A Dreadful Punishment – looking into the crime of “Petty Treason” and the beliefs surrounding it.

By Lindsay Townsend

There were a series of crimes in the Middle Ages that were thought so dreadful they were considered to be a form of treason. High treason is the offence of attempting to injure or kill the king or queen, and little or petty treason involves any “underling” killing his or her superior Under the law of petty treason, codified in 1351, wives accused of murdering their husbands, or clergy killing their prelates, or a servant killing his or her master or mistress could be tried under this charge.

                                                  

Why were such crimes considered treason? In the Middle Ages, hierarchy was seen as natural, as part of good order, created and ordained by God.  God was always seen as male and at the apex of creation. Earth mirrored heaven, it was believed, and so man was held above woman. To a medieval man, a wife should obey her husband and be inferior to him, and the same was believed to be true for servants and their masters and mistresses.

Attitudes held at the time and the the demands of the church reinforced such ideas. One of the most popular lay stories of the fourteenth century was that of Patient Griselda, who submits to her odious husband while he takes her children from her, tells her he has killed them and finally tells Griselda he has divorced her. As an ideal, patient wife, Griselda then forgives him when her bullying husband reveals that all these ordeals have been fake and a test of her obedience. The church may have raised the Virgin Mary as a perfect woman but all other females and wives were said to be tainted by the sin of Eve, tempted by Satan in the guise of a serpent into stealing an apple from the tree of knowledge and then tempting her husband Adam into sharing it with her. For that sin, the church believed women should be subservient to their husbands.

The message was clear: wives must obey. To murder one’s husband (whom a medieval wife had promised to obey in the marriage ceremony) was seen as the ultimate betrayal, a deadly, intimate act. Servants, too, were encouraged to be servile, especially since they lived with the family, inside the family.

Writing as I do about relationships and romance, I am particularly appalled by the crime of petty treason. For a wife convicted of it, the punishment was dreadful – she was burnt at the stake. It was a crime where the same act – murder of a spouse – was treated in different ways. A man could kill his wife and be tried for murder, but a wife killing her husband was committing treason. A man was allowed to beat his wife because, it was believed by philosophers like Thomas Aquinas that women were less capable of reason than men. This last did mean, strangely enough, that women could be acquitted of the crime of Petty Treason if it was discovered that she had no “accomplices”. Women were not considered able to murder their husbands alone! So in 49 cases of husband killing brought before the justices in medieval Yorkshire and Essex, 32 were released. For those desperate women who were convicted however, a terrible fate awaited. In one of my novels, A Taste of Evil, I have my heroine Alyson accused of the crime of petty treason, with that barbaric threat hanging over her.

  

This horrific punishment was the same as for relapsed heretics and for the same reason. For a wife to kill her husband was seen as a form of heresy, a move against God’s order. Some “mercy” could be offered by the executioner’s choking the woman by cords before the flames touched her, but that often went wrong as the cords could also be burnt by the fire. The law was finally repealed in 1790.

[Renaissance image of Patient Griselda from Wikimedia Commons]

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News & Media: Murder Most Dreadful

By Sandra Schwab

Back in the olden days when Good Queen Bess ruled over England, making the news usually involved some kind of gruesome execution and the display of various rotting body parts on crossways up and down the country. If you were very notorious indeed, your story could also be worth an entry into a town chronicle or it was transformed into a broadside ballad. Add a pretty woodcut, and it could be sold on the streets for cheap money; a practice which remained popular until well into the nineteenth century, when the story of the murder of a Maria Marten by her gentleman suitor in 1827 sold more than one million copies.

In the case of Thomas Arden, the story of his death and the bringing to justice of his murderers even entered the Renaissance stage as "The Tragedie of Arden of Faversham" (1592). Arden was a power-hungry landowner, who at forty married a girl of sixteen. He seems to have been a domineering, profit-seeking man, and there was no much love lost between the married couple.

The wife, Alice, eventually took a lover, with whom she started plotting the death of her husband. The events that followed were first described in a chronicle of 1551:

This year on S. Valentine's day at Faversham in Kent was committed a shameful murder, for one Arden a gentleman was by the consent of his wife murdered, wherefore she was burned at Canterbury, and there was hanged in chains for that murder and at Faversham (two) hanged in chains, and a woman burned, and in Smithfield was hanged one Mosby [i.e., Alice's lover] and his sister for the murder also.

The title page of the play shows how a later generation transformed the events at Faversham into a moral lesson on the wickedness of women and the dangers of base lust: "Wherin is shewed the great malice and discimulation of a wicked woman, the unsatiable desire of filthy lust and the shamefull end of all murderers."

