CHAPTER XIII.
AN EVIL DAY--FLOGGING-TIME IN NEW CASTLE--HOW THE PUNISHMENT IS INFLICTED--A FEW REMARKS UPON THE GENERAL MERITS OF THE SYSTEM--A SINGULAR JUDGE--HOW GEORGE WASHINGTON BUSBY WAS SENTENCED--EMOTIONS OF THE PRISONER--A CRUEL INFLICTION, AND A CODE THAT OUGHT TO BE REFORMED.
This is St. Pillory's Day. It is the day upon which humane and liberalDelawarians hang their heads for shame at the insult offered tocivilization by the law of their State. That law this morning placedhalf a dozen miserable creatures in the stocks, and then flogged themupon their naked flesh with a cat-o'-nine-tails. It was no slight thingto stand there wearing that wooden collar in this bitter Novemberweather, with the north-east wind blowing in fierce gusts from the broadexpanse of the river; and one poor wretch who endured that suffering wasso benumbed with cold that he could hardly climb down the ladder to theground. And when he had descended, they lashed his back until it wascovered with purple stripes. He had stolen some provisions, and helooked as if he needed them, for he seemed hungry and forlorn andutterly desperate with misery. It would have been a kindlier act ofChristian charity if society, instead of mutilating his body, had fed itand clothed it properly, and placed him in some reformatory institutionwhere his soul could have been taken care of. But that is not the methodthat prevails here.
The gates of the prison yard were wide open when the punishment wasinflicted upon these offenders, and among the spectators were at leasttwo or three score children gathered to look upon the barbarousspectacle. Nothing could induce me to permit mine to witness it. Theinfluence of such a scene is wholly brutalizing. The child that has seenthat sacrifice has lost some of the sweetness and tenderness of itsbetter nature.
The whipping-post and pillory is a sturdy bit of timber a foot square.Eight or nine feet from the ground it pierces a small platform, and fivefeet above this there is a cross-piece which contains in each of its twoarms a hole for the neck and two holes for the wrists of the man who isto be pilloried. The upper half of the arm lifts to admit the victim,and then closes upon him, sometimes very tightly. It is fastened downwith a wedge-shaped key, shot into the centre-post. Beneath the platformhangs a pair of handcuffs in which the wrists of those who are to beflogged are placed. The whole machine looks like a gigantic cross. It isblack with age, covered with patches of green mold and moss, andshrunken and split until the grain of the wood protrudes in ridges.
There was a time in the past when it stood, an instrument of crueltorture, upon the public street. It was planted in the green just at theend of the old market house, and there the criminals were lashed by thesheriff. Any of the old men who have spent their lives in this place cantell how, when they were boys, it was the custom for the urchins and theloafers of the town to pelt any poor rogue who was pilloried withwhatever missiles happened to be at hand; and often the creatures thusabused were taken down from the stocks and tied up to the post, there tohave their flesh lacerated with the leather thongs. They used to flogwomen, too. They flogged women in the open street, with their garmentstorn away from their bodies above the waist, and the gaping crowdgathered about and witnessed without shame that dreadful spectacle.
But that was more than half a century ago. Who shall say that we do notadvance in civilization? Who can assert that these people have notacquired a higher sense of decency, when public opinion has compelledthe removal of this abominable relic of barbarism to the jail-yard, andthe performance of the penalty in another place than before the doors ofthe temple where a God of mercy is worshiped? I hope that the day is notfar distant when the whipping-post and the infernal system thatsustains it will go down together, and when the people of this Statewill learn that their first duty to a criminal is to strive to make hima better man.
They say here, in apologizing for the institution, that the punishmentis not severe, because the sheriff never makes savage use of the lash.But it is a terrible infliction, no matter how lightly the blows arestruck, for it is imposed in the presence of a multitude, and thesufferer feels that he is for ever to be known among men as a thief. Thethongs do not always fall gently; the force of the lash depends upon thewill of the sheriff, who may kill a man with the number of blows whichin another case give no pain. I say that any law which places suchdiscretionary power in the hands of an executive officer who may bebribed or frightened, or who may have some personal injury to avenge,defeats the true end of justice. The court should fix the penaltyabsolutely. They say here, also, that no man is ever flogged a secondtime. That is untrue. The same men do return again and again. Some donot; but where do they go? Why, to other communities, where theyperpetrate other crimes and become a burden upon other people. We haveno right to breed criminals and then to drive them into cities and townsthat have already enough of their own. We are under a sacred obligationto place them in prisons supported by the money of the State, and thereto attempt to teach them arts by which they may earn their bread if theywill. In such a place a convict can be reached by those philanthropistswho realize what society owes to its criminal classes. But as he istreated now, it is impossible that he should ever lift himself or belifted to a purer and better life.
