Curious Punishments of Bygone Days

								

whipping-post became the usual substitute for the cart, but the force of
the blows was not lightened.
The poet Cowper has left in one of his letters an amusing account of
a sanguinary whipping which he witnessed. The thief had stolen some
ironwork at a fire at Olney in 1783, and had been tried, and sentenced
to be whipped at the cart-tail.

"The fellow seemed to show great fortitude, but it was all an
imposition. The beadle who whipped him had his left hand filled with red
ochre, through which, after every stroke, he drew the lash of the whip,
leaving the appearance of a wound upon the skin, but in reality not
hurting him at all. This being perceived by the constable who followed
the beadle to see that he did his duty, he (the constable) applied the
cane without any such management or precaution to the shoulders of the
beadle. The scene now became interesting and exciting. The beadle could
by no means be induced to strike the thief hard, which provoked the
constable to strike harder; and so the double flogging continued until a
lass of Silver End, pitying the pityful beadle thus suffering under the
hands of the pityless constable, joined the procession, and placing
herself immediately behind the constable seized him by his capillary
pigtail, and pulling him backwards by the same, slapped his face with
Amazonian fury. This concentration of events has taken more of my paper
than I intended, but I could not forbear to inform you how the beadle
thrashed the thief, the constable the beadle, and the lady the
constable, and how the thief was the only person who suffered nothing."
As a good, sound British institution, and to have familiar home-like
surroundings in the new strange land, the whipping-post was promptly set
up, and the whip set at work in all the American colonies. In the orders
sent over from England for the restraint of the first settlement at
Salem, whipping was enjoined, "as correccon is ordaned for the fooles
back"--and fools' backs soon were found for the "correccon"; tawny skins
and white shared alike in punishment, as both Indians and white men were
partakers in crime. Scourgings were sometimes given on Sabbath days and
often on lecture days, to the vast content and edification of Salem
folk.
The whipping-post was speedily in full force in Boston. At the session
of the court held November 30, 1630, one man was sentenced to be
whipped for stealing a loaf of bread; another for shooting fowl on the
Sabbath, another for swearing, another for leaving a boat "without a
pylott." Then we read of John Pease that for "stryking his mother and
deryding her he shalbe whipt."
In 1631, in June, this order was given by the General Court in Boston:
"That Philip Ratcliffe shall be whipped, have his eares cutt off, fined
40 pounds, and banished out of the limits of this jurisdiction, for
uttering malicious and scandalous speeches against the Government."