on ancient punishments. It existed from the earliest
times free devon porn and was administered for a great variety of offenses, to
men and women alike, for vagrancy, for free devon porn theft, to the fathers and
mothers of illegitimate children, for drunkenness, for insanity,
even sometimes for small-pox. At one time both sexes free devon porn were whipped
naked, but from Queen Elizabeth's time only from the waist
upward. In 1791 the whipping of female vagrants ceased by law.
(W. Andrews, _Bygone Punishments_, 1899.)
It must, however, be remarked that law always lags far free devon porn behind
social feeling and custom, and flagellation as a common
punishment had fallen into disuse or become very perfunctory long
before free devon porn any change was made free devon porn in the law, free devon porn though it is not
absolutely extinct, even by law, today. There is even an ignorant
and retrograde tendency to revive it. Thus, even in severe
Commonwealth free devon porn days, the alleged whipping with rods of free devon porn a
servant-girl by her master, though with no serious free devon porn physical
injury, produced a great public outcry, as free devon porn we see by the case of
the Rev. Zachary Crofton, a distinguished London clergyman, who
was prosecuted in 1657 on free devon porn the charge of whipping his
servant-girl, free devon porn Mary Cadman, because she lay in bed late in the
morning and stole sugar. This incident led to several pamphlets.
In _The free devon porn Presbyterian, Lash or Noctroff's Maid Whipt_ (1661), a
satire on Crofton, free devon porn we read: "free devon porn It is not only contrary to Gospel
but
good manners to take up a wench's petticoats, smock and all";
and free devon porn in the doggerel ballad of "Bo-Peep," which was also written
on the same subject, it is said that Crofton should have left his
wife to chastise the maid. Crofton published two pamphlets, one
under his own name and one under that of Alethes Noctroff (1657),
in which he elaborately free devon porn dealt with the charge as both false and
frivolous. In one passage he offers a free devon porn qualified defense of such
an act: "I cannot but bewail the
exceeding rudeness of our times
to suffer such foolery to be prosecuted as of some high and
free devon porn notorious crime. Suppose free devon porn it were (as it is not) true, may not
some eminent congregational brother be found guilty of free devon porn the same
free devon porn act? Is it not much short of drinking an health naked on a
signpost? May it not be as theologically defended
as the
husband's correction of his wife?" This passage, and the whole
episode, show that feeling in free devon porn regard to this matter