Home / Albums / Search results 62
Choose filters
Cancel
Validate
Choose filters
Validate
Validate
Validate
- The Scarlet letter
Sinners were never spared (In puritan communities) , either in publicity or punishment. Keen justice made the magistrates rigid and exact in the exposition and publication of crime, hence the labelling of an offender. Examples “To wear two Capitall Letters, A. D. cut in cloth and sewed on their uppermost garment on the Arm and Back; and if any time they shall be founde without the letters so worne while in this government, they shall be forthwith taken and publickly whipt.” “Robert Coles was fyned ten shillings and enjoyned to stand with a white sheet of paper on his back whereon Drunkard shalbe written in great lres & to stand therewith soe longe as the Court finde meete, for abuseing himself shamefully with drinke.” The following year Robert Coles, still misbehaving, was again sentenced, and more severely, for his drunkard’s badge was made permanent. - Branding
There is nothing more abhorrent to the general sentiment of humanity to-day than the universal custom of all civilized nations, until the present century, of branding and maiming criminals. In these barbarous methods of degrading criminals the colonists in America followed the customs and copied the laws of the fatherland. Our ancestors were not squeamish. The sight of a man lopped of his ears, or slit of his nostrils, or with a seared brand or great gash in his forehead or cheek could not affect the stout stomachs that cheerfully and eagerly gathered around the bloody whipping-post and the gallows.