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man held in bondage for no crime, but simply on account of the accident of his birth and the color of his skin, had a right to escape if he could. Among these thousands who would lift no hand to aid the slaveowner were some who were ready to resist the law with force and arms. Among them were men like Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker, the first of whom, in public addresses, and the other in sermons filled with philippics against the Federal Judges and with very bad law, advised resistance to the hated statutes.* And when they, at the Faneuil Hall meeting, by their violent harangues incited the attack on the Court House and the killing of the United States Marshal, Batchelder, were they not legally as guilty of murder as were those Chicago anarchists who, thirty-two years later, were hanged for a precisely similar revolt against the laws of the land?5

Amiability and politeness, amongst the middle and lower classes, did not generally prevail in the good old days of yore, and the free use of the tongue gave rise to feuds and riots to an extent which it is difficult for us at the present day to realize. A scolding woman. was treated as a high offender against the public peace and the authorities took care that a special and a very

4 In a sermon on the "Function and Place of Conscience in Relation to the Laws of Man," preached on September 22, 1850, he said: "If a man falls into the water and is in danger of drowning, it is the natural duty of the bystanders to aid in pulling him out even at the risk of wetting their garments. We should think a man a coward who could swim and would not save a drowning girl, for fear of spoiling his coat. He would be indictable at common law." He was doubtless correct as to "natural duty," but any one-year law student would have told him that he was wrong as to the common law.

5 See the Trial of Parsons, Spies, Fischer, Engel and others, 9 Am. St. Tr.

efficient form of punishment should be found for such kinds of transgression. This was the ducking-stool. A Frenchman who traveled in England, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, gives this good description of punishment in that country of the scolding female:

"They fasten an arm-chair to the end of two beams twelve or fifteen feet long, and parallel to each other, so that these two pieces of wood with their two ends embrace the chair which hangs upon them upon a sort of axle, by which means it plays freely and always remains in the natural horizontal position in which the chair should be that a person may sit conveniently in it whether you raise it or let it down. They set up a post on the bank of a pond or river and over this post they lay, almost in equilibro, the two pieces of wood, at one end of which the chair hangs just over the water. They place the woman in this chair and so plunge her into the water, as often as the sentence directs, in order to cool her immoderate heat."

And at the close of the eighteenth century an English poet wrote in praise of the ducking-stool the following lines:

"There stands my friend in yonder pool,

An engine called the ducking-stool,
By legal power commanded down

The joy and terror of the town.

If jarring females kindle strife,
Give language foul or lug the coif:
If noisy dames should once begin

To drive the house with horrid din,
'Away,' you cry, 'you'll grace the stool;
We'll teach you how your tongue to rule.'
The fair offender fills the seat

In sullen pomp, profoundly great.
Down in the deep the stool descends,
But here at first we miss our ends.

She mounts again and rages more
Than ever vixen did before.

So throwing water on the fire

Will make it but burn up the higher:

6 Andrews "Bygone Punishments."

If so, my friend, pray let her take
A second turn into the lake;

And rather than your patience lose,
Thrice and again repeat the dose.
No brawling wives, no furious wenches;
No fire so hot but water quenches."

That good old Tory, Dr. Samuel Johnson, quite approved of it. When the Quakeress, Mrs. Knowles, complained that much more liberty was allowed to men than to women, the doctor replied: "Why, madam, women have all the liberty they should wish to have. We have all the labor and danger, and the women all the advantage. And we have different modes of restraining evil. Stocks for the men, a ducking-stool for women, and a pound for beasts."

The punishment of the ducking-stool gradually went out of vogue in England-as such things often do in that country without any express statutory repeal. About the time of the American Revolution it was in full play in most parts of England, but the last recorded use of it occurred at Leominster in 1809, when one Jenny Pipes was paraded through the town on the ducking-stool and ducked in the water by order of the magistrates. The old instrument of torture is still preserved in the village church, and the editor has himself seen another which is shown to visitors to the Church of St. Mary at Warwick.

Whether had the jury convicted them, the New York Judge would have sentenced the women, Greenwault and Moody (p. 710), to the ducking-stool, is a question which will forever remain unanswered; but that the offense was still recognized in New York, the Court had decided in the face of the protest of the counsel for the prisoners. It seems clear that the commonlaw crime of scolding and its penalty as well were

brought from England to New England by its Puritan settlers. A writer on Curious Punishments states that as late as 1899 there were places in the United States where the ducking-stool was still a legal punishment. In 1889 the Grand Jury in Jersey City indicted a woman as a common scold and it was found on examination of the law that the offense was still a crime in New Jersey and that the ducking-stool had never been formally abolished."

Another Enoch Arden case was that of Richard Smith (p. 713), but the missing husband was of a different type than was Tennyson's hero, for when he found an intruder in possession of his wife and family

7 The old reporter who preserved the story of this trial was very indignant at the suggestion of the women's lawyers that the offense of scolding was not cognizable in the New York courts. "What!" exclaimed he. "Shall it be said that a common disturber of the public peace-a quarrelsome, turbulent and abusive woman, clamorous in and out of doors, at all times, is not to be restrained by the strong arm of public justice? The only objection we have ever heard urged against a prosecution for this offense is, that by the common law, the punishment prescribed on a conviction is the ducking-stool; and it is said, that according to our Constitution, 'no cruel or unusual punishments are to be inflicted.' But have not our courts the power, on a conviction for a misdemeanor, to soften the punishment, or substitute one adapted to the nature of our government? The descendants of the peaceable William Penn have so thought and so decided; for we understand from undoubted authority that the records of criminal jurisprudence in Philadelphia show that a prosecution for this offense has been sustained; and on conviction the defendant has been punished as for any other misdemeanor."

8 "The early English settlers in the United States introduced many of the manners and customs of their native land. The ducking-stool was soon brought into use. At the present time, in some parts of America, scolding females are liable to be punished by means of the ducking-stool." Andrews' Curious Punishments, 274, citing Brooks (H. M.), "Strange and Curious Punishments." Ticknor & Co., Boston, 1886.

as well as his goods and chattels, he proceeded at once to dispossess him. The wife took the side of her newest husband, which doubtless drove him to murder, for which he was very justly hanged. The charge of the presiding Judge is of interest, as it contains one of the very earliest constructions of the Pennsylvania statute (the first in this or any other country) which abolished the common-law divisions of homicide, of murder and manslaughter and enacted degrees of murdersomething which the law before this had not recognized.

We get a glimpse at the celebrated New York prison, the Tombs, and its police court methods in the case of Magistrate Bogart (p. 726). The "straw bail” on which he permitted a notorious character to escape not only punishment, but even a trial, showed a partnership between the Judiciary and the criminal classes which was to continue until the Tweed exposures a few years later drove the corrupt Judges of that city into retirement and disgrace.

A great case on the law of insanity is the trial of Abraham Prescott (p. 740) for the murder of his benefactress. The boy's counsel, without hope of fee or monetary reward, made a strong defense, and their speeches to the jury have seldom been surpassed in a criminal trial in this country. The whole history of insanity and of the opinions of medical men up to that date were marshaled with great skill. And the charge of the Chief Justice was admirably fitted to bring the jury to the real issue and to prevent them from being influenced by either prejudice or sentiment. It is indeed a strong contrast to the "dumb charge" which obtains in many of our States. The lawyers made a strong attack on the death penalty, arguing even that in this Christian country it must be considered as be

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