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    Curious Punishments of Bygone Days
    Curious Punishments of Bygone Days
    Curious Punishments of Bygone Days
    Ebook122 pages1 hour

    Curious Punishments of Bygone Days

    By Alice Morse Earle

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    Alice Morse Earle was a social historian of great note at the turn of the century, and many of her books have lived on as well-researched and well-written texts of everyday life in Colonial America. Curious Punishments of Bygone Days was first published in 1896. It is a catalogue of early American crimes and their penalties, with chapters on the pillories, stocks, the scarlet letter, the ducking stool, discipline of authors and books, and four other horrifying examples of ways in which those who transgressed the laws of Colonial America were made to pay for their sins. Contents Include The Bilboes The Ducking Stool The Stocks The Pillory Punishments of Authors and Books The Whipping-Post The Scarlet Letter Branks and Gags Public Penance Military Punishments Branding and Maiming
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateOct 23, 2015
    ISBN9781473377165
    Curious Punishments of Bygone Days

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      Book preview

      Curious Punishments of Bygone Days - Alice Morse Earle

      Curious Punishments

      of Bygone Days

      by

      Alice Morse Earle

      Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.

      This book is copyright and may not be

      reproduced or copied in any way without

      the express permission of the publisher in writing

      British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      Contents

      A History of Corporal Punishment

      FOREWORD.

      I. THE BILBOES

      II. THE DUCKING STOOL

      III. THE STOCKS

      IV. THE PILLORY

      V. PUNISHMENTS OF AUTHORS AND BOOKS

      VI. THE WHIPPING-POST

      VII. THE SCARLET LETTER

      VIII. BRANKS AND GAGS

      IX. PUBLIC PENANCE

      X. MILITARY PUNISHMENTS

      XI. BRANDING AND MAIMING

      A History of Corporal Punishment

      Corporal punishment, in its simplest form, is a type of physical punishment that involves deliberately inflicting pain, as retribution for an offence. It has the intended purpose of disciplining or reforming a wrongdoer, or to deter possible offenders from committing unacceptable actions in the future. The term usually refers to methodically striking the offender with the open hand or with an implement, whether in judicial, domestic, or educational settings.

      Corporal punishment was recorded as early as the tenth century BCE in the Book of Proverbs attributed to Solomon:

      He that spareth the rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him correcteth him betimes.

      Withhold not correction from a child: for if thou strike him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and deliver his soul from hell.

      It was certainly present in classical civilisations, being used in Greece, Rome, and Egypt for both judicial and educational discipline. Some states gained a reputation for using such punishments cruelly; Sparta, in particular, used flogging as part of a disciplinary regime designed to build willpower and physical strength. In the Roman Empire, the maximum penalty that a Roman citizen could receive under the law was 40 lashes or strokes with a whip applied to the back and shoulders, or with the fasces (similar to a birch rod, but consisting of 8–10 lengths of willow rather than birch) applied to the buttocks. Such punishments could draw blood, and were frequently inflicted in public.

      Throughout history and into the present day, there have been many objections to corporal punishment, and Quintillian’s (c. 35 - 100 CE) is one of the earliest and most notable of these:

      Besides, after you have coerced a boy with stripes, how will you treat him when he becomes a young man, to whom such terror cannot be held out, and by whom more difficult studies must be pursued? Add to these considerations, that many things unpleasant to be mentioned, and likely afterwards to cause shame, often happen to boys while being whipped, under the influence of pain or fear; and such shame enervates and depresses the mind, and makes them shun people’s sight and feel constant uneasiness... scandalously unworthy men may abuse the privilege of punishing, and what opportunity also the terror of the unhappy children may sometimes afford others.

      Plutarch, also in the first century, says something similar:

      This also I assert, that children ought to be led to honourable practices by means of encouragement and reasoning, and most certainly not by blows or ill-treatment, for it surely is agreed that these are fitting rather for slaves than for the free-born; for so they grow numb and shudder at their tasks, partly from the pain of the blows, partly from the degradation.

