Punishment in 18th century Bristol by John Latimer
(information source The Annals of Bristol in the Eighteenth Century (1893). Author: John Latimer)
In 1703 the Bristol Corporation, renewing an old by-law, ordered that the authorities of each ward should take care, that the stocks of each parish were kept in good working order.
Those instruments did not rust from want of work.
Men and women convicted of drunkenness, or of profane swearing, and barbers caught shaving customers on a Sunday, were condemned to detention in the stocks, sometimes as long as six hours at a stretch.
Being wholly defenceless while thus entrammelled, the culprits were often the victims of the hard-hearted crowd which assembled to pelt them with rotten food and stones.
After a quarter sessions court, again, prisoners convicted of cheating or petty thieving were, females as well as males, stripped naked to the waist and whipped, then paraded on a cart through city streets, or lashed at the whipping post in Wine Street, or set up in the pillory in the same thoroughfare, in which latter case, if the mob was malevolent, a luckless wretch was in danger of being killed out-right by missiles.
Persons convicted of lewdness were, by the ancient custom of the city, say the records, set back-wards upon a horse, and paraded about for the delectation of the multitude.
Women found guilty of "common scolding" were punished by being dragged to the river, thrust into the city ducking-stool, and plunged into the Froom, midst jeering acclamations.
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Finally, as the result of a gaol deliveries, murderers and the worst class of thieves were compelled to walk to the gallows on St. Michael's Hill to subject death.
These executions were frightfully numerous; on two occasions within the space of twenty years, five unhappy creatures were hanged in a batch.
For various crimes, the punishment of women was death by burning.
On the 16th of June, 1695, according to a local calendar, a woman, a shopkeeper in Temple Street, was burnt for coin clipping, but Mr. Seyer alleges, on the authority of another manuscript, that she escaped from Newgate before the day fixed for her execution.
A girl of fourteen years, for murdering her mistress, was burnt in Bristol in 1712.
A woman, who had murdered her husband, suffered at Gloucester in 1763; another for the same crime perished in Somerset in 1766 ; and a girl, eighteen years old, for murdering her mistress, underwent the same fate at Monmouth in 1764.
The witches remain to be mentioned.
In 1700 there were few Bristolians who were not in dread of them, and such apprehensions were common amongst cultivated Englishmen.
The Bishop of Gloucester, according to Bishop Kennet (Lansdowne MSS., British Museum), vowed his belief not merely in witches, but in fairies, and John Wesley, long after this date, declared that non-believers in witchcraft were little better than infidels.
In 1683 three women were hanged at Exeter for witchcraft.
A wizard was tried about the same date at Taunton, and was rescued from death only by the sceptical ingenuity of the judge, Lord Guilford.
In 1701 Luttrell records in his diary that a woman narrowly escaped conviction as a witch in Bristol, the prosecutor's perjury being discovered, apparently, in court.
In 1702 a so-called witch perished at Edinburgh, then the seat of a Parliament, and the chief centre of Scotch learning and science.
And two more women were executed at Northampton in 1706.
In or about the latter year a man named Silvester, in Bristol, fell under such deep suspicion of unholy arts that he prudently disappeared before his neighbours could take action.
As late as 1730, at Frome, a poor old woman, suspected of being a witch, was, by the advice of a "cunning man," thrown into a pool and drowned by twenty of her neighbours, in the presence of 200 persons, who made no attempt to save her life.
Allusion has already been made to the barbarous treatment of women convicted of petty offences.
At the Bristol sessions in March, 1705, Mary James, "for a cheat," was sentenced to stand on the pillory one hour, for six successive market days.
She probably suffered severely from the missiles of the mob, for about seven weeks later another woman, convicted of a small felony, "prayed for transportation," which was granted.
A third female, found guilty of obtaining three yards of cloth by fraudulent pretences, was sentenced to be stripped naked to the waist, and whipped down one side of High Street and up the other.
In the same year a man, for stealing a cheese, was ordered to be flogged from All Saints' Church to the White Horse inn, Redcliff Street, and thence back to Newgate, the cheese to be carried by his side.
One of the barbarous customs of the age was the branding on the cheek of persons convicted of petty thefts.
The practice, which was performed in open court, was so repugnant to the feelings of sensitive officials as to lead to evasions of the law.
In one case the Bristol sheriffs were fined £40 for not causing two women to be "well burnt"; in another instance the same functionaries were fined £30 for a like offence.
At the sessions at which the felon named as "Taunton" was transformed into a defender of his country, the keeper of Newgate was fined £6, for not having his irons for burning ready, but ultimately escaped with a reprimand.
It would appear that prisoners frequently gave bribes to get the branding-iron applied cold, but that wily old magistrates, to defeat such shifts, insisted on seeing the smoke arise from the singed skin of each offender.
Owing to the brutality with which persons exposed on the pillory were often treated by the mob, it was not unusual for the victims or their friends to hire a number of ruffians, who undertook to drive off the assailing rabble.
The exhibitions in Wine Street thus occasionally produced "free fights" of a violent character.