Literature & Education: The Grand Street School

By Eliza Tucker

School isn't just for good little boys and girls.

In the 1870s, there thrived in the Lower East Side of New York City, a school open to children of all colors and creeds. Located near the intersection of Grand and Clinton Streets in a dry good shop owned by Prussian immigrant Wolfe Mandelbaum, The Grand Street School became the most highly esteemed school for young criminals in the United States.

By the time the school was established, Wolfe's wife, Fredericka, had become New York City's most well-respected receiver of stolen goods. She employed expert pickpockets and thieves who not only helped fill two large Manhattan warehouses with items that once belonged to the city's finest families, but took in children aged ten and younger to learn how to scam, cutpurse, and rob. Even the advanced classes in safe cracking, burglary, blackmail and conartistry were free of initial charge for astute students.

The best and brightest graduates of the Grand Street School were offered salaried positions, but they had to surrender anything they stole. This offering didn't last long: "Marm" Mandelbaum found several of these employees were double dealing by turning in their better finds to her rivals.

The Grand Street School only operated for six years, when, in an act of rebellion, a well-known police officer's son applied for training. Marm Mandelbaum realized the educational venture was too common and bad for her other businesses. In 1884, Marm Mandelbaum--New York's own Fagin--was captured in a sting operation led by the Pinkerton Detective Agency.

Social Taboos: Branded

By Anna C. Bowling

In the days of the original thirteen colonies, every healthy adult was needed, and a viable penal system was not on the top of the settlers' to do list. Still, human nature being human nature, when there are laws, as in any society, there will be those who don't abide by them. While the usual practice is to segregate miscreants from the mainstream of society, when that's not a possibility, or the law-breaker has special skills needed for survival, there have to be other means.

Punishments such as the stocks or pillory served as deterrents and temporary restraints for the guilty party, and a moral lesson or cause to for amusement for passersby, depending on their temperament. Still, Some offenses needed a longer lasting solution. For the eighteenth century colonist, this often meant permanent body alterations. As American citizens in many areas can recognize prison work crews from special uniforms, the colonist could know the criminal past of those who had one.

In my colonial historical romance, MY OUTCAST HEART, Tabetha Small knows that Christian Dalby has been convicted of thievery before he's even said a word to her. The "T" branded onto his hand (as in the picture above) makes that plain. The brand was placed so that anyone with occasion to shake hands with someone who bore the mark would be sure to see it. Though Dalby finds a way to obscure his brand, other marks were much harder to hide, such as brands on the cheek or forehead, cropped ears, or even having one's tongue bored through with an iron rod. The infamous Hester Prynne of Nathaniel Hawthorne's THE SCARLET LETTER. could well be considered to have gotten off easy; her letter was only worn on her clothing.

Whipping, tarring and feathering, and the ever-popular being ridden out of town on a rail were not considered cruel or unusual in their time, but necessary ways to carry out the law of the land. Whether or not those to whom the punishment was meted learned their lesson, the effects of a youthful offense would be plain as the nose (or lack thereof) on a man's face for the rest of his life.

To read more about Colonial crime and punishment, visit the official site of Colonial Williamsburg.

Women: 13 Criminal Women in History

By Jacquie Rogers

History tends to mix up ruling women with criminal women in a way that doesn't seem to happen to men. For example, Dido, Queen of Carthage, would be considered a founder and ruler had she been male.

Then there's the POV aspect. Joan d'Arc is a good example, where she's a British criminal but a French and Catholic saint.

Try as I might, I couldn't find a female Jack the Ripper anywhere in history. Not saying there weren't any--just that I couldn't find any. That said, we did have some extraordinary women who either led a life of crime (mainly on the high seas) or straddled the legal lines when convenient. So here goes:

1. Jeanne de Clisson (1300 – 1359): "Lioness of Brittany," she preyed mercilessly on French ships after France convicted her husband for treason and killed him.

2. Lucrezia Borgia (1480 - 1519): Whether she was actively involved with her brother's and father's crimes or a political pawn isn't known. Her husbands had a habit of turning up dead.

3. Grace O'Malley (1530-1603): Irish pirate. Commanded both a private army and a fleet of ships for nearly 60 years. See her castle on the right.

4. Lady Mary Killigrew (mid to late 1500s): When Mary's husband, a Vice Admiral under Queen Elizabeth, went to sea, Mary took the castle staff as her crew and went a'pirating.

5. Sayyida al-Hurra ibn Banu Rashid al-Mandri al-Wattasi Hakima Tatwan (early to mid 1600s): Moroccan pirate who ruled the western Mediterranean. In 1515 she became the last woman in Islamic history to legitimately hold the title of "al-Hurra," or queen, following the death of her husband who ruled Tétouan.

