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Curious Punishments of Bygone Days
[Illustration: The Drunkards Cloak.]
_Curious_ Punishments
_of_
Bygone Days,
_by_
Alice Morse Earle.
The Illustrations
BY FRANK HAZENPLUG
_Loompanics Unlimited
Port Townsend, Washington_
_Originally published 1896_
_Reprinted by
Loompanics Unlimited_
ISBN 0-915179-53-9
Library of Congress Catalog
Card Number 86-082642
The Contents
I THE BILBOES 1
II THE DUCKING STOOL 11
III THE STOCKS 29
IV THE PILLORY 44
V PUNISHMENTS OF AUTHORS AND BOOKS 57
VI THE WHIPPING-POST 70
VII THE SCARLET LETTER 86
VIII BRANKS AND GAGS 96
IX PUBLIC PENANCE 106
X MILITARY PUNISHMENTS 119
XI BRANDING AND MAIMING 138
_FOREWORD._
_In ransacking old court records, newspapers, diaries and letters for
the historic foundation of the books which I have written on colonial
history, I have found and noted much of interest that has not been used
or referred to in any of those books. An accumulation of notes on
old-time laws, punishments and penalties has evoked this volume. The
subject is not a pleasant one, though it often has a humorous element;
but a punishment that is obsolete gains an interest and dignity from
antiquity and its history becomes endurable because it has a past only
and no future. That men were pilloried and women ducked by our
law-abiding forbears rouses a thrill of hot indignation which dies down
into a dull ember of curiosity when we reflect that they will never be
pilloried or ducked again._
_An old-time writer dedicated his book to "All curious and ingenious
gentlemen and gentlewomen who can gain from acts of the past a delight
in the present days of virtue, wisdom and the humanities." It does not
detract from the good intent and complacency of these old words that the
writer lived in the days when the pillory, stocks and whipping-post
stood brutally rampant in every English village._
_Now, we also boast that, as Pope says:_
_"Taught by time our hearts have learned to glow
For others' good, and melt for others' woe."_
_And I too dedicate this book to all curious and ingenious gentlemen and
gentlewomen of our own days of virtue, wisdom and the humanities; and I
trust any chance reader a century hence--if such reader there be--may in
turn be not too harsh in judgment on an age that had to form powerful
societies and associations to prevent cruelty--not to hardened and
vicious criminals--but to faithful animals and innocent children._
[Illustration: Laying by the heels in the Bilboes.]
_Curious_ Punishments _of_ Bygone Days
I
THE BILBOES
There is no doubt that our far-away grandfathers, whether of English,
French, Dutch, Scotch or Irish blood, were much more afraid of ridicule
than they were even of sinning, and far more than we are of extreme
derision or mockery to-day. This fear and sensitiveness they showed in
many ways. They were vastly touchy and resentful about being called
opprobrious or bantering names; often running petulantly to the court
about it and seeking redress by prosecution of the offender. And they
were forever bringing suits in petty slander and libel cases. Colonial
court-rooms "bubbled over with scandal and gossip and spite." A creature
as obsolete as his name, a "makebayt," was ever-present in the
community, ever whispering slander, ever exciting contention, and often
also haled to court for punishment; while his opposite, a make-peace,
was everywhere sadly needed. Far-seeing magistrates declared against the
make-bait, as even guilty of stirring up barratry, or as Judge Sewall,
the old Boston Puritan termed it, at least "gravaminous."
Equally with personal libel did all good citizens and all good
Christians fiercely resent of word, not only of derision or satire, but
even of dispassionate disapproval of either government or church. A
tithe of the plain-speaking criticism cheerfully endured in politics
to-day would have provoked a civil war two centuries ago; while freedom
of judgment or expression in religious matters was ever sharply silenced
and punished in New England.
That ultra-sensitiveness which made a lampoon, a jeer, a scoff, a taunt,
an unbearable and inflaming offence, was of equal force when used
against the men of the day in punishment for real crimes and offenses.
In many--indeed, in nearly all--of the penalties and punishments of past
centuries, derision, scoffing, contemptuous publicity and personal
obloquy were applied to the offender or criminal by means of demeaning,
degrading and helpless exposure in grotesque, insulting and painful
"engines of punishment," such as the stocks, bilboes, pillory, brank,
ducking-stool or jougs. Thus confined and exposed to the free gibes and
constant mocking of the whole community, the peculiar power of the
punishment was accented. Kindred in their nature and in their force were
the punishments of setting on the gallows and of branding; the latter,
whether in permanent form by searing the flesh, or by mutilation; or
temporarily, by labeling with written placards or affixed initials.
One of the earliest of these degrading engines of confinement for public
exposure, to be used in punishment in this country, was the bilboes.
Though this instrument to "punyssche transgressours ageynste ye Kinges
Maiesties lawes" came from old England, it was by tradition derived from
Bilboa. It is alleged that bilboes were manufactured there and shipped
on board the Spanish Armada in large numbers to shackle the English
prisoners so confidently expected to be captured. This occasion may have
given them their wide popularity and employment; but this happened in
1588, and in the first volume of _Hakluyt's Voyages_, page 295, dating
some years earlier, reference is made to bilbous.
They were a simple but effective restraint; a long heavy bolt or bar of
iron having two sliding shackles, something like handcuffs, and a lock.
