Devil Made Me Do It!

Crime and Punishment in Early New England

Nonfiction, History, Americas, United States
Cover of the book Devil Made Me Do It! by Juliet Haines Mofford, Globe Pequot Press
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Author: Juliet Haines Mofford ISBN: 9780762775965
Publisher: Globe Pequot Press Publication: December 20, 2011
Imprint: Globe Pequot Press Language: English
Author: Juliet Haines Mofford
ISBN: 9780762775965
Publisher: Globe Pequot Press
Publication: December 20, 2011
Imprint: Globe Pequot Press
Language: English

Tales of the country’s original criminals—and how the courts punished them for their misdeeds

 

Scarlet Letters, wanton dalliances, Sabbathbreaking, and debt: Colonial laws were easily broken and the malefactors who broke them, swiftly punished. How did our ancestors deal with murder and mayhem? How did seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New England communities handle deviants? How have definitions of criminal behavior and its punishment changed over the centuries? What were early prisons like? What were the duties of a turn-key? Find out all this and more in The Devil Made Me Do It.

 

Drawing on early court dockets, diaries, sermons, gaolers’ records, and other primary sources, Juliet Haines Mofford investigates historical cases from a time when accused felons often pleaded in their own defense: “The Devil made me do it!”

 

Among the questions that emerge in this fascinating book: Would spinster Sarah Booker be punished today for her 1769 theft of three skeins of linen yarn? Would Joan Andrews still get a T for Theft pinned upon her bodice for cheating a client by placing two stones in the firkin of butter she sold him?

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Tales of the country’s original criminals—and how the courts punished them for their misdeeds

 

Scarlet Letters, wanton dalliances, Sabbathbreaking, and debt: Colonial laws were easily broken and the malefactors who broke them, swiftly punished. How did our ancestors deal with murder and mayhem? How did seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New England communities handle deviants? How have definitions of criminal behavior and its punishment changed over the centuries? What were early prisons like? What were the duties of a turn-key? Find out all this and more in The Devil Made Me Do It.

 

Drawing on early court dockets, diaries, sermons, gaolers’ records, and other primary sources, Juliet Haines Mofford investigates historical cases from a time when accused felons often pleaded in their own defense: “The Devil made me do it!”

 

Among the questions that emerge in this fascinating book: Would spinster Sarah Booker be punished today for her 1769 theft of three skeins of linen yarn? Would Joan Andrews still get a T for Theft pinned upon her bodice for cheating a client by placing two stones in the firkin of butter she sold him?

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