A paragraph in the Gloucester Journal dated August 25th, 1725, states that one John Millard, convicted at the Bristol assizes of forgery, by which he obtained large sums of money, was sentenced to a year's imprisonment, to pay a heavy fine, and to stand in the pillory on two market days.
The latter part of the sentence had taken place during the week.
Millard the forger, had his ears cut off and his nose slit.
"The last day he was severely pelted with rotten oranges and eggs by a common mob, after they had overcome the mob which stood up in his defence, though not 'till some of their leaders were taken up and carried to Bridewell."
Stewart records another case in his manuscript annals.
Richard Baggs, who had been sentenced to the pillory for a filthy offence.
Fearing the exasperation of the populace, he hired 100 Kingswood colliers to protect him, and provided himself with an iron skull cap, and thickly covered his body with brown paper.
The rioting was so violent that the magistrates permitted him to be removed before the time fixed by his sentence."
Felix Farley's Journal of June 21st, 1766, states that a lady who was looking at a pillory exhibition from a window in Wine Street, had her eye cut entirely out of her head by a piece of glass, the window having been smashed by a cabbage stump.
Returning to the first mentioned case, the quarter sessions records show that Millard was still in Newgate in December, 1737, twelve years after his conviction, being an insolvent debtor.
The magistrates ordered his discharge, as concerned his private debts.
But as he stands indebted to the Crown for £103, a fine inflicted upon him at the gaol delivery in 1725, he is ordered to remain in custody.
As nothing more is heard of him, he was probably released only by death.
At the quarter sessions in October, 1725, Sir John Duddleston, grandson and heir of the first baronet, prayed for his discharge from Newgate as an insolvent debtor, under an Act of the previous session, and was liberated accordingly.
The young man was regarded as a discredit to his family by his widowed grandmother, who cut him off with a shilling, by her will, dated 1718.
He afterwards obtained a humble office in the Custom House, but fell into such obscurity that his ultimate fate is unknown.
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A movement for the suppression of drunkenness and profanity sprang up about this time in Bristol and other towns.
The remedy propounded for these offences was the stocks or whipping, which were in great favour amongst local aldermen during the last six months of 1729.
Incorrigible drunkards were incarcerated for four hours.
Persons convicted of cursing or swearing were held in durance for from one to four hours according to the number of their offences.
One man, who had been drunk, was ordered to be exhibited no less than six hours.
Females were frequently subjected to the punishment of branding, and to the same painful extent as men.
All these offenders, however, were rather pitied than tormented by the populace, and the magisterial severity was ineffectual.
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In December the last instance is recorded of another unavailing chastisement.
A woman and two men having been convicted of lewdness, the aldermen (no less than nine of whom attached their signatures to the judgment) ordered, that they all three be put on horseback and ride, through the streets, according to the ancient custom of this city.
At the gaol delivery in April, Thomas Betterley was convicted of murder and sentenced to be hanged. Soldiers being scarce, however, the culprit was pardoned on condition of his continuing to serve as a dragoon. (probably a worse fate than death)
The removing of prisoners to distant places
A form of punishment which judges were first authorised to inflict on common felons in 1718, but which had been long adopted for saving the lives of convicts sentenced to death.
The system was conducted with the looseness characteristic of the time.
The Government standing wholly aloof, except when it accepted felons to recruit the army and navy, local authorities had to make their own arrangements for shipping off prisoners, who sometimes lay for years in gaol before being embarked.
Occasionally, an enterprising shipowner, or a ship captain about to sail for America, offered to take a batch of convicts at a low price, intending to sell them as temporary slaves at New York or Baltimore, and a bargain was thereupon struck by the authorities.
In 1727 Mr. W. Jefferis (mayor, 1738) received twelve guineas for transporting four felons, and the same gentleman, in several succeeding years, performed similar services at the same rate.
In a few cases, during war with France, convicts were shipped in "letters of marque," and may have had to fight.
On several occasions, the off-scourings of the gaols were embarked in vessels carrying honest emigrants, as to whose general treatment revelations will be made presently.
In these transactions the speculative shipper was naturally unwilling to accept aged or weakly felons, who were unlikely to find purchasers.
Thus, in August, 1723, the Common Council voted a sum of ten guineas, paid for obtaining pardons for seven prisoners (being mostly women who have been in Newgate under sentence of transportation, and no person would take them.
In the State Papers of 1733 is a letter from Mr. William Cann, town clerk, to Mr. Scrope, M.P. for Bristol and Secretary of the Treasury, expressing the desire of the mayor and aldermen that one Phillips, condemned to death for horse stealing, should be transported for fourteen years, and that the necessary warrant should be issued at once, as two lusty young fellows were about to be shipped, and if Phillips did not accompany them it would be difficult to prevail on any one to take him singly, by reason of his being in years.
In January, 1745, Alderman Lyde applied to the Council for the usual sum of three guineas each for "eight convicts transported by him," which was ordered to be paid, but the minute adds that four female convicts were still in Newgate, where they had lain, a considerable time, so that the alderman had selected only the marketable prisoners.