[Footnote 530: Already in 1673, for having an illegitimate child and imposing it on her husband, a woman had been sentenced by the court, "if found in this Colony two months after this date that shee stands in the markett place on a stoole for one hower w^{th} a paper on hir breast w^{th} y^e Inscription THVS I STAND FOR MY ADVLTEROVS AND WHORISH CARRIAGE and that on a lecture day next after the lecture and then be seuerely whipt w^{th} thirty stripes."--NOBLE'S _Records of the Court of Assistants_, I, 10.] [Footnote 531: _Acts and Resolves_, I, 171. This provision seems to have been retained until it was omitted in the act of Feb. 17, 1785: _The Perpet. Laws of the Com. of Mass._ (Boston, 1789), 203, 204.] Apparently writers have thus far failed to discover positive evidence that the provision of this act regarding the capital letter was ever carried out. A search in the manuscript records of the superior court of judicature, however, has disclosed several interesting cases. The earliest sentence occurred in March, 1707, when Mathew Fuller and Hannah Parker were indicted before a superior court at Plymouth. In the exact terms of the statute Hannah was sentenced to be set on the gallows, receive thirty stripes upon her naked back, and forever after to wear the capital _A_. But, singularly enough, her paramour was acquitted, no reason being assigned therefor either in the court record or in the files.[532] Again in 1721 Jemima Colefix, for sinning with a free negro and bearing a mulatto child, received a similar sentence; and in this case also the accused man was acquitted of being the putative father as had been charged.[533] The next case is dated February 9, 1730-31; and it shows that men as well as women had to endure this penalty. Before a court held in Boston "the jurors present John Warren, miller, and Rachel Gould for adultery," both being married persons. Although they pleaded not guilty, they were each set on the gallows, given thirty-nine stripes, and condemned to wear the capital letter.[534] Twenty years later, on September 26, 1752, "Daniel Bayley, cooper, and Mary Rainer" received the same punishment, except that they each suffered forty stripes, the full number allowed by the statute.[535] Finally after the lapse of thirty years more, just as the War of Independence was drawing to a close, we learn from the records that, following the usual stripes and exposure on the scaffold, Jerusha Doolittle was condemned to wear the fatal _A_ as a badge of shame "forever."[536] [Footnote 532: _MSS. Records of the Superior Court of Judicature_, III (1700-14), fol. 206. This decree may not actually have been carried out. The record concludes, "she being big with child the sentence was suspended for the present."]