Interpreting a sentence

[Rebecca Shapiro]

There are other Shapiros on both this and the C18-L list . . . However, with
respect to the sentence Professor Berson mentions, I'd say that the author
of it was not using specific enough language. I would also say that the
discussion on C18-L, while very interesting, has taken some odd temporal and
geographic turns of late which can make for a lack of precision in posts.

Rebecca Shapiro
CUNY--CityTech

Date:    Tue, 8 Feb 2011 15:00:09 -0500
> From:    "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject: Re: Interpreting a sentence
>
> 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.
> >
>

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