In these shackles were thrust the legs of offenders or criminals, who
were then locked in with a padlock. Sometimes a chain at one end of the
bilboes attached both bilboes and prisoner to the floor or wall; but
this was superfluous, as the iron bar prevented locomotion. Whether the
Spanish Armada story is true or not, bilboes were certainly much used on
board ship. Shakespeare says in _Hamlet_: "Methought I lay worse than
the mutines in the bilboes." In _Cook's Voyages_ and other sea-tales we
read of "bilboo-bolts" on sailors.
The Massachusetts magistrates brought bilboes from England as a means of
punishing refractory or sinning colonists, and they were soon in
constant use. In the very oldest court records, which are still
preserved, of the settlement of Boston--the Bay colony--appear the
frequent sentences of offenders to be placed in the bilboes. The
earliest entry is in the authorized record of the Court held at Boston
on the 7th of August, 1632. It reads thus: "Jams Woodward shall be sett
in the bilbowes for being drunk at the Newe-towne." "Newe-towne" was the
old name of Cambridge. Soon another colonist felt the bilboes for
"selling peeces and powder and shott to the Indians," ever a
bitterly-abhorred and fiercely-punished crime. And another, the same
year, for threatening--were he punished--he would carry the case to
England, was summarily and fearlessly thrust into the bilboes.
Then troublesome Thomas Dexter, with his ever-ready tongue, was hauled
up and tried on March 4, 1633. Here is his sentence:
"Thomas Dexter shal be sett in the bilbowes, disfranchized, and fyned
L15 for speking rpchfull and seditious words agt the government here
established." He also suffered in the bilboes for cursing, for
"prophane saying dam ye come." Thomas Morton of Mare-Mount, that
amusing old debauchee and roysterer, was sentenced to be "clapt into the
bilbowes." And he says "the harmeles salvages" stared at him in wonder
"like poore silly lambes" as he endured his punishment, and doubtless
some of "the Indesses, gay lasses in beaver coats" who had danced with
him around his merry Maypole and had partaken of his cask of "claret
sparkling neat" sympathized with him and cheered him in his indignity.
The next year another Newe-towne man, being penitent, Henry Bright, was
set in the bilboes for "swearynge." Another had "sleited the magistrates
in speaches." In 1635, on April 7, Griffin Montagne "shal be sett in ye
bilbowes for stealing boards and clapboards and enjoyned to move his
habitacon." Within a year we find offenders being punished in two places
for the same offence, thus degrading them far and wide; and when in
Salem they were "sett in the stockes," we find always in Boston that the
bilboes claimed its own. Women suffered this punishment as well as men.
Francis Weston's wife and others were set in the bilboes.
It is high noon in Boston in the year 1638. The hot June sun beats down
on the little town, the narrow paths, the wharfs; and the sweet-fern and
cedars on the common give forth a pungent dry hot scent that is wafted
down to the square where stands the Governor's house, the market, the
church, the homes of the gentlefolk. A crowd is gathered there around
some interesting object in the middle of the square; visitors from
Newe-towne and Salem, Puritan women and children, tawny Indian braves in
wampum and war-paint, gaily dressed sailors from two great ships lying
at anchor in the bay--all staring and whispering, or jeering and biting
the thumb. They are gathered around a Puritan soldier, garbed in
trappings of military bravery, yet in but sorry plight. For it is
training day in the Bay colony, and in spite of the long prayer with
which the day's review began, or perhaps before that pious opening
prayer, Serjeant John Evins has drunken too freely of old Sack or
Alicant, and the hot sun and the sweet wine have sent him reeling from
the ranks in disgrace. There he sits, sweltering in his great coat
"basted with cotton-wool and thus made defensive ag't Indian arrowes;"
weighed down with his tin armor, a heavy corselet covering his body, a
stiff gorget guarding his throat, clumsy tasses protecting his thighs,
all these "neatly varnished black," and costing twenty-four shillings
apiece of the town's money. Over his shoulder hangs another weight, his
bandelier, a strong "neat's leather" belt, carrying twelve boxes of
solid cartridges and a well-filled bullet-bag; and over all and heavier
than all hangs from his neck--as of lead--the great letter D. Still from
his wrist dangles his wooden gun-rest, but his "bastard musket with a
snaphance" lies with his pike degraded in the dust.
The serjeant does not move at the jeers of the sailors, nor turn away
from the wondering stare of the savages--he cannot move, he cannot turn
away, for his legs are firmly set in the strong iron bilboes which John
Winthrop sternly brought from England to the new land. Poor John Evins!
Your head aches from the fumes of the cloying sack, your legs ache from
the bonds of the clogging bilboes, your body aches from the clamps of
your trumpery armor, but you will have to sit there in distress and in
obloquy till acerb old John Norton, the pious Puritan preacher, will
come "to chide" you, as is his wont, to point out to your
fellow-citizens and to visitors your sinful fall, the disgracing
bilboes, and the great letter that brands you as a drunkard.
The decade of life of the Boston bilboes was soon to end, it was to be
"laid flat," as Sir Matthew Hale would say; a rival entered the field.
In 1639 Edward Palmer made for Boston with "planks and woodwork," a pair
of stocks.
