METHODS OF PUNISHMENT.
It may be interesting to note that in the olden times there were other methods resorted to for punishing criminals besides fines, jails and penitentiaries, which are not used in this day and time. The Common Council, in 1785, passed a resolution ordering Sergeant John Richards to “erect immediately a whipping post, stocks and ducking stool.” The whipping post was used mainly for the slaves who were guilty of small infractions of the law, but for aggravated offences, the penalty was “thirty-nine lashes on his bare back, well laid on,” to which was added “burning in the left hand, in the presence of the court.” The whipping post is said to have been used for habitual persistent absence from church, but it was very seldom used for that purpose, and never in Fredericksburg so far as we have discovered from the records.
The stocks were used to punish white persons for petty offences, such as vagrancy, trespassing and similar infractions of the law. The stocks consisted of a frame of timber, with holes in which the ankles and wrists of the offenders were confined. The stocks were erected in the public square and it is said the passers-by, and those who had gathered around them, through curiosity, would taunt and jeer at the criminals thus confined for punishment.
The ducking stool was used for punishing common scolds, refractory women and dishonest tradesmen, especially brewers and bakers. The ducking stool for Fredericksburg was erected on the bank of the Rappahannock river, at the foot of Wolfe street, near where the old Stafford bridge spanned the river. There are several of our old citizens now living who remember when it was in use, and when it was dispensed with, nearly seventy years ago. A “ducking” always brought together a large crowd, most of whom were rude and disorderly, and jeers at and ridicule of the party “ducked” would rend the air, while the sentence of the court was being carried out. It is said that some of the “scolding women,” as they would emerge from the water would send forth volumes of abuse at the disorderly crowd, while the officer waited for the next bath, and this was kept up until the order of the court was fully executed. It seemed to be the wish of the authorities that the whole population would turn out and witness these different modes of punishment, with the hope that it would deter others from committing similar offences.
CHAPTER V
The Lease of the Market-House Lots—The First Serious Fire—Fredericksburg an Important Center—An Act Concerning Elections—Half of the Town Destroyed by Fire—Fredericksburg an Important Postal Point—How the Mails were Carried—A Congressional Investigation—Amendatory Act of 1821—The Great Fire of 1822—The Trade of the Town—Contagious Diseases—The Town in 1841—Acts of Extension, 1851, 1852, 1858, 1861, &c.
In the year 1789 an enactment was passed by the Legislature empowering the Mayor and Commonalty of the town of Fredericksburg to lease for three lives, or twenty-one years, such unimproved parts of the market-house lots as to them shall seem most proper, and apply the rents arising therefrom for the benefit of the corporation. In the same year an act was passed authorizing the Trustees of the Fredericksburg Academy to raise, by way of lottery, the sum of four thousand pounds to defray the expenses of erecting a building on the academy lands for the purpose of accommodating the professors and the rapidly increasing number of students. We could not learn the result of this latter scheme.
THE FIRST SERIOUS FIRE.