CASTLE--HOW THE PUNISHMENT IS
INFLICTED--A FEW REMARKS UPON THE GENERAL MERITS OF THE SYSTEM--A
SINGULAR JUDGE--HOW GEORGE WASHINGTON BUSBY WAS SENTENCED--EMOTIONS
OF THE PRISONER--A CRUEL INFLICTION, AND A CODE THAT OUGHT TO BE
REFORMED.
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This is St. Pillory's Day. It is the day upon which humane and liberal
Delawarians hang their heads for shame at the insult offered to
civilization by the law of their State. That law this morning placed
half a dozen miserable creatures in the stocks, and then flogged them
upon their naked flesh with a cat-o'-nine-tails. It was no slight thing
to stand there wearing that wooden collar in this bitter November
weather, with the north-east wind blowing in fierce gusts from the broad
expanse of the river; and one poor wretch who endured that suffering was
so benumbed with cold that he could hardly climb down the ladder to the
ground. And when he had descended, they lashed his back until it was
covered with purple stripes. He had stolen some provisions, and he
looked as if he needed them, for he seemed hungry and forlorn and
utterly desperate with misery. It would have been a kindlier act of
Christian charity if society, instead of mutilating his body, had fed it
and clothed it properly, and placed him in some reformatory institution
where his soul could have been taken care of. But that is not the method
that prevails here.
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The gates of the prison yard were wide open when the punishment was
inflicted upon these offenders, and among the spectators were at least
two or three score children gathered to look upon the barbarous
spectacle. Nothing could induce me to permit mine to witness it. The
influence of such a scene is wholly brutalizing. The child that has seen
that sacrifice has lost some of the sweetness and tenderness of its
better nature.
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The whipping-post and pillory is a sturdy bit of timber a foot square.
Eight or nine feet from the ground it pierces a small platform, and five
feet above this there is a cross-piece which contains in each of its two
arms a hole for the neck and two holes for the wrists of the man who is
to be pilloried. The upper half of the arm lifts to admit the victim,
and then closes upon him, sometimes very tightly. It is fastened down
with a wedge-shaped key, shot into the centre-post. Beneath the platform
hangs a pair of handcuffs in which the wrists of those who are to be
flogged are placed. The whole machine looks like a gigantic cross. It is
black with age, covered with patches of green mold and moss, and
shrunken and split until the grain of the wood protrudes in ridges.
There was a time in the past when it stood, an instrument of cruel
torture, upon the public street. It was planted in the green just at the
end of the old market house, and there the criminals were lashed by the
sheriff. Any of the old men who have spent their lives in this place can
tell how, when they were boys, it was the custom for the urchins and the
loafers of the town to pelt any poor rogue who was pilloried with
whatever missiles happened to be at hand; and often the creatures thus
abused were taken down from the stocks and tied up to the post, there to
have their flesh lacerated with the leather thongs. They used to flog
women, too. They flogged women in the open street, with their garments
torn away from their bodies above the waist, and the gaping crowd
gathered about and witnessed without shame that dreadful spectacle.
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But that was more than half a century ago. Who shall say that we do not
advance in civilization? Who can assert that these people have not
acquired a higher sense of decency, when public opinion has compelled
the removal of this abominable relic of barbarism to the jail-yard, and
the performance of the penalty in another place than before the doors of
the temple where a God of mercy is worshiped? I hope that the day is not
far distant when the whipping-post and the infernal system that
sustains it will go down together, and when the people of this State
will learn that their first duty to a criminal is to strive to make him
a better man.
They say here, in apologizing for the institution, that the punishment
is not severe, because the sheriff never makes savage use of the lash.
But it is a terrible infliction, no matter how lightly the blows are
struck, for it is imposed in the presence of a multitude, and the
sufferer feels that he is for ever to be known among men as a thief. The
thongs do not always fall gently; the force of the lash depends upon the
will of the sheriff, who may kill a man with the number of blows which
in another case give no pain. I say that any law which places such
discretionary power in the hands of an executive officer who may be
bribed or frightened, or who may have some personal injury to avenge,
defeats the true end of justice. The court should fix the penalty
absolutely. They say here, also, that no man is ever flogged a second
time. That is untrue. The same men do return again and again. Some do
not; but where do they go? Why, to other communities, where they
perpetrate other crimes and become a burden upon other people. We have
no right to breed criminals and then to drive them into cities and towns
that have already enough of their own. We are under a sacred obligation
to place them in prisons supported by the money of the State, and there
to attempt to teach them arts by which they may earn their bread if they
will. In such a place a convict can be reached by those philanthropists
who realize what society owes to its criminal classes. But as he is
treated now, it is impossible that he should ever lift himself or be
lifted to a purer and better life.