Fallen angels in Delaware never rise again. Law clips their wings andstamps upon them with its heel, and society shakes off the dust of itsfeet upon them and curses them in their degradation. The gates of mercyare shut upon them hopelessly and for ever, and they walk abroad withthe story of their shame blazoned upon them, as the women who wore theScarlet Letter in the old Puritan times in New England, that all theworld may read it. They know that their punishment has been fierce andterrible and out of all proportion to their offence, and they cursetheir oppressors and hate them with a bitter, unrelenting hatred. Theyknow they will not be allowed to reform, and that the law which shouldhave led them to a better future has cut them off from fellowship withtheir race, robbed them of their humanity and made pariahs and outcastsof them. They are turned to stone, and they come out of their prisonsconfirmed, hopeless criminals.
A certain judge who administered Delaware justice here once upon a time(we will say it was a thousand years ago) was a very peculiar man incertain of his methods. I do not know whether he was merely fond oflistening to the music of his own voice, as too many less reverend andawful men are, or whether he really loved to torture the prisoners inthe dock, when he sentenced them, by keeping them in suspense respectinghis intentions, and by exciting hopes which he finally crushed. But hehad a way of assuming a mild and benevolent aspect as he addressed aconvicted man which was very reassuring to the unhappy wight, and thenhe usually proceeded to deliver a few remarks which were so ingeniouslyarranged, which expressed such tender and affectionate sympathy, whichwere so highly charged with benevolence, so expressive, as it were, of apassionate yearning for the welfare of the victim, that the latter atlast would be convinced that the judge was about to give him anexceedingly light sentence. Just as he had gotten himself into a frameof mind suitable to the unexpected brightness of his prospects, thejudge's custom was to bring his observations suddenly to an end, and tohurl at the head of the convict, still with that philanthropicexpression upon his countenance, the most frightful penalty permitted bythe law.
On a certain day, while a certain historian was in court, he was engagedin exercising a youth named Busby in this fashion. Busby, it appears,was accused of stealing seventy-five cents' worth of old iron fromsomebody, and the jury had found him guilty.
Busby was ordered to stand up, and the judge, permitting a peculiarlybland smile to play upon his features, gazed tenderly at the prisoner,while he placed a small pinch of tobacco in his mouth; and then, drawinga long breath, he began:
"George Washington Busby, you have been found guilty by a jury of yourfellow-countrymen of an offence against society and against the peaceand dignity of the commonwealth of Delaware, and I have now to imposeupon you the penalties provided by the law. I am very, very sorry to seeyou here, George, and it grieves my heart to be compelled to fulfill theobligation devolving
upon me as a judicial officer. Pause, I entreatyou, at this the very outset of your career, and reflect upon what youare casting from you. You are a young man; you are, as it were, in thevery morning of your life; a bright and happy home is yours, and aroundyou are the kind parents and friends who have made you the child oftheir prayers, who have guided your footsteps from infancy, who haveloved and cherished you and made for you mighty sacrifices.
"You have a mother"--and here the judge's voice faltered and he wipedaway a tear--"a mother at whose knee you were taught to lisp yourearliest devotions, and who has watched over you and ministered to youwith that tender and fervent love that only a mother can feel. You havea father who looked upon you with a heart swelling with pride, and whogave to you the heritage of his honest name. Up to the time when,yielding to the insidious wiles of the tempter, you committed thiscrime, your character had been irreproachable, and it seemed as if thebrightest promises of your childhood were to have rich and beneficentfulfillment. For you the vista of the future appeared serene andbeautiful; a pure and noble manhood seemed to await you, and all theblessings which may be gained by an unspotted reputation, by persistentenergy and by earnest devotion to the right were to be yours."