Planks and woodwork were plentiful everywhere in the new world, and iron
and ironworkers at first equally scarce; so stocks soon were seen in
every town, and the bilboes were disused, sold perhaps for old iron,
wherein they again did good service. In Virginia the bilboes had a short
term of use in the earliest years of the settlement; the Provost-marshal
had a fee of ten shillings for "laying by the heels;" and he was
frequently employed; but there, also, stocks and pillory proved easier
of construction and attainment.
I would not be over-severe upon the bilboes in their special use in
those early colonial settlements. There had to be some means of
restraint of vicious and lawless folk, of hindering public nuisances,
and a prison could not be built in a day; the bilboes seemed an easy
settlement of the difficulty, doing effectually with one iron bar what a
prison cell does with many. It was not their use, but their glare of
publicity that was offensive. They were ever placed on offenders in the
marketplace, in front of the meeting house on lecture day, on market
day; not to keep prisoners in lonely captivity but in public obloquy;
and as has here been cited, for what appear to us to-day slight
offenses.
[Illustration: The Ducking-Stool]
II
THE DUCKING STOOL
The ducking stool seems to have been placed on the lowest and most
contempt-bearing stage among English instruments of punishment. The
pillory and stocks, the gibbet, and even the whipping-post, have seen
many a noble victim, many a martyr. But I cannot think any save the most
ignoble criminals ever sat in a ducking-stool. In all the degrading and
cruel indignities offered the many political and religious offenders in
England under the varying rules of both church and state, through the
fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the ducking-stool played
no part and secured no victims. It was an engine of punishment specially
assigned to scolding women; though sometimes kindred offenders, such as
slanderers, "makebayts," "chyderers," brawlers, railers, and women of
light carriage also suffered through it. Though gruff old Sam Johnson
said to a gentle Quaker lady: "Madam, we have different modes of
restraining evil--stocks for men, a ducking-stool for women, and a pound
for beasts;" yet men as well as women-scolds were punished by being set
in the ducking-stool, and quarrelsome married couples were ducked, tied
back-to-back. The last person set in the Rugby ducking-stool was a
brutal husband who had beaten his wife. Brewers of bad beer and bakers
of bad bread were deemed of sufficiently degraded ethical standing to be
ducked. Unruly paupers also were thus subdued.
That intelligent French traveler, Misson, who visited England about the
year 1700, and who left in his story of his travels so much valuable and
interesting information of the England of that day, gives this lucid
description of a ducking-stool:
"The way of punishing scolding women is pleasant enough. They fasten an
armchair to the end of two beams twelve or fifteen feet long, and
parallel to each other, so that these two pieces of wood with their two
ends embrace the chair, which hangs between them by a sort of axle, by
which means it plays freely, and always remains in the natural
horizontal position in which a chair should be, that a person may sit
conveniently in it, whether you raise it or let it down. They set up a
post on the bank of a pond or river, and over this post they lay, almost
in equilibrio, the two pieces of wood, at one end of which the chair
hangs just over the water. They place the woman in this chair and so
plunge her into the water as often as the sentence directs, in order to
cool her immoderate heat."
The adjectives pleasant and convenient as applied to a ducking-stool
would scarcely have entered the mind of any one but a Frenchman. Still
the chair itself was sometimes rudely ornamented. The Cambridge stool
was carved with devils laying hold of scolds. Others were painted with
appropriate devices such as a man and woman scolding. Two Plymouth
ducking-stools still preserved are of wrought iron of good design. The
Sandwich ducking-stool bore the motto:
"Of members ye tonge is worst or beste
An yll tonge oft doth breede unreste."
We read in Blackstone's _Commentaries_:
"A common scold may be indicted, and if convicted shall be sentenced to
be placed in a certain engine of correction called the trebucket,
castigatory, or ducking-stool."
The trebuchet, or trebucket, was a stationary and simple form of a
ducking machine consisting of a short post set at the water's edge with
a long beam resting on it like a see-saw; by a simple contrivance it
could be swung round parallel to the bank, and the culprit tied in the
chair affixed to one end. Then she could be swung out over the water and
see-sawed up and down into the water. When this machine was not in use,
it was secured to a stump or bolt in the ground by a padlock, because
when left free it proved too tempting and convenient an opportunity for
tormenting village children to duck each other.
A tumbrel, or scold's-cart, was a chair set on wheels and having very
long wagon-shafts, with a rope attached to them about two feet from the
end. When used it was wheeled into a pond backward, the long shafts were
suddenly tilted up, and the scold sent down in a backward plunge into
the water. When the ducking was accomplished, the tumbrel was drawn out
of the water by the ropes. Collinson says in his _History of
Somersetshire_, written in 1791: "In Shipton Mallet was anciently set up
a tumbrel for the correction of unquiet women." Other names for a like
engine were gumstool and coqueen-stool.
Many and manifold are the allusions to the ducking-stool in English
literature. In a volume called _Miscellaneous Poems_, written by
Benjamin West and published in 1780, is a descriptive poem entitled _The
Ducking-stool_, which runs thus:
"There stands, my friend, in yonder pool
An engine called the ducking-stool;
By legal power commanded down
The joy and terror of the town.
If jarring females kindle strife,
Give language foul, or lug the coif,
If noisy dames should once begin
To drive the house with horrid din,
Away, you cry, you'll grace the stool;
We'll teach you how your tongue to rule.