6. Jacquotte Delahaye (mid to late 1600s): French/Haitian beauty who became a pirate upon her father's death to support herself and her retarded brother.

7. Esther Abrahams (c.1771 - 1846): Jewish Convict & First Lady. Convicted of stealing lace, then transported to Australia, she married George Johnston and became unofficial first lady of the colony.

8. Cheng I Sao (wife of Cheng) or Ching Shih (active from 1807-1810): Commanded 1,500 pirate ships and controlled the Chinese coastline. She also ran a protection racket inland from the rivers. Her temper was short and she had a tendency to behead those who annoyed her. See picture.

9. Lola Montez (1818-1861): Born Eliza Gilbert in Limerick, Ireland, 1818. A bad dancer and paramour of Franz Liszt and Alexandre Dumas, she became mistress of King Ludwig and de facto ruler of Bavaria. Belle of the California gold rush, she had a vicious temper and carried a whip.

10. Lizzie Borden (1860-1927): In 1893, she was acquitted of hacking her father and step-mother to death with an axe.

11. Belle Star, or Myra Maybelle Shirley Starr, (1848-1889): The "Bandit Queen," she was accused of stealing horses, fencing goods, and robbing stages. No one knows the true extent of her criminal life.

12. Pearl Hart (c.1870-?): First known woman stage robber in the Old West.

13. Etta Place: Little is known about the woman who was either the Sundance Kid's wife or girlfriend. See Carrie's post below.



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Weapons and Armies: The Tong Wars

By Eliza Tucker

All wars begin on smaller scales: a push for more freedom, a governmental revolution, or the desire for resources. New York City of the mid-1800s was no different. Dozens of gangs, small and large, violent and not-so-violent, ran the city with their support of the police through grafts and vice rackets.

Originally, life within the Chinese communities was dominated by a few large family and district associations with restrictive membership. As a protective response to their dominance mutual aid associations, so-called tongs, emerged. The tongs adopted the norms and values of the Triad subculture. Their secretive nature, combined with the fact that they could recruit members without traditional restrictions, enabled them to overpower the family and district associations and to take on the social functions of arbitration, protection and exploitation in Chinatown. A tong is not a criminal organization per se, but a natural means of obtaining and using mutually obligate bonds (guanxi) for both criminal and non-criminal purposes.

Organizing Chinatown: Race and Racketeering in New York City, 1890-1910
Jeffrey Scott McIllwain
Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004

Photo: Mock Duck

When the tongs first emigrated to the American West, they served as mutual aid societies. Quickly the 'mutual aid' provided began to resemble the strongarm tactics of the mafia and Irish mob. The tongs spread across the US to Chicago, Boston, and New York City. In the early 1900s, two Chinese gangs took hold of the few Manhattan blocks known as Chinatown. Led by newcomer Sai Wing Mock, known as Mock Duck or "Clay Pigeon", the Hip Sings launched a war against the much larger On Leong Tong, led by press-and-police pet, Tom Lee.

Mock Duck, at age 22, politely asked the older, legendary Tom Lee for half the revenues of all of the On Leong gambling and prostitution rackets. After a long stare, Tom Lee laughed and walked away, without saying a word.

Two days later, Mock Duck set fire to an On Leong boarding house, killing two tong members. Shortly after, an On Leong member was attacked by two hatchetmen. Tom Lee replied to the attack with an order to kill all Hip Sing members, with an emphasis on Mock Duck.

Mock Duck survived stabbings and shootings, and began wearing a chain mail vest under his clothes. Known for his terrible aim with a gun, Mock Duck soon realized his best chance against the hatchetmen was to stoop to the ground, duck his head, shut his eyes, and shoot two pistols in any direction he pleased. Using this method, Mock Duck rarely failed to hit his attackers, but often hit innocent bystanders as well.

Tom Lee put a $1000 price on Mock Duck's head--that's almost $25,000 in today's currency--and the warrant fueled the fires in the Tong Wars. Meanwhile, Mock Duck was busy securing his tong's ties to the Four Brothers, China's oldest and most respected family guild. The Four Brothers joined the war against the On Leongs after Mock Duck promised them cultural power in New York. Mock Duck also drafted the two most dangerous hatchetmen in San Francisco, who are estimated to have murdered around 100 men in the Tong Wars.

While Tom Lee had the police force in his pocket, so Mock Duck appealed to the religious reformers for added support. He told the popular Rev. Charles Parkhurst about the good Chinese trying to live honestly, and about the terrible vices the On Leongs pushed upon them, such as the singsong girls (prostitutes) and the opium dens. Mock Duck provided Parkhurst with a list of On Leong's establishment, and Parkhurst used his favor with most of New York's upper class to force the authorities into action.