Here Busby began to feel considerably better. He was assured that sucha kind old man as that could not treat him with severity, and heinformed the tipstaff in a whisper that he calculated now on about sixtydays' imprisonment at the furthest.
The judge shifted the quid in his cheek, blew his nose, and resumed:
"How difficult it is, then, for me to determine the precise measure ofyour punishment! Knowing that the quality of mercy is not strained, andthat as we forgive so shall we be forgiven, how painful it is for me todraw the line between undue leniency and the demands of outraged law!Considering, I say, all these things, that are so much in yourfavor--your youth, your happy home, where the holiest influences areshed upon your path, where parental love covers you with its mostgracious benediction, where your devoted mother lies stricken withanguish at the sin of her idolized son, where your aged father has hisgray hairs brought down in sorrow to the grave, where you have beennurtured and admonished and taught to do right--"
"Certainly he can't intend to give me more than one month," said Busbyto the tipstaff.
"Considering that this is your first offence; that your conduct hithertohas been that of an honest young man, and that the lesson you havelearned from this bitter and terrible experience will sink deeply intoyour heart; that you have opening out to you in the possible future alife of usefulness and honor, with a prospect of redeeming this singleerror and winning for yourself a respected name--"
"He can't decently give me more than twenty days after that," suggestedBusby.
The judge, after wiping the moisture from his eyes and borrowing amorsel of tobacco from the prosecuting attorney, continued:
"In view of all these extenuating circumstances, in view of the fact,fully recognized by this court, that justice is not revengeful, butexercises its highest prerogative in leading the fallen to reformationand moral improvement--in view, I say, of the fact that you are in thevery spring-time of your existence, with the vista of the future openingout with alluring brightness before you and giving promise of higher andbetter things--in view of those sorrowing parents the child of whoseprayers you are; of that mother who guided your infant steps and caredfor you with the yearning tenderness of maternal love, of that venerablefather who looks upon you as the staff of his old age; considering, too,that this is your first misstep from the path of duty--"
"Two weeks as sure as death!" exclaimed Mr. Busby, joyfully, to theofficer beside him.
"The path of duty," continued the judge, "and that up to the moment ofthe commission of the deed you had been above suspicion and abovereproach,--in view of all this," remarked the judge, "I have thought itmy duty, minister of the law though I am, and bound though I am by myoath to vindicate the insulted majesty of that law--"
"If he gives me more than one week, I will never trust signs again,"murmured Busby.
"I say that although I am bound to administer justice with an impartialhand, I feel it to be incumbent upon me in this particular instance, inconsequence of these extenuating circumstances, to mete it out so that,while the law will be vindicated, you may be taught that it is not cruelor unkind, but rather is capable of giving the first generous impulse toreformation."
"He certainly means to let me off altogether," exclaimed Busby.
"In view, then, of these mitigating circumstances of your youth, yourprevious good character, your happy prospects, your afflicted parentsand your own sincere repentance, the sentence of the court is: That you,George Washington Busby, the prisoner at the bar, do pay seventy-fivecents restitution money and the costs of this trial, and that onSaturday next you be whipped with twenty lashes on the bare back, welllaid on; that you be imprisoned for six months in the county jail, andthat you wear a convict's jacket in public for one year after yourrelease. Sheriff, remove the prisoner from the court."
Then the judge beamed a mournful but sympathetic smile upon Busby,secured the loan of another atom of tobacco, spat on the floor andcalled up the next case.
* * * * *
Mrs. Adeler, you laugh and say that I have indulged in grossexaggeration in reproducing the sentence. Not so. I tell you that Ihave known a boy of thirteen to have that condemnation, couched inalmost precisely those words, hurled at him from the bench of the NewCastle court-house because he stole a bit of iron said to be worthseventy-five cents. And I was present among the spectators in the jailyard when the sheriff lashed the lad until he writhed with pain. Itwas infamous--utterly infamous. I cannot, perhaps, justly accuse thejudge who imposed the sentence upon the boy of indulging in the lecturewhich has just been quoted. That, as I have said, may be attributed toa magistrate who lived ten centuries ago. But the sentence is genuine,and it was given recently. I do not blame the judge. He acted under theauthority of statutes which were created by other hands. But the law issavagery itself, and the humane men of this State should sweep it fromexistence.
Out of the Hurly-Burly; Or, Life in an Odd Corner Page 16
