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Colonial America bastardy laws were laws, statutes, or other legal precedents set forth by the English colonies in North America.This page focuses on the rules pertaining to bastardy that became law in the New England colonies of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania from the early seventeenth century to the late eighteenth century.
Throughout the 1700s, even as England's "Bloody Code" took shape, incarceration at hard labor was held out as an acceptable punishment for criminals of various kinds—e.g., those who received a suspended death sentence via the benefit of clergy or a pardon, those who were not transported to the colonies, or those convicted of petty larceny. [14]
This period saw the introduction of new laws focused on property defence, which some viewed as class suppression. As convictions for capital crimes increased, penal transportation with indentured servitude became a more common punishment. In 1785, Australia was deemed suitable for transporting convicts, and over one-third of all criminals ...
Senator (and future Chief Justice) Oliver Ellsworth was the drafter of the Crimes Act. The Crimes Act of 1790 (or the Federal Criminal Code of 1790), [1] formally titled An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes Against the United States, defined some of the first federal crimes in the United States and expanded on the criminal procedure provisions of the Judiciary Act of 1789. [2]
Whipping was the most commonly used form of punishment, especially in the American South with slaves. Other frequently used punishments included branding, cutting off ears, and placing people in the pillory. These punishments were sometimes harsher, depending on the crimes committed. In Colonial America, executions were less common than in Europe.
The Piracy Act 1717 (4 Geo. 1.c. 11), sometimes called the Transportation Act 1717 or the Felons' Act 1717 (1718 in New Style [2]), [3] was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain that established a regulated, bonded system to transport criminals to colonies in North America for indentured service, as a punishment for those convicted or attainted in Great Britain, excluding Scotland.
The appearance of a victim of the punishment was also used as a costume in a masked ball and other public appearances of that time. [47] Much later, in Meredith Willson's musical The Music Man (1957), tarring and feathering is demanded as punishment of the main character Harold Hill, con man and Trickster figure, for his scam. [59] [60]
Punishment and killing of slaves: Slave codes regulated how slaves could be punished, usually going so far as to apply no penalty for accidentally killing a slave while punishing them. [9] Later laws began to apply restrictions on this, but slave-owners were still rarely punished for killing their slaves. [ 10 ]