The fair offender fills the seat
In sullen pomp, profoundly great;
Down in the deep the stool descends,
But here, at first, we miss our ends;
She mounts again and rages more
Than ever vixen did before.
So, throwing water on the fire
Will make it but burn up the higher.
If so, my friend, pray let her take
A second turn into the lake,
And, rather than your patience lose,
Thrice and again repeat the dose.
No brawling wives, no furious wenches,
No fire so hot but water quenches."
In Scotland "flyting queans" sat in ignominy in cucking-stools. Bessie
Spens was admonished: "Gif she be found flyteing with any neighbour, man
or wife, and specially gains Jonet Arthe, she shall be put on the
cuck-stule and sit there twenty-four hours." A worthless fellow, Sande
Hay, "for troublance made upon Andro Watson, is discernit for his
demerits to be put in the cuck-stule, there to remain till four hours
after noon." The length of time of punishment--usually twenty-four
hours--would plainly show there was no attendant ducking; and this
cuck-stool, or cucking-stool, must not be confounded with the
ducking-stool, which dates to the days of Edward the Confessor. The
cuck-stool was simply a strong chair in which an offender was fastened,
thus to be hooted at or pelted at by the mob. Sometimes, when placed on
a tumbrel, it was used for ducking.
At the time of the colonization of America the ducking-stool was at the
height of its English reign; and apparently the amiability of the lower
classes was equally at ebb. The colonists brought their tempers to the
new land, and they brought their ducking-stools. Many minor and some
great historians of this country have called the ducking-stool a Puritan
punishment. I have never found in the hundreds of pages of court records
that I have examined a single entry of an execution of ducking in any
Puritan community; while in the "cavalier colonies," so called, in
Virginia and the Carolinas, and in Quaker Pennsylvania, many duckings
took place, and in law survived as long as similar punishments in
England.
In the Statute Books of Virginia from Dale's time onward many laws may
be found designed to silence idle tongues by ducking. One reads:
"Whereas oftentimes many brabling women often slander and scandalize
their neighbours, for which their poore husbands are often brought into
chargeable and vexatious suits and cast in great damages, be it enacted
that all women found guilty be sentenced to ducking."
Others dated 1662 are most explicit.
"The court in every county shall cause to be set up near a Court House a
Pillory, a pair of Stocks, a Whipping Post and a Ducking-Stool in such
place as they think convenient, which not being set up within six month
after the date of this act the said Court shall be fined 5,000 lbs. of
tobacco.
"In actions of slander caused by a man's wife, after judgment past for
damages, the woman shall be punished by Ducking, and if the slander be
such as the damages shall be adjudged as above 500 lbs. of Tobacco, then
the woman shall have ducking for every 500 lbs. of Tobacco adjudged
against the husband if he refuse to pay the Tobacco."
The fee of a sheriff or constable for ducking was twenty pounds of
tobacco.
_The American Historical Record_, Vol. I, gives a letter said to have
been written to Governor Endicott, of Massachusetts, in 1634, by one
Thomas Hartley, from Hungars Parish, Virginia. It gives a graphic
description of a ducking-stool, and an account of a ducking in Virginia.
I quote from it:
"The day afore yesterday at two of ye clock in ye afternoon I saw this
punishment given to one Betsey wife of John Tucker who by ye violence of
her tongue has made his house and ye neighborhood uncomfortable. She was
taken to ye pond near where I am sojourning by ye officer who was joined
by ye Magistrate and ye Minister Mr. Cotton who had frequently
admonished her and a large number of People. They had a machine for ye
purpose yt belongs to ye Parish, and which I was so told had been so
used three times this Summer. It is a platform with 4 small rollers or
wheels and two upright posts between which works a Lever by a Rope
fastened to its shorter or heavier end. At ye end of ye longer arm is
fixed a stool upon which sd Betsey was fastened by cords, her gown tied
fast around her feete. The Machine was then moved up to ye edge of ye
pond, ye Rope was slackened by ye officer and ye woman was allowed to go
down under ye water for ye space of half a minute. Betsey had a stout
stomach, and would not yield until she had allowed herself to be ducked
5 several times. At length she cried piteously, Let me go Let me go, by
God's help I'll sin no more. Then they drew back ye Machine, untied ye
Ropes and let her walk home in her wetted clothes a hopefully penitent
woman."
Bishop Meade, in his _Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia_,
tells of a "scolding quean" who was ordered to be ducked three times
from the yard arm of a vessel lying in James River. A woman in
Northampton County, Virginia, suffered a peculiarly degrading punishment
for slander. In the lack of a ducking-stool she was "drawen ouer the
Kings Creeke at the starne of a boate or Canoux, also the next Saboth
day in the time of diuine seruise" was obliged to present herself before
the minister and congregation, and acknowledge her fault and beg
forgiveness. From the _Decisions of Virginia General Court_ now being
printed by the Virginia Historical Society, we learn of one Margaret
Jones that at a court held at "James-Citty" on the 12th of October,
1626: "for ye severall offences aforenamed, of ye said Margaret Jones,
yt Shee bee toughed or dragged at a boats Starne in ye River from ye
shoare unto the Margaret & John and thence unto the shoare againe."
Toughed would seem a truly appropriate word for this ordeal. The provost
marshal's fees decreed by this court at this time were ten shillings
"for punishing any _man_ by ducking."
