What was the punishment for adultery in puritan times

Spurned by the object of her affection, she resolved to wed the first man who came along. She carried out her threat by marrying a much older man for whom she could muster no fondness. Mary was what we today would call a "Party Girl. In Puritan society, adultery was not seen merely as a matter between the two parties but as a breach of contract between those individuals and the community.

Even if a husband wanted his adulterous wife to be saved, she could be sentenced to die as a result of the community's obligations to its moral and legal statutes.

A Boston law provided for death as punishment the scaffold then was used only for executions, not the pillory , and in , Mary Latham and James Britton were reported in John Winthrop's journal to have been put to death for adultery. But corporal punishment, or whipping, was the usual punishment in Puritan Massachusetts for adultery, signaling that the ultimate possible punishment offered by the Bible and the law was too harsh. Hawthorne's ancestor, Major John Hathorne, was magistrate in Salem in , and he ordered a woman named Hester Craford to be severely whipped in public after she gave birth to an illegitimate child.

Later, even these punishments subsided. A Plymouth law of called for the display of an A on the dress. Hawthorne recorded this case in his journal, and it became the subject of his story, "Endicott and the Red Cross," in which a Salem woman, required to wear the red letter A , added wonderful embroidery to it. Now, however, it seemed that the Puritan communities had found themselves in the difficult place of punishing adultery too leniently, because many found the embroidery of the A too light a sentence, but whipping and execution too harsh.

Puritan punishments in Connecticut were even tougher. When Joan Andrews of York, Maine, sold a firkin of butter with stones in it, she had to stand in a public place. Slanderers, scolds and liars were liable to have a cleft stick — a stick split at the end — put onto their tongues while they stood in a public place. In in Salem, Mass. Massachusetts banned Quakers, and the Puritan punishments for returning were painful.

Colonial records described in what should happen to Quakers who came back:. A Quaker if male for the first offense shall have one of his ears cut off; for the second offense have his other eare cutt off; a woman shalbe severely whipt; for the third offense they, he or she, shall have their tongues bored through with a hot iron.

Offenders could try to have their Puritan punishments mitigated by seeking the intervention of clergy. A counterfeiter in Salem, condemned to death, pleaded for a clergyman to help him. A Puritan woman could also pay the ultimate price for adultery.

The Massachusetts Bay General Court declared adultery a capital crime in , meaning it was a crime punishable by death. Mary Latham was executed for adultery, according to EyewitnessToHistory. Mary was convicted for committing adultery with one man and then confessed to having sex with 12 others. She went willingly to her execution, viewing it as a fair punishment for her sins. While men were also punished for this crime, adultery was considered a more serious offense for women, who were often viewed as temptresses.

In the case of Mary Mendame, her lover was "only" whipped at the post, a lesser punishment than the whipping she received at the cart's tail, because the judges said she had enticed him. Married men who had sex with a single woman were charged with fornication, while married women who had sex with a single man were charged with the more serious crime of adultery.