Daily Kennebec journal., 1894-05-04
@ifg ono Gountg.
NEW ENGLAND COLONIAL LAWS.
ioms oi Their curiosities Noted in an Ad
dress BY Judge Hall.


the Kennebec Natural History and Anti
quarian Society, Tuesday evening, on the
"Curiosities of the New England Colonial
Laws" he cited the following sentence
from the court records of Augusta: At a
term of the Supreme Judicial Court of
Massachusetts, held at Augusta in 1904, one
Ella Druce was convicted of larceny of
goods to the value of about $25 90. He
was sentenced "to be set upon the gallows,
with a rope round his neck and an end
thereof cast over the gallows. for the space
Of one hour; be publicly whipped twenty
stripes and pay the cost of prosecution and
stand committed until the sentence shall be
performed. And it is further ordered that
the said Eli pay the said Stephen Page (the
orosecutor) $49.30, being with the goods
returned, treble the value of the goods
stolen, and if unable to pay, to make justii-
'ation thereof by service. And the prose
'utor is authorized by the court to dispose
If the prisoners service for one year.
Some of the original liquor laws of Name
we're cited. Oae passed by the govern
! ment of Gorges at Kittery in 1886 pro-
sided: "Any man that doth sell his neigh
Dor strong liquor or wine; shall suffer his
neighbor or servant to continue drinking in
che house, except men invited or laborers
IN working days for an hour at dinner, or
strangers or dodgers, shall forfeit 10 shil-
lings." Fifty years later it was ordered by
the same government: "Thenceforth no
rum, stray liquor nor flip shall be sold to
my inhabitant Of the town directly nor in
iirectly by any ordinary keeper except i'll
eases of great distress or sickness" Before
this very brief prohibitory law was passed
by the Duke of Yorks governme mt embrac-
ing the east Kennebec region at Pemaquid.
It was in these words: "Ordered: No rum
o be d-ank on that side the bank stands
Many curious laws were cited regulating
attire in colonial times. One law provided
that men should not wear long hair like
woman and woman should not wear
"cut hair" or curled hair. The
laws were very severe against low
aecked and short sleeved dresses lace, RIB
oons and silk roses. The paper was full
Of illustration incident of the times. Some
Of the laws regulating labor were cited.
The opp-essors in the view of these laws
WAS the mechanic and common laborer
Wag"s of lsborers on the lower Kennebec
iuring the last part of the last century were
dfty cents day. 1t required two weeks
labor to secure man a pair of cotton shirts.
Laborers oppressed their employers by
insisting upon stipulatus about the kind of
food they should have to eat. At the mouth
If the Kennebec it was usual to stipulate
that the laborer should not be rtq aired "to
eat salmon more than FIVE times week or
clams more than three-quarters of the
ime." There was . severe law against
corruption of the ballot. Whoever should
put more than one corn or bean in the box
,hould be fined ten pounds. Equal to about
$3.50 of our money.
The origin of the town system of govern
ment and the common school system and
several others of the principal institutions of
the country were traced to their origin, and
it was claimed that the town and common
school syetems originated with the Puritan
church and the school system began in Cal
vanism to defeat that old d lude Satan"
from longer keeping the scriptures from
the people by keeping them in ignorance.
This is merely brief outline of this in
teresting paper, which the JousNAL would
like to have used in full, but space would
not permit.