- English
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eBook - ePub
About this book
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?
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?
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Please note we cannot support devices running on iOS 13 and Android 7 or earlier. Learn more about using the app.
Yes, you can access Devil Made Me Do It! by Juliet Haines Mofford in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & North American History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Table of contents
- Preface
- PART I: The Puritan Way
- PART II: Governing the Family
- PART III: Governing the Community
- PART IV: The First Colonial Crime Wave: Crimes against Religion
- PART V: Sexual Deviants and Female Felons
- PART VI: The Second Colonial Crime Wave: Witches
- PART VII: Crimes against Property
- PART VIII: The Third Colonial Crime Wave: Pirates
- PART IX: Early Prisons
- PART X: The Case of Patience Samson Boston, the Penitent Prisoner
- Afterword: From Ridicule to Reform
- Endnotes
- Bibliography
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author