Fallen angels in Delaware never rise again. Law clips their wings and
stamps upon them with its heel, and society shakes off the dust of its
feet upon them and curses them in their degradation. The gates of mercy
are shut upon them hopelessly and for ever, and they walk abroad with
the story of their shame blazoned upon them, as the women who wore the
Scarlet Letter in the old Puritan times in New England, that all the
world may read it. They know that their punishment has been fierce and
terrible and out of all proportion to their offence, and they curse
their oppressors and hate them with a bitter, unrelenting hatred. They
know they will not be allowed to reform, and that the law which should
have led them to a better future has cut them off from fellowship with
their race, robbed them of their humanity and made pariahs and outcasts
of them. They are turned to stone, and they come out of their prisons
confirmed, hopeless criminals.
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A certain judge who administered Delaware justice here once upon a time
(we will say it was a thousand years ago) was a very peculiar man in
certain of his methods. I do not know whether he was merely fond of
listening to the music of his own voice, as too many less reverend and
awful men are, or whether he really loved to torture the prisoners in
the dock, when he sentenced them, by keeping them in suspense respecting
his intentions, and by exciting hopes which he finally crushed. But he
had a way of assuming a mild and benevolent aspect as he addressed a
convicted man which was very reassuring to the unhappy wight, and then
he usually proceeded to deliver a few remarks which were so ingeniously
arranged, which expressed such tender and affectionate sympathy, which
were so highly charged with benevolence, so expressive, as it were, of a
passionate yearning for the welfare of the victim, that the latter at
last would be convinced that the judge was about to give him an
exceedingly light sentence. Just as he had gotten himself into a frame
of mind suitable to the unexpected brightness of his prospects, the
judge's custom was to bring his observations suddenly to an end, and to
hurl at the head of the convict, still with that philanthropic
expression upon his countenance, the most frightful penalty permitted by
the law.
On a certain day, while a certain historian was in court, he was engaged
in exercising a youth named Busby in this fashion. Busby, it appears,
was accused of stealing seventy-five cents' worth of old iron from
somebody, and the jury had found him guilty.
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Busby was ordered to stand up, and the judge, permitting a peculiarly
bland smile to play upon his features, gazed tenderly at the prisoner,
while he placed a small pinch of tobacco in his mouth; and then, drawing
a long breath, he began:
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"George Washington Busby, you have been found guilty by a jury of your
fellow-countrymen of an offence against society and against the peace
and dignity of the commonwealth of Delaware, and I have now to impose
upon you the penalties provided by the law. I am very, very sorry to see
you here, George, and it grieves my heart to be compelled to fulfill the
obligation devolving upon me as a judicial officer. Pause, I entreat
you, at this the very outset of your career, and reflect upon what you
are casting from you. You are a young man; you are, as it were, in the
very morning of your life; a bright and happy home is yours, and around
you are the kind parents and friends who have made you the child of
their prayers, who have guided your footsteps from infancy, who have
loved and cherished you and made for you mighty sacrifices.
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"You have a mother"--and here the judge's voice faltered and he wiped
away a tear--"a mother at whose knee you were taught to lisp your
earliest devotions, and who has watched over you and ministered to you
with that tender and fervent love that only a mother can feel. You have
a father who looked upon you with a heart swelling with pride, and who
gave to you the heritage of his honest name. Up to the time when,
yielding to the insidious wiles of the tempter, you committed this
crime, your character had been irreproachable, and it seemed as if the
brightest promises of your childhood were to have rich and beneficent
fulfillment. For you the vista of the future appeared serene and
beautiful; a pure and noble manhood seemed to await you, and all the
blessings which may be gained by an unspotted reputation, by persistent
energy and by earnest devotion to the right were to be yours."
