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Whipping was an extremely common punishment throughout the colonies, especially for servants and slaves. In Charles County, Maryland, in 1664, the county court ordered Agnes Taylor to be whipped “at the whipping Post in the Publicke View of the People” twenty lashes “for having Played the whore”; Ann Cooper earned twelve lashes for “having had A Bastard.” Three servants, Mathew Brown, Elizabeth Browne, and Joseph Fendemore, were brought to court as runaways; Matthew “impudently” alleged that he was abused, and not given enough “Vitualls”; but this, the court felt was a malicious lie. He was sentenced to twenty-seven lashes. Joseph Fendemore and Elizabeth Browne claimed they “went Along with him for company”; this brought from the court only sarcasm: they could join him “for Company sacke [sake]” at the whipping post, seven lashes for Elizabeth and nine for Joseph.30

It was a paternal society—a society built on the model of a patriarchal house. Like a stem father, the authorities did not believe in sparing the rod. The courts enforced discipline. In a way, it was a crime just to be a bad citizen: not to conform to standards of good virtue and respectability. The court could haul in a community nuisance and make him see the error of his ways. Or her ways: a Massachusetts law of 1672 denounced the “evil practice” of “Exorbitancy of the Tongue, in Railing and Scolding.” Women were the target of this law; the punishment was to be “Gagged, or set in a Ducking-stool, and dipt over Head and Ears three times in some convenient place of fresh or saltwater.”31

The colonial magistrates thought it made sense to humble a “scold” publicly, and in general to humiliate no-goods and other minor deviants. Shaming punishments were sometimes offered as alternatives to fines or other forms of punishment. In Maine, in 1671, Sarah Morgan, who had the effrontery to strike her husband, was ordered “to stand with a gagg in her Mouth halfe an houre at Kittery at a Publique Town meeteing &. the cause of her offence writt upon her forhead, or pay 50 s[hillings] to the County.”32

Shaming punishments were colorful; they were certainly used with great frequency. But the workaday fine, the drudge-horse of criminal justice, was probably the most common form of punishment. Not everybody had money, of course; runaway servants, who would be hard pressed to come up with cash, sometimes atoned for offenses in a much more appropriate way: by serving extra time. Under a law of New Jersey (1713), a servant who ran away would have to serve “Double the Time” he or she was absent.33 Thieves were sometimes required to pay extra damages, or to make restitution; restitution was also a way of restoring the equilibrium the thief had disturbed. In Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1736, Mary Roberts, who admitted stealing “worsted stuff” and other cloth from Stephen Adkinson, was ordered to ”make restitution of the said goods stolen, to the owner.” It was her third offense; she was also fined and whipped.34

The colonies made extensive use of bonds and recognizances: there was no such thing as probation, but courts commonly forced troublemakers and suspicious people to put up security, as a guarantee of good behavior. They were, after all, part of the community, for better or for worse. Jane Linch, convicted of stealing in Philadelphia (1760), was ordered “whipt on Wednesday next at the Carts tail round four Squares of the City,” twenty-one lashes in all; she was also fined, told to make restitution, to pay the costs of the prosecution, to give security herself in the amount of fifty pounds, and to find two sureties for twenty-five pounds each “for her good Behaviour for twelve months.”35

This “quasi-parole use of recognizances” was common in New York; bonds were used to make sure a defendant appeared at trial, as an alternative to trial and punishment, or as an addition to it. It was sometimes even used for an acquitted defendant.36 In 1703, one Hannah Crosier was charged with stealing; she was found not