The colonists were astonishingly honest. Thieves were surprisingly few; they were punished under Dutch rule by scourging with rods, and usually by banishment,—a very convenient way of shifting responsibility. Assaults were punished by imprisonment and subjection to prison fare, consisting only of bread and water or small beer; and sometimes temporary banishment. There was at first no prison, so men were often imprisoned in their own houses, which does not seem very disgraceful. In the case of François de Bruyn, tried for insulting and striking the court messenger, he was fined two hundred guilders, and answered that he would rot in prison before he would pay. He was then ordered to be imprisoned in a respectable tavern, which sentence seems to have some possibility of mitigating accompaniments.
In 1692 it was ordered in Kings County that a good pair of stocks and a pound be made in every bound within Kings County, and kept in sufficient repair. In repair and in use were they kept till this century. Pillories too were employed in punishment till within the memory of persons now living. The whipping-post was really a public blessing,—in constant use, and apparently of constant benefit, though the publicity of its employment seems shocking to us to-day. The public whipper received a large salary. In 1751, we learn from an advertisement, it was twenty pounds annually.
Some of the punishments were really almost picturesque in their ingenious inventions of mortification and degradation. Truly it was a striking sight when “Jan of Leyden”—a foul-mouthed rogue, a true blather-schuyten—was fastened to a stake in front of the townhouse, with a bridle in his mouth and a bundle of rods tied under each arm, and a placard on his breast bearing the inscription, “Lampoon-riter, false accuser, defamer of magistrates.” Though he was banished, I am sure he never was forgotten by the children who saw him standing thus garnished and branded on that spring day in 1664. In the same place a thief was punished by being forced to stand all day under a gallows, a gallows-rope around his neck and empty sword-scabbard in his hand, a memorable figure.
And could any who saw it ever forget the punishment of Mesaack Martens, who stole six cabbages from his neighbor, and confessed and stood for days in the pillory with cabbages on his head, that “the punishment might fit the crime;” to us also memorable because the prisoner was bootlessly examined by torture to force confession of stealing fowls, butter, turkeys, etc.
He was not the only poor creature who suffered torture in New Amsterdam. It was frequently threatened and several times executed. The mate of a ship was accused of assaulting a sheriff’s officer, who could not identify positively his assailant. The poor mate was put to torture, and he was innocent of the offence. The assailant was proved to be another man from whom the officer had seized a keg of brandy. Still none in New Amsterdam were tortured or pressed to death. The blood of no Giles Corey stains the honor of New Netherland.
Sometimes the execution of justice seemed to “set a thief to catch a thief.” A letter written by an English officer from Fort James on Manhattan Island to Captain Silvester Salisbury in Fort Albany in 1672 contains this sentence:—
“We had like to have lost our Hang-man Ben Johnson, for he being taken in Divers Thefts and Robbings convicted and found guilty, escaped his neck through want of another Hangman to truss him up, soe that all the punishment that he received for his Three Years’ Roguery in thieving and stealing (which was never found out till now) was only 39 stripes at the Whipping Post, loss of an Ear and Banishment.”
We have the records of an attempt at capital punishment in 1641; and Mr. Gerard’s account of it in his paper “The Old Stadt-Huys” is so graphic, I wish to give it in full:—
“The court proceedings before the Council, urged by the Fiscal, were against Jan of Fort Orange, Manuel Gerrit the Giant, Anthony Portugese, Simon Congo, and five others, all negroes belonging to the Company, for killing Jan Premero, another negro. The prisoners having pleaded guilty, and it being rather a costly operation to hang nine able-bodied negroes belonging to the Company, the sentence was that they were to draw lots to determine ‘who should be punished with the cord until death, praying the Almighty God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, to direct that the lot may fall on the guiltiest, whereupon’ the record reads, ‘the lot fell by God’s Providence on Manuel Gerrit, the Giant, who was accordingly sentenced to be hanged by the neck until dead as an example to all such malefactors.’ Four days after the trial, and on the day of the sentence, all Nieuw Amsterdam left its accustomed work to gaze on the unwonted spectacle. Various Indians also gathered, wondering, to the scene. The giant negro is brought out by the black hangman, and placed on the ladder against the fort with two strong halters around his neck. After an exhortation from Domine Bogardus during which the negro chaunts barbaric invocations to his favorite Fetich, he is duly turned off the ladder into the air. Under the violent struggles and weight of the giant, however, both halters break. He falls to the ground. He utters piteous cries. Now on his knees, now twisting and groveling on the earth. The women shriek. The men join in his prayers for mercy to the stern Director. He is no trifler and the law must have its course. The hangman prepares a stronger rope. Finally the cry for mercy is so general that the Director relents, and the fortunate giant is led off the ground by his swarthy friends, somewhat disturbed in his intellect by his near view of the grim King of Terrors.”
Up to February 21, 1788, benefit of clergy existed; that is, the plea in capital felonies of being able to read. This was a monkish privilege first extended only to priestly persons. In England it was not abolished till 1827. The minutes of the Court of General Quarter Sessions in New York bear records of criminals who pleaded “the benefit” and were branded on the brawn of the left thumb with “T” in open court and then discharged.