In 1634 two women were sentenced to be either drawn from King's Creek
"from one Cowpen to another at the starn of a boat or kanew," or to
present themselves before the congregation and ask public forgiveness of
each other and God.
In 1633 it was ordered that a ducking-stool be built in every county in
Maryland, but I have no proof that they were ever built or used, though
it is probable they were. At a court-baron at St. Clements, the county
was prosecuted for not having one of these "public conveniences."
Half a century elapsed after the settlement of Massachusetts ere that
commonwealth ordered a ducking-stool. On the 15th of May, 1672, while
Richard Bellingham was Governor, the court at Massachusetts Bay passed
this law:
"Whereas there is no expresse punishment by any law hitherto established
affixed to the evill practise of sundry persons by exorbitancy of the
tonge in rayling and scolding, it is therefore ordered, that all such
persons convicted, before any Court or magistrate that hath propper
cognizance of the cause for rayling or scolding, shalbe gagged or sett
in a ducking stoole & dipt ouer head & eares three times in some
convenient place of fresh or salt water as the Court or magistrate shall
judge meete."
Governor Bellingham's sister was a notorious scold, who suffered death
as a witch.
John Dunton, writing from Boston in 1686, does not note the presence of
a ducking-stool, but says:
"Scolds they gag and set them at their own Doors for certain hours
together, for all comers and goers to gaze at; were this a Law in
England and well executed it wou'd in a little Time prove an Effectual
Remedy to cure the Noise that is in many Women's heads."
This was a law well-executed at the time in Scotland, though Dunton was
ignorant of it.
There are no entries to show that the law authorizing ducking ever was
executed in Massachusetts nor in Maine, where a dozen towns--Kittery,
York and others--were fined for "having no coucking-stool." It was
ordered on Long Island that every Court of Sessions should have a
ducking-stool; but nothing exists in their records to prove that the
order was ever executed, or any Long Island woman ducked; nor is there
proof that there was in New York city a ducking-stool, though orders
were issued for one; a Lutheran minister of that city excused himself
for striking a woman who angered him by her "scholding" because she was
not punished by law therefor.
Pennsylvania, mild with the thees and thous of non-belligerent Quakers,
did not escape scolding women. In 1708 the Common Council of
Philadelphia ordered a ducking-stool to be built. In 1718 it was still
lacking, and still desired, and still necessary.
"Whereas it has been frequently and often presented by several former
Grand Jurys for this City the Necessity of a Ducking-stool and house of
Correction for the just punishment of scolding Drunken Women, as well as
divers other profligate and Unruly persons in this Town who are become a
Publick Nuisance and disturbance to the Town in Generall, Therefore we
the present Grand Jury Do Earnestly again present the same to the Court
of Quarter Sessions for the City Desireing their Immediate Care That
these Public Conveniances may not be any Longer Delay'd but with all
possible Speed provided for the Detention and Quieting such Disorderly
Persons."
For several years later the magistrates clamored for a ducking-stool,
and the following indictment was brought against an unruly woman:
"City of Philadelphia. We the grand Inquest for our Lord the King upon
respective oaths and affirmations Do present that Mary wife of John
Austin late of Philadelphia, Cordwainer, the twenty-ninth day of
September and divers other days and times as well before as after in the
High City Ward in the City afforsd within the Jurisdiction of this
Court was and yet is a Common Scold, And the Peace of our Lord the King
a common and publick Disturber, And Strife and Debate among her
neighbours a Comon Sower and Mover, To the Great Disburbance of the
Leige Subjects of our sd Lord the King Inhabiting the City afforsd, And
to the Evill Example of other Such Cases & Delinquents And also agt the
Peace of our Lord the King his Crown and Dignity."
As late as 1824 a Philadelphia scold was sentenced by this same Court of
Sessions to be ducked; but the punishment was not inflicted, as it was
deemed obsolete and contrary to the spirit of the time.
In 1777 a ducking-school was ordered at the confluence of the Ohio and
Monongahela rivers--and doubtless it was erected and used.
In the year 1811, at the Supreme Court at Milledgeville, Georgia, one
"Miss Palmer," who, the account says, "seems to have been rather glib on
the tongue," was indicted, tried, convicted and punished for scolding,
by being publicly ducked in the Oconee River. The editor adds:
"Numerous spectators attended the execution of the sentence." Eight
years later the Grand Jury of Burke County, of the same state, presented
Mary Cammell as a "common scold and disturber of the peacable
inhabitants of the County." The _Augusta Chronicle_ says this of the
indictment:
"We do not know the _penalty_, or if there be any, attached to the
offense of _scolding_; but for the information of our Burke neighbours
we would inform them that the late lamented and distinguished Judge
Early decided, some years since, when a modern Xantippe was brought
before him, that she should undergo the _punishment of lustration_ by
immersion three several times in the _Oconee_. Accordingly she was
confined to the tail of a cart, and, accompanied by the hooting of a
mob, conducted to the river, where she was publicly ducked, in
conformity with the sentence of the court. Should this punishment be
accorded Mary Cammell, we hope, however, it may be attended with a more
salutary effect than in the case we have just alluded to--the unruly
subject of which, each time as she rose from the watery element,
impiously exclaimed, with a ludicrous gravity of countenance, 'Glory to
God.'"
It is doubtful whether these Georgia duckings were done with a regularly
constructed ducking-stool; the cart was probably run down into the
water.