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Here Busby began to feel considerably better. He was assured that such
a kind old man as that could not treat him with severity, and he
informed the tipstaff in a whisper that he calculated now on about sixty
days' imprisonment at the furthest.
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The judge shifted the quid in his cheek, blew his nose, and resumed:
"How difficult it is, then, for me to determine the precise measure of
your punishment! Knowing that the quality of mercy is not strained, and
that as we forgive so shall we be forgiven, how painful it is for me to
draw the line between undue leniency and the demands of outraged law!
Considering, I say, all these things, that are so much in your
favor--your youth, your happy home, where the holiest influences are
shed upon your path, where parental love covers you with its most
gracious benediction, where your devoted mother lies stricken with
anguish at the sin of her idolized son, where your aged father has his
gray hairs brought down in sorrow to the grave, where you have been
nurtured and admonished and taught to do right--"
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"Certainly he can't intend to give me more than one month," said Busby
to the tipstaff.
"Considering that this is your first offence; that your conduct hitherto
has been that of an honest young man, and that the lesson you have
learned from this bitter and terrible experience will sink deeply into
your heart; that you have opening out to you in the possible future a
life of usefulness and honor, with a prospect of redeeming this single
error and winning for yourself a respected name--"
"He can't decently give me more than twenty days after that," suggested
Busby.
The judge, after wiping the moisture from his eyes and borrowing a
morsel of tobacco from the prosecuting attorney, continued:
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"In view of all these extenuating circumstances, in view of the fact,
fully recognized by this court, that justice is not revengeful, but
exercises its highest prerogative in leading the fallen to reformation
and moral improvement--in view, I say, of the fact that you are in the
very spring-time of your existence, with the vista of the future opening
out with alluring brightness before you and giving promise of higher and
better things--in view of those sorrowing parents the child of whose
prayers you are; of that mother who guided your infant steps and cared
for you with the yearning tenderness of maternal love, of that venerable
father who looks upon you as the staff of his old age; considering, too,
that this is your first misstep from the path of duty--"
"Two weeks as sure as death!" exclaimed Mr. Busby, joyfully, to the
officer beside him.
"The path of duty," continued the judge, "and that up to the moment of
the commission of the deed you had been above suspicion and above
reproach,--in view of all this," remarked the judge, "I have thought it
my duty, minister of the law though I am, and bound though I am by my
oath to vindicate the insulted majesty of that law--"
"If he gives me more than one week, I will never trust signs again,"
murmured Busby.
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"I say that although I am bound to administer justice with an impartial
hand, I feel it to be incumbent upon me in this particular instance, in
consequence of these extenuating circumstances, to mete it out so that,
while the law will be vindicated, you may be taught that it is not cruel
or unkind, but rather is capable of giving the first generous impulse to
reformation."
"He certainly means to let me off altogether," exclaimed Busby.
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"In view, then, of these mitigating circumstances of your youth, your
previous good character, your happy prospects, your afflicted parents
and your own sincere repentance, the sentence of the court is: That you,
George Washington Busby, the prisoner at the bar, do pay seventy-five
cents restitution money and the costs of this trial, and that on
Saturday next you be whipped with twenty lashes on the bare back, well
laid on; that you be imprisoned for six months in the county jail, and
that you wear a convict's jacket in public for one year after your
release. Sheriff, remove the prisoner from the court."
Then the judge beamed a mournful but sympathetic smile upon Busby,
secured the loan of another atom of tobacco, spat on the floor and
called up the next case.
* * * * *
Mrs. Adeler, you laugh and say that I have indulged in gross
exaggeration in reproducing the sentence. Not so. I tell you that I
have known a boy of thirteen to have that condemnation, couched in
almost precisely those words, hurled at him from the bench of the New
Castle court-house because he stole a bit of iron said to be worth
seventy-five cents. And I was present among the spectators in the jail
yard when the sheriff lashed the lad until he writhed with pain. It
was infamous--utterly infamous. I cannot, perhaps, justly accuse the
judge who imposed the sentence upon the boy of indulging in the lecture
which has just been quoted. That, as I have said, may be attributed to
a magistrate who lived ten centuries ago. But the sentence is genuine,
and it was given recently. I do not blame the judge. He acted under the
authority of statutes which were created by other hands. But the law is
savagery itself, and the humane men of this State should sweep it from
existence.
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