Interpreting a sentence

Tue Feb 8 20:00:09 UTC 2011

At 2/8/2011 01:11 PM, George Thompson wrote:
>It certainly isn't my impression that the criminal law of 17th C
>England was "lax", or that the New Englanders devised a criminal law
>that was more draconian than back home.
>Nonetheless, I would interpret the quoted sentence as stating that
>the criminal law of NE was intended to be more severe than that of
>the old country.
>
>As far as the Purritans [sic] being considered extremists, they were
>indeed so considered, by me, Ben Jonson and many other figures of
>note, but not for their code of criminal law.  What the writer of
>the quoted sentence meant to say there I won't guess at.
>
>Is the writer thinking of the scarlet-letter business?  That wasn't
>found in England, I suppose, but I doubt that my great-to-the-7th
>grandads supposed that England was soft on fornication &
>adultery.    (1/4 of my ancestry is old-time New Englander)  The
>law's take on theft can't have been different, much.  How about
>gambling, drunkenness & other victimless crimes?  Leaving aside what
>the aristocracy was able to get away with, of course.

Probably only George and Fred Shapiro know who the writer is (they
subscribe to C18-L).  Yes, the writer did immediately mention the
"scarlet-letter business" in replying to my allegedly unwarranted
assumption that she was the opinionator (dates from 1677 and 1702-4!)
of the first part of the sentence.  She didn't explain what parallel
she was drawing with TSL -- whether she thought the law described in
it was severe,  or merciful.  (It's also not clear whether she was
committing the sin of presentism, comparing the 1600s law with the
18th or even the 19th/20th century laws.) In fact, it's clear from
the Massachusetts law that the *penalty* imposed on Hester Prynne in
1641 (the year is unambiguous) *was* lenient -- at that time adultery
was a capital offense (but it was not in the 18th century).  And
Hawthorne even has a townsman say that the magistrates, "in their
great mercy and tenderness of heart," have forgone the death
penalty.  (I don't believe Hawthorne is being ironic here, except
perhaps in comparison with the laws of 100 or 200 years later.  He
knew the colonial laws.)

Adultery was not a capital offense in England, I think from at least
the 1600s if not much earlier, except for a short period after 1650
during the Commonwealth.  Fornication was never a capital crime in
New England (nor, I imagine, in Old England).  The law's take on
theft was much more severe in Old than in New England during the
1700s at least -- crimes against property alone were never capital in
New England.  (Robbery and burglary could be punished by death, but
those were crimes against people.)  Aristocracy and wealth were
mitigating factors in Old England.  Recently, C18-L has been
discussing the case of the well-connected and wealthy Francis
Charteris, sentenced to death in 1730 for the rape of his female
servant -- and pardoned by the king.

The penalty of wearing a letter or words describing one's crime was
common in Old as well as New England.  (My sources for this are
Andrew McFarland Davis, The Law of Adultery and Ignominious
Punishments (1895), pp. 25--26; and George Lee Haskins, Law and
Authority in Early Massachusetts (1960), p. 175.)  In New England
victimless crimes (including such as fornication,  gambling, and
drunkenness) and crimes against property (such as theft) were
punished sometimes by wearing letters, generally by whipping and/or fines.

>One of my very-great-grandmas had an out-of-wedlock baby, and seems
>not to have suffered unduly for it.  (This last is a family scandal
>that we have kept hidden for 325 years -- I hope that you all will
>not let it go beyond the circle here.)

Was your very-great-grandma "contracted" (and later marry) when she
(if George will forgive my use of the word of 325 years ago)
fornicated?  Or if not contracted at the time, did she and the father
marry later?  The fine would be quartered in the first case, or
halved in the second.  (No fatherless infant that the town might have
to support.)

Joel

>GAT
>
>George A. Thompson
>Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre",
>Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at att.net>
>Date: Tuesday, February 8, 2011 11:34 am
>Subject: Interpreting a sentence
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> > I am reading the following sentence (in email, so I excuse the typo):
> >
> > >Criminal law in New England was created on the whole by people who
> > >had found life in Europe too lax, but were considered extremists,
> > >and persecuted, by their contemmporaries [sic] Europeans.
> >
> > Is it fair to assume that "criminal law in New England was created on
> > the whole by people who had found life in Europe too lax"  is the
> > opinion of the writer of this sentence, rather than the opinion of
> > "their contemporaneous Europeans"?
> >
> > Is it fair to assume that the "criminal law was founded ..." part
> > implies the belief (whether held by the writer or held by the
> > contemporaneous Europeans) that the New Englanders created a criminal
> > law that was severe in order to overcome the laxness they saw in Europe?
> >
> > Joel
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
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