One of the latest, and certainly the most notorious sentences to ducking
was that of Mrs. Anne Royal, of Washington, D. C., almost in our own
day. This extraordinary woman had lived through an eventful career in
love and adventure; she had been stolen by the Indians when a child, and
kept by them fifteen years; then she was married to Captain Royall, and
taught to read and write. She traveled much, and wrote several
vituperatively amusing books. She settled down upon Washington society
as editor of a newspaper called the "Washington Paul Pry" and of
another, the "Huntress"; and she soon terrorized the place. No one in
public office was spared, either in personal or printed abuse, if any
offense or neglect was given to her. A persistent lobbyist, she was
shunned like the plague by all congressmen. John Quincy Adams called her
an itinerant virago. She was arraigned as a common scold before Judge
William Cranch, and he sentenced her to be ducked in the Potomac River.
She was, however, released with a fine, and appears to us to-day to have
been insane--possibly through over-humored temper.
[Illustration: The Stocks.]
III
THE STOCKS
One of the earliest institutions in every New England community was a
pair of stocks. The first public building was a meeting-house, but often
before any house of God was builded, the devil got his restraining
engine. It was a true English punishment, and to a degree, a Scotch; and
was of most ancient date. In the _Cambridge Trinity College Psalter_, an
illuminated manuscript illustrating the manners of the twelfth century,
may be seen the quaint pictures of two men sitting in stocks, while two
others flout them. So essential to due order and government were the
stocks that every village had them. Sometimes they were movable and
often were kept in the church porch, a sober Sunday monitor. Shakespeare
says in King Lear:
"Fetch forth the stocks
You stubborn ancient knave!"
In England, petty thieves, unruly servants, wife-beaters, hedge-tearers,
vagrants, Sabbath-breakers, revilers, gamblers, drunkards,
ballad-singers, fortune-tellers, traveling musicians and a variety of
other offenders, were all punished by the stocks. Doubtless the most
notable person ever set in the stocks for drinking too freely was that
great man, Cardinal Wolsey. About the year 1500 he was the incumbent at
Lymington, and getting drunk at a village feast, he was seen by Sir
Amyas Poulett, a strict moralist, and local justice of the peace, who
humiliated the embryo cardinal by thrusting him in the stocks.
The Boston magistrates had a "pair of bilbowes" doubtless brought from
England; but these were only temporary, and soon stocks were ordered. It
is a fair example of the humorous side of Puritan law so frequently and
unwittingly displayed that the first malefactor set in these strong new
stocks was the carpenter who made them:
"Edward Palmer for his extortion in taking L1, 13s., 7d. for the plank
and woodwork of Boston stocks is fyned L5 & censured to bee sett an
houre in the stocks."
Thus did our ancestors make the "punishment fit the crime." It certainly
was rather a steep charge, for Carpenter Robert Bartlett of New London
made not long after "a pair of stocks with nine holes fitted for the
irons," and only charged thirteen shillings and fourpence for his work.
The carpenter of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, likewise, as Pepys said of a
new pair of stocks in his neighborhood, took handsel of the stocks of
his own making.
In Virginia a somewhat kindred case was that of one Mr. Henry Charlton
of Hungar's Parish in 1633. For slandering the minister, Mr. Cotton,
Charlton was ordered "to make a pair of stocks and set in them several
Sabbath days after divine service, and then ask Mr. Cotton's forgiveness
for using offensive words concerning him."
In Maryland in 1655 another case may be cited. One William Bramhall
having been convicted of signing a rebellious petition, was for a second
offense of like nature ordered to be "at the Charge of Building a Pair
of Stocks and see it finished within one Month." There is no reference
to his punishment through the stocks of his own manufacture.
With a regard for the comfort of the criminal strangely at variance with
what Cotton Mather termed "the Gust of the Age," and a profound
submission to New England climate, a Massachusetts law, enacted June 18,
1645, declares that "he yt offens in excessive and longe drinkinge, he
shalbe sett in the stocks for three howers _when the weather is
seasonable_."
Just as soon as the Boston stocks had been well warmed by Carpenter
Palmer they promptly started on a well-filled career of usefulness. They
gathered in James Luxford, who had been "psented for having two wifes."
He had to pay a fine of L100 and be set in the stocks one hour upon the
following market-day after lecture, and on the next lecture-day also,
where he could be plainly seen by every maid and widow in the little
town, that there might be no wife Number Three. Then a watchman of the
town, "for drinking several times of strong waters," took his turn. Soon
a man for "uncivil carriages" was "stocked." Every town was enjoined to
build stocks. In 1655 Medfield had stocks, and in 1638 Newbury and
Concord were fined for "the want of stocks," and Newbury was given time
till the next court session to build them. The town obeyed the order,
and soon John Perry was set in them for his "abusive carriage to his
wife and child." Dedham and Watertown were "psent'd" in 1639 for "the
want of stocks." Ipswich already had them, for John Wedgwood that same
year was set in the stocks simply for being in the company of drunkards.
