“John Simes, ordinary, and others, for keeping a disorderly house to debauch the youth. John was disguised in women’s clothes walking the streets openly, and going from house to house against the laws of God and this Province, to the staining of the holy profession, and against the law of nature. Edward James, a like offender, at an unreasonable hour of night.
“Dorothy, wife of Richard Conterill, is indicted also for being masked in men’s clothes, walking and dancing in the house of said John Simes at 10 o’clock at night. Sarah Stiver, wife of John Stiver, was also at the same house, dressed in men’s clothes, and walked the streets.”
It is quite probable that these indictments stopped any further attempts to hold “masquerade balls” in Philadelphia for some years.
In 1703 three barbers were indicted for “trimming on the First day”; three persons were brought before the Court for playing cards; a butcher was in court for “killing meat in the street and leaving their blood and offals there,” another for “setting up a great reed stack on Mulberry Street, and making a close fence about the same.” Many runaways were publicly whipped.
In the year 1708 “Solomon Cresson, a constable of the City of Philadelphia, going his rounds at 1 o’clock at night and discovering a very riotous assembly in a tavern, immediately ordered them to disperse, when John Evans, Esq., Governor of the Province, happened to be one of them, and called Solomon in the house and flogged him very severely, and had him imprisoned for two days.”
In 1731, at New Castle, “Catherine Bevan is ordered to be burned alive, for the murder of her husband; and Peter Murphy, the servant who assisted her, to be hanged.”
Pious Henry Antes Organized First
Moravian Synod January 12, 1742
Pious Henry Antes assembled at his home in Germantown on January 12, 1742, thirty-five persons, representing eight distinct denominations of the Christian religion, and formed the first Moravian Synod.