      In Medieval Europe, corporal punishment was encouraged by the attitudes of the medieval church towards the human body, with flagellation being a common means of self-discipline. This had an influence on the use of corporal punishment in schools, as educational establishments were closely attached to the church during this period. Nevertheless, corporal punishment was not used uncritically; and as early as the eleventh century Saint Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury was speaking out against what he saw as the excessive use of corporal punishment in the treatment of children.

      From the sixteenth century onwards, new trends were seen in corporal punishment. Judicial punishments were increasingly turned into public spectacles, with public beatings of criminals intended as a deterrent to other would-be offenders. Perhaps the most influential writer on the subject was the English philosopher John Locke, whose Some Thoughts Concerning Education explicitly criticised the central role of corporal punishment in education. Locke’s work was highly influential, and may have helped influence Polish legislators to ban corporal punishment from Poland’s schools in 1783; the first country in the world to do so.

      During the eighteenth century, the concept of corporal punishment was attacked by some philosophers and legal reformers. Merely inflicting pain on miscreants was seen as inefficient, influencing the subject only for a short period of time and effecting no permanent change in their behaviour. Some believed that the purpose of punishment should be reformation, not retribution. This is perhaps best expressed in Jeremy Bentham’s idea of a ‘panoptic prison’, in which prisoners were controlled and surveyed at all times – supposedly reducing the need for measures such as corporal punishment.

      A consequence of this mode of thinking was a reduction in the use of corporal punishment in the nineteenth century in Europe and North America. In some countries this was encouraged by scandals involving individuals seriously hurt during acts of corporal punishment. For instance, in Britain, popular opposition to punishment was encouraged by two significant cases, the death of Private Frederick John White, who died after a military flogging in 1846, and the death of Reginald Cancellor, killed by his schoolmaster in 1860. Events such as these mobilised public opinion and, by the late nineteenth century, the extent of corporal punishment’s use in state schools was unpopular with many parents.

      In the 1870s, courts in the United States overruled the common-law principle that a husband had the right to physically chastise an errant wife. In the UK the traditional right of a husband to inflict moderate corporal punishment on his wife in order to keep her within the bounds of duty was similarly removed in 1891. The use of judicial corporal punishment declined during the first half of the twentieth century and was abolished altogether in the UK with the Criminal Justice Act of 1948. Most other European countries had abolished it earlier. In many schools however, the use of the cane, paddle or tawse remained commonplace in the UK and the United States until the 1980s. In several other countries today, it still is commonplace.

      The history of corporal punishment provides a fascinating window into societal attitudes towards law and order, gender relationships and generational discipline as well. Although a somewhat macabre subject, it affords the interested reader an unparalleled insight into the functioning of past societies, as well as various cultures around the world, in the present day.

      Curious Punishments

      of

      Bygone Days,

      by

      Alice Morse Earle.

      The Illustrations

      BY FRANK HAZENPLUG

      FOREWORD.

      In ransacking old court records, newspapers, diaries and letters for the historic foundation of the books which I have written on colonial history, I have found and noted much of interest that has not been used or referred to in any of those books. An accumulation of notes on old-time laws, punishments and penalties has evoked this volume. The subject is not a pleasant one, though it often has a humorous element; but a punishment that is obsolete gains an interest and dignity from antiquity and its history becomes endurable because it has a past only and no future. That men were pilloried and women ducked by our law-abiding forbears rouses a thrill of hot indignation which dies down into a dull ember of curiosity when we reflect that they will never be pilloried or ducked again.

      An old-time writer dedicated his book to All curious and ingenious gentlemen and gentlewomen who can gain from acts of the past a delight in the present days of virtue, wisdom and the humanities. It does not detract from the good intent and complacency of these old words that the writer lived in the days when the pillory, stocks and whipping-post stood brutally rampant in every English village.

      Now, we also boast that, as Pope says:

      "Taught by

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