In Yarmouth, a thief who stole flax and yarn, and in Rehoboth, one who
stole an Indian child, were "stocked." Portsmouth, New Hampshire, built
stocks and a cage. Plymouth had a constant relay of Quakers to keep her
stocks from ever lying idle, as well as other offenders, such as Ann
Savory, of unsavory memory. Rhode Island ordered "good sufficient
stocks" in every town. In the southern and central colonies the stocks
were a constant force. The Dutch favored the pillory and whipping-post,
but a few towns had stocks. We find the Heer officer in Beverwyck
(Albany) dispensing justice in a most summary manner. When Martin de
Metslaer wounded another in a drunken brawl, the authorities hunted
Martin up, "early hauled him out of bed and set him in the stocks."
Connecticut was a firm advocate of the stocks, and plentiful examples
might be given under New Haven and Connecticut laws.
Web Adey, who was evidently a "single-man," for "two breaches of the
Saboth" was ordered to be set in the stocks, then to find a master, and
if not complying with this second order the town would find one for him
and sell him for a term of service. This was the arbitrary and not
unusual method of disposing of lazy, lawless and even lonely men, as
well as of more hardened criminals, who, when sold for a term of
service, usually got into fresh disgrace and punishment through
disobedience, idleness and running away.
I do not find many sentences of women to be set in the stocks. Jane
Boulton of Plymouth was stocked for reviling the magistrates; one of her
neighbors sat in the stocks and watched her husband take a flogging.
Goody Gregory of Springfield in 1640, being grievously angered by a
neighbor, profanely abused her, saying "Before God I could break thy
head." She acknowledged her "great sine and fault" like a woman, but she
paid her fine and sat in the stocks like a man, since she swore like
one.
And it should be noted that the stocks were not for the punishment of
_gentlemen_, they were thoroughly plebeian. The pillory was aristocratic
in comparison, as was also branding with a hot iron.
Fiercely hedged around was divine worship. The stocks added their
restraint by threatened use. "All persons who stand out of the
meeting-house during time of service, to be set in the stocks."
In Plymouth in 1665 "all persons being without the dores att the meeting
house on the Lords daies in houres of exercise, demeaneing themselves by
jesting, sleeping, and the like, if they shall psist in such practices
hee (the tithing-man) shall sett them in the stocks."
Regard for church and state were often combined by making public
confession of sin in church with punishment in front of the church
after the service. This was simply a carrying out of English customs.
Mr. Hamilton, author of that interesting book, _Quarter Sessions from
Queen Elizabeth to Queen Anne_, says, dealing with Devonshire:
"A favorite punishment for small offenses, such as resisting the
constable, was the stocks. The offender had to come into the church at
morning prayer, and say publicly that he was sorry; he was then set in
the stocks until the end of the evening prayer. The punishment was
generally repeated on the next market-day."
It seems scarcely necessary to describe the shape and appearance of
stocks, for pictures of them are so common. They were formed by two
heavy timbers the upper one of which could be raised, and when lowered,
was held in place by a lock. In these two timbers were cut two
half-circle notches which met two similar notches when the upper timber
was in place and thus formed round holes, holding firmly in place the
legs of the imprisoned culprit; sometimes the arms were thrust into
smaller holes similarly formed. Usually, however, the culprit sat on a
low bench with simply his legs confined. Thus securely restrained, he
was powerless to escape the jests and jeers of every idler in the
community.
The stocks were the scene of many striking figures, and many amusing
ones; what a sight was that when an English actor who had caused the
playing of the Midsummer-Night's Dream in the very house of the Bishop
of Lincoln, and on Sunday, too, was set in stocks at the Bishop's gate
with an ass's head beside him and a wisp of hay--in derision of the part
he had played, that of Bottom the weaver. This in 1631--after both
Plymouth and Boston had been settled.
And the stocks were not without their farcical side in New England.
Governor Winthrop's account of the exploits of a Boston Dogberry in 1644
is certainly amusing.
"There fell out a troublesome business in Boston. An English sailor
happened to be drunk, and was carried to his lodging, and the constable
(a godly man and much zealous against such disorders), hearing of it,
found him out, being upon his bed asleep, so he awaked him, and led him
to the stocks, no magistrate being at home. He being in the stocks, one
of La Tour's French gentlemen visitors in Boston lifted up the stocks
and let him out. The constable, hearing of it, went to the Frenchman
(being then gone and quiet) and would needs carry _him_ to the stocks.
The Frenchman offered to yield himself to go to prison, but the
constable, not understanding his language pressed him to go to the
stocks: the Frenchman resisted and drew his sword; with that company
came in and disarmed him, and carried him by force to the stocks, but
soon after the constable took him out and carried him to prison, and
presently after, took him forth again, and delivered him to La Tour.
Much tumult was there about this: many Frenchmen were in town, and other
strangers, who were not satisfied with this dealing of the constable yet
were quiet. In the morning the magistrate examined the cause, and sent
for La Tour, who was much grieved for his servant's miscarriage, and
also for the disgrace put upon him (for in France it is a most
ignominious thing to be laid in the stocks), but yet he complained not
of any injury, but left him wholly with the magistrates to do with him
what they pleased, etc. ... The constable was the occasion of all this
transgressing the bounds of his office, and that in six things. 1. In
fetching a man out of his lodging that was asleep upon his bed, and
without any warrant from authority. 2. In not putting a hook upon the
stocks, nor setting some to guard them. 3. In laying hands upon the
Frenchman that had opened the stocks when he was gone and quiet. 4. In
carrying him to prison without warrant. 5. In delivering him out of
prison without warrant. 6. In putting such a reproach upon a stranger
and a gentleman when there was no need, for he knew he would be
forthcoming and the magistrate would be at home that evening; but such
are the fruits of ignorant and misguided zeal.... But the magistrates
thought not convenient to lay these things to the constable's charge
before the assembly, but rather to admonish him for it in private, lest
they should have discouraged and discountenanced an honest officer."
