ENGLISH

Devil Made Me Do It!: Crime and Punishment in Early New England

By Juliet Haines Mofford

Book information

Publisher
Globe Pequot
Year
2011
ISBN
9780762775965, 9780762771653, 2011038537
Language
english
Format
EPUB
Filesize
8 MB (8022727 bytes)
Pages
\0
Time added
2022-11-03 21:08:43
History; Nonfiction; HIS000000; HIS036000; HIS0361

Description

Tales of the country's original criminals—and how the courts punished them for their misdeeds Scarlet Letters, wanton dalliances, Sabbathbreaking, and debt: Colonial laws were easily broken and the malefactors who broke them, swiftly punished. How did our ancestors deal with murder and mayhem? How did seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New England communities handle deviants? How have definitions of criminal behavior and its punishment changed over the centuries? What were early prisons like? What were the duties of a turn-key? Find out all this and more in The Devil Made Me Do It. Drawing on early court dockets, diaries, sermons, gaolers' records, and other primary sources, Juliet Haines Mofford investigates historical cases from a time when accused felons often pleaded in their own defense: "The Devil made me do it!" Among the questions that emerge in this fascinating book: Would spinster Sarah Booker be punished today for her 1769 theft of three skeins of linen yarn? Would Joan Andrews still get a T for Theft pinned upon her bodice for cheating a client by placing two stones in the firkin of butter she sold him?

Similar books

The arraignment and tryall with a declaration of the Ranters also, several sentences proceedings at the sessions in the Old-Baily, and Councel of War: their protestations and the hanging of one up by the thumbs; with divers penalties to be inflicted upon others. The dancing and revelling of Dr. Buckeridge and his wife, and other gent. dancing all in white, in Berkshire, and their Christmas carol. A dispute between a Ranter in Bridewel, and one that came to see him; with his creed and pater noster: and the names of the false gods they worship. As also, a list of many of the Ranters, from whence they are derived: and of many hundreds of them in England

2019 · EPUB

The discoverer; vvherein is set forth (to undeceive the nation) the reall plots and stratagems of Lievt. Col. John Lilburn, Mr. William Walwyn, Mr. Thomas Prince, Mr. Richard Overton, and that partie ... Namely, under the pretence and colour of libertie ... a most dangerous and destructive designe is carried on to deprive the nation of their religion, rights, liberties, proprieties, lawes, government, &c. and to bring a totall and universall ruine upon the land. And so much is here clearely proved. The first part

2019 · EPUB

An act to impower Sir John Molesworth: Baronet, and Joseph Moyle, Esquire, Two of the surviving Trustees, in an Indenture, dated the Twenty-Fifth Day of December One thousand Seven hundred and Forty-Three, to raise the several Sums in the said Indenture mentioned, or such of them as are still unsatisfied, and pay the same, as well as the rest of the personal Estate of Hugh Gregor, deceased, to such Person as Jane Gregor, an Infant, shall marry during her Infancy, with the Consent of the surviving Trustees, and of her Guardians

EPUB