Curious Punishments of Bygone Days

								

for heroes. Who can read unmoved that painful, that pathetic account of
the punishment of Dr. Bastwick. His weeping wife stood on a stool and
kissed his poor pilloried face, and when his ears were cut off she
placed them in a clean handkerchief and took them away, with emotions
unspeakable and undying love.
De Foe said, in his famous Hymn to the Pillory:


"Tell us, great engine, how to understand
Or reconcile the justice of this land;
How Bastwick, Prynne, Hunt, Hollingsby and Pye--

    Men of unspotted honesty--

    Men that had learning, wit and sense,

    And more than most men have had since,

    Could equal title to thee claim

    With Oates and Fuller, men of fouler fame."
Lecture-day, as affording in New England, in the pious community, the
largest gathering of reproving spectators, was the day chosen in
preference for the performance of public punishment by the pillory.
Hawthorne says of the Thursday Lecture: "The tokens of its observance
are of a questionable cast. It is in one sense a day of public shame;
the day on which transgressors who have made themselves liable to the
minor severities of the Puritan law receive their reward of ignominy."
Thus Nicholas Olmstead, in Connecticut, is to "stand on the pillory at
Hartford the next lecture-day." He was to be "sett on a lytle before the
beginning and to stay thereon a lytle after the end."
The disgrace of the pillory clung, though the offence punished was not
disgraceful. Thus in the year 1697 a citizen of Braintree, William
Veasey, was set in the pillory for ploughing on a Thanksgiving day,
which had been appointed in gratitude for the escape of King William
from assassination. The stiff old Braintree rebel declared that James
II was his rightful king. Five years later Veasey was elected a member
of the General Court, but was not permitted to serve as he had been in
the pillory.
Throughout the Massachusetts jurisdiction the pillory was in use. In
1671 one Mr. Thomas Withers for "surriptisiously endeavoring to prevent
the Providence of God by putting in several votes for himself as an
officer at a town meeting" was ordered to stand two hours in the pillory
at York, Maine. Shortly after (for he was an ingenious rogue) he was
similarly punished for "an irregular way of contribution," for putting
large sums of money into the contribution box in meeting to induce
others to give largely, and then again "surriptisiously" taking his gift
back again.
There was no offense in the southern colonies more deplored, more
reprobated, more legislated against than what was known as "ingrossing,
forestalling, or regrating."
This was what would to-day be termed a brokerage or speculative sale,
such as buying a cargo about to arrive, and selling at retail, buying a
large quantity of any goods in a market to re-sell, or any form of
huckstering. Its prevalence was held to cause dearth, famine and
despair; English "regratours" and forestallers were frequently