Curious Punishments of Bygone Days

								

Stadt Huys, under Dutch rule, and sentences were many. A few examples of
the punishment under the Dutch may be given. A sailmaker, rioting in
drink around New Amsterdam cut one Van Brugh on the jaw. He was
sentenced to be fastened to a stake, severely scourged and a gash made
in his left cheek, and to be banished. To the honor of Vrouw Van Brugh
let me add that she requested the court that these penalties should not
be carried out, or at any rate done in a closed room. One Van ter Goes
for treasonable words of great flagrancy was brought with a rope round
his neck to a half-gallows, whipped, branded and banished. Roger
Cornelisen for theft was scourged in public, while Herman Barenson,
similarly accused was so loud in his cries for mercy that he was
punished with a rod in a room. From a New York newspaper, dated 1712, I
learn that one woman at the whipping-post "created much amusement by her
resistance"--which statement throws a keen light on the cold-blooded and
brutal indifference of the times to human suffering.
May 14, 1750, New York Gazette.
"Tuesday last one David Smith was convicted in the Mayor's Court of
Taking or stealing Goods off a Shop Window in this City, and was
sentenced to be whipped at the Carts Tail round this Town and afterwards
whipped at the Pillory which sentence was accordingly executed on him."
In the same paper, date October 2, 1752, an account is given of the
pillorying of a boy for picking pockets and the whipping of an Irishman
for stealing deerskins. Another man was "whipt round the city" for
stealing a barrel of flour. In January, 1761, four men for "petty
larceny" were whipped at the cart-tail round New York.
In 1638 a whipping post was set up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, as a
companion to the cage. For "speaking opprobriously," and even for
"suspitious speeches," New Haven citizens were whipped at the "carts
podex."
Rhode Island even under the tolerant and gentle Roger Williams had no
idle whip. "Larcenie," drunkenness, perjury, were punished at the
whipping-post. In Newport malefactors were whipped at the cart-tail
until this century. Mr. Channing tells of seeing them fastened to the
cart and being thus slowly led through the streets to a public spot
where they were whipped on the naked back. Women were at that time
whipped in the jail-yard with only spectators of their own sex.
In Plymouth women were whipped at the cart-tail, and the towns resounded
with the blows dealt out to Quakers. In 1636, on a day in June, one
Helin Billinton, was whipped in Plymouth for slander.
There was a whipping-post on Queen Street in Boston, another on the
Common, another on State Street, and they were constantly in use in
Boston in Revolutionary times. Samuel Breck wrote of the year 1771:
"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,