Curious Punishments of Bygone Days

								

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."
So common were whippings in the southern colonies at the date of
settlement of the country, that in Virginia even "launderers and
launderesses" who "dare to wash any uncleane Linen, drive bucks, or
throw out the water or suds of fowle clothes in the open streetes," or
who took pay for washing for a soldier or laborer, or who gave old torn
linen for good linen, were severely whipped. Many other offenses were
punished by whipping in Virginia, such as slitting the ears of hogs, or
cutting off the ends of hogs' ears--thereby removing ear-marks and
destroying claim to perambulatory property--stealing tobacco, running
away from home, drunkenness, destruction of land-marks; and in 1664
Major Robins brought suit against one Mary Powell for "scandalous
speaches" against Rev. Mr. Teackle, for which she was ordered to
receive twenty lashes on her bare shoulders and to be banished the
country. Of course, for the correction of slaves the whip was in
constant use till our Civil War banished slavery and the whipping-post
from every state save Maryland and Delaware. This latter-named
commonwealth has been much censured for countenancing the continuance of
whipping as a punishment. It is, however, stiffly contended by Delaware
magistrates that as a restraint over wife-beaters and other cruel and
vicious criminals, the whipping post is a distinct success and of marked