Curious Punishments of Bygone Days

								

Letter R, to pay a fine of One Hundred Dollars and Cost of Prosecution,
and to stand committed till Sentence performed."
Severe everywhere were the punishments awarded to counterfeiters. The
Continental bills bore this line: "To counterfeit this bill is Death."
In 1762 Jeremiah Dexter of Walpole, for passing on two counterfeit
dollars, "knowing them to be such," stood in the pillory for an hour;
another rogue, for the same offense, had his ears cropped.
Mr. Samuel Breck, speaking of methods of punishment in his boyhood in
Boston, in 1771, said:
"A little further up State Street was to be seen the pillory with three
or four fellows fastened by the head and hands, and standing for an hour
in that helpless posture, exposed to gross and cruel jeers from the
multitude, who pelted them constantly with rotten eggs and every
repulsive kind of garbage that could be collected."
Instances of punishment in Boston by the pillory of both men and women
are many. In the Boston Post-Boy of February, 1763, I read:
"BOSTON, JANUARY 31.--At the Superiour Court held at Charlestown last
Week, Samuel Bacon of Bedford, and Meriam Fitch wife of Benjamin Fitch
of said Bedford, were convicted of being notorious Cheats, and of having
by Fraud, Craft and Deceit, possess'd themselves of Fifteen Hundred
Johannes the property of a third Person; were sentenced to be each of
them set in the Pillory one Hour, with a Paper on each of their Breasts
and the words A CHEAT wrote in Capitals thereon, to suffer three months'
imprisonment, and to be bound to their good Behaviour for one Year and
to pay Costs."
From the Boston Chronicle, November 20, 1769:
"We learn from Worcester that on the eighth instant one Lindsay stood in
the Pillory there one hour, after which he received 30 stripes at the
public whipping-post, and was then branded in the hand his crime was
Forgery."
The use of the pillory in New England extended into this century. On the
15th of January, 1801, one Hawkins, for the crime of forgery, stood for
an hour in a pillory in Salem, and had his ears cropped. The pillory was
in use in Boston, certainly as late as 1803. In March of that year the
brigantine "Hannah" was criminally sunk at sea by its owner Robert
Pierpont and its master H. R. Story, to defraud the underwriters. The
two criminals were sentenced after trial to stand one hour in the
pillory in State Street on two days, be confined in prison for two years
and pay the costs of the prosecution. As this case was termed "a
transaction exceeding in infamy all that has hitherto appeared in the
commerce of our country," this sentence does not seem severe.
The pillory lingered long in England. Lord Thurlow was eloquent in its
defence, calling it "the restraint against licentiousness provided by
the wisdom of past ages." In 1812 Lord Ellenborough, equally warm in his
approval and endorsement, sentenced a blasphemer to the pillory for two
hours, once each month, for eighteen months; and in 1814 he ordered Lord