Truly this is a striking and picturesque scene in colonial life, one
worthy of Hogarth's pencil. The bronzed English sailor, inflamed with
drink, ear-ringed, pigtailed, with short, wide, flapping trousers and
brave with sash and shining cutlass; the gay, volatile Frenchman, in the
beautiful and courtly dress of his day and nation, all laces and
falbalas; and the solemn pragmatic Puritan tipstaff, with long wand of
black and white, and horn lanthorn, with close-cropped head, sad-colored
in garments, severe of feature, zealous in duty; and the spectators
standing staring at the stocks; Indian stragglers, fair Puritan maidens,
fierce sailor-men, a pious preacher or sober magistrate--no lack of
local color in that picture.
It is interesting to note in all the colonies the attempt to exterminate
all idle folk and idle ways. The severity of the penalties were so
salutary in effect, that as Mrs. Goodwin says in her _Colonial
Cavalier_, they soon would have exterminated even that social pest, the
modern tramp. Vagrants, and those who were styled "transients," were
fiercely abhorred and cruelly spurned. I have found by comparison of
town records that they were often whipped from town to town, only to be
thrust forth in a few weeks with fresh stripes to another grudged
resting place. Such entries as this of the town of Westerly, Rhode
Island, might be produced in scores:
"September 26, 1748. That the officer shall take the said transient
forthwith to some publick place in this town and strip him from the
waist upward, & whyp him twenty strypes well layd on his naked back, and
then be by said officer transported out of this town."
The appearance of crime likewise had to be avoided. In 1635 Thomas Petet
"for suspition of slander, idleness and stubbornness is to be severely
whipt and kept in hold."
More shocking and still more summary was the punishment meted out to a
Frenchman who was _suspected_ only of setting fire to Boston in the year
1679. He was ordered to stand in the pillory, have both ears cut off,
pay the charges of the court, and lie in prison in bonds of five hundred
pounds until sentence was performed.
These Massachusetts magistrates were not the only ones to sentence
punishment on suspicion. In Scotland one Richardson, a tailor, being
"accusit of pickrie," or pilfering, was adjudged to be punished with
"twelve straiks with ane double belt, because there could be nae
sufficient proof gotten, but vehement suspition."
Writing of punishments of bygone days, an English rhymester says:
"Each mode has served its turn, and played a part
For good or ill with man; but while the bane
Of drunkenness corrupts the nation's heart--
Discrediting our age--methinks the reign
Of stocks, at least, were well revived again."
There is, in truth, a certain fitness in setting in the stocks for
drunkenness; a firm confining of the wandering uncertain legs; a fixing
in one spot for quiet growing sober, and meditating on the misery of
drunkenness, a fitness that with the extreme of publicity removed, or
the wantonness of the spectators curbed, perhaps would not be so bad a
restraining punishment after all. Some of the greatness and self-control
of the later years of Cardinal Wolsey's life may have come from those
hours of mortification and meditation spent in the stocks. And over the
stocks might be set "a paper" as of yore, bearing in capital letters the
old epitaph found in solemn warning of eternity on many an ancient
tombstone but literally applicable in this temporal matter.
"All Ye who see the State of Me
Think of the Glass that Runs for Thee."
IV
THE PILLORY
Hawthorne says in his immortal _Scarlet Letter_:
"This scaffold constituted a portion of a penal machine which now, for
two or three generations past, has been merely historical or
traditionary among us, but was held in the old time to be as effectual
in the promotion of good citizenship as ever was the guillotine among
the terrorists of France. It was, in short, the platform of the pillory;
and above it rose the framework of that instrument of discipline, so
fashioned as to confine the human head in its tight grasp, and thus hold
it up to the public gaze. The very ideal of ignominy was embodied and
made manifest in this contrivance of wood and iron. There can be no
outrage, methinks--against our common nature--whatever be the
delinquencies of the individual--no outrage more flagrant than to
forbid the culprit to hide his face for shame."
[Illustration: The Pillory.]
This "essence of punishment"--the pillory or stretch-neck--can be traced
back to a remote period in England and on the Continent--certainly to
the twelfth century. In its history, tragedy and comedy are equally
blended; and martyrdom and obloquy are alike combined. Seen in a
prominent position in every village and town, its familiarity of
presence was its only retrieving characteristic; near church-yard and in
public square was it ever found; local authorities forfeited the right
to hold a market unless they had a pillory ready for use.
A description of a pillory is not necessary to one who has read any
illustrated history of the English Church, of the Quakers, Dissenters,
or of the English people; for the rude prints of political and religious
sufferers in the pillory have been often reproduced. Douce, in his
_Illustrations of Shakespeare_ gives six different forms of the pillory.
It was an upright board, hinged or divisible in twain, with a hole in
which the head was set fast, and usually with two openings also for the
hands. Often the ears were nailed to the wood on either side of the
head-hole. Examples exist of a small finger-pillory or thumb-stocks, but
are rare.