Curious Punishments of Bygone DaysEarle, Alice Morse
History
Curious Punishments of Bygone Days
Earle, Alice Morse
Punishment -- United States -- History -- 17th century; Punishment -- United States -- History -- 18th century
"The large whipping-post painted red stood conspicuously and prominently
in the most public street in the town. It was placed in State Street
directly under the windows of a great writing school which I frequented,
and from there the scholars were indulged in the spectacle of all kinds
of punishment suited to harden their hearts and brutalize their
feelings. Here women were taken in a huge cage in which they were
dragged on wheels from prison, and tied to the post with bare backs on
which thirty or forty lashes were bestowed among the screams of the
culprit and the uproar of the mob."
The diary of a Boston school-girl of twelve, little Anna Green Winslow,
written the same year as Mr. Breck's account, gives a detailed account
of the career of one Bet Smith, through workhouse and gaol to
whipping-post, and thence to be "set on the gallows where she behaved
with great impudence."
Criminals were sentenced in lots. On September 9, 1787, in one Boston
court one burglar was sentenced to be hanged, five thieves to be
whipped, two greater thieves to be set on the gallows, and one
counterfeiter set on the pillory.
Cowper's account of the tender-hearted beadle is supplemented by a
similar performance in Boston as shown in a Boston paper of August 11,
1789. Eleven culprits were to receive in one day the "discipline of the
post." Another criminal was obtained by the Sheriff to inflict the
punishment, but he persisted in being "tender of strokes," though
ordered by the Sheriff to lay on. At last the Sheriff seized the whip
and lashed the whipper, then turned to the row of ninepins and delivered
the lashes. "The citizens who were assembled complimented the Sheriff
with three cheers for the manly determined manner in which he executed
his duty."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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