But Mock Duck kept the Ace up his sleeve. Tom Lee realized that Mock Duck hadn't given Parkhurst any addresses along On Leong's Mott Street, from whence the On Leong's highest revenue came. Tom Lee couldn't turn over any information about the Hip Sings in retaliation if he wanted to stay in business.

In 1906, Tom Lee finally conceded, only to try to rebuild the On Leongs in 1909. This time, the police involved themselves fully, working toward peace more than profit. These battles, fought within just five diminutive city blocks, were responsible for approximately 350 deaths.

Famous People: J. Edgar Hoover, the Original G-Man

By Delia DeLeest

Before there was the FBI, there was the BOI, the Bureau of Investigations. J. Edgar Hoover was the director of the BOI in 1924 and was a founder of the FBI in 1935.

Born on New Year's Day, 1895, Hoover received his law degree in 1917. During WWI, he found work with the Justice Department, became head of the General Intelligence Division which morphed into a position with the BOI in 1921. President Calvin Coolidge named him head of that agency in 1924 after the previous head was implicated in fraud.

In the 1930's, a rash of bank robberies tested his power. Because of bank foreclosures on farms and homes, these criminals became folk heroes of sorts among the common man, making their apprehension even harder. The BOI could become involved with these crimes when the thieves took stolen cars across state lines, a federal offense. After a botched attempt to capture of John Dillinger in Manitowish Waters, WI, left a civilian and an agent dead, but the culprits free to steal another day, Dillinger became a bit of an obsession with Hoover. Nobody makes fools out of the BOI and goes unpunished. Hoover only felt vindicated when Dillinger was shot down in front of the Biograph Theater in 1934.

Dillinger's death, along with the capture of many other high-profile outlaws finally brought Hoover the recognition he felt he deserved. The Bureau's powers were widened and it was renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigations, which is what it remains today.

Almost from the very start, Hoover was accused of overstepping his bounds. He would investigate people based on their political beliefs instead of any criminal activities. Under his leadership, the FBI kept tabs on many people for their possibly radical beliefs. Cointelpro, a program he developed in the mid-50's, was involved in illegal wire-tapping, burglaries and planting forged documents, among other things. The program became public in 1971 and was abolished after being declared unconstitutional.

Hoover did many good deeds also. Under him, the FBI was depository to the largest collection of fingerprints in the world. The FBI's evidence lab was expanded and became a high-tech effective crime fighting tool. Because of his leadership, he's also been hailed as the reason why the country was relatively free of sabotage or espionage during the WWII years.

Despite allegations that Hoover tended to abuse his power, both with criminals and his own agents, Hoover remained the bureau's head until his death in 1972. President's Truman, Kennedy and Johnson all considered firing him during their administrations, but the affect he could have on their political careers and those of their friends forced them to reconsider. In 1974, files were found containing dirt Hoover had collected on many political personalities. That's one way to obtain job security.

The FBI headquarters in Washington DC is named after Hoover. Due to the controversies during his rein as leader, it's been suggested that the building be renamed, but at this time, the name remains.

The History of a Slum

Oh! the night that I struck New York,
I went out for a quiet walk;
Folks who are "on to" the city say,
Better by far that I took Broadway;
But I was out to enjoy the sights,
There was the Bow'ry ablaze with lights;
I had one of the devil's own nights!
I'll never go there anymore.
- Charles H. Hoyt, 1892, from the musical "A Trip to Chinatown"

Before the Dutch West India Company settled the island called Mannahatta, the native Lenni Lenape walked a path from water to forest to hills and then to bogs. Colonists came and Mannahatta became New Amsterdam. By 1645 it had become a residential area: ten families of freed slaves were the first to bring the Bowery toward civilization. At the top of the road was the great farm belonging to Peter Stuyvesant, one of the last Director-Generals of the Colony of New Netherland. One of the first things you'll learn on a tour of the Bowery is that the name has nothing to do with the shape of the avenue (which is rather like a hunting bow), but a corruption of the Dutch word bouwerij, which means "farm." One of the other things you'll learn straightaway is how to pronounce it: "take a bow" rather than "tie a bow."

By the late 1700s, the Bowery was New York City's major uptown thoroughfare (back when Hester Street was considered uptown) and lined with mansions and trendy shops. Because this section of town was the new "it" area, the Manhattan Company, under the direction of Aaron Burr, began to develop it further. And to develop it they'd need to dry up the bogs and fill in the neighboring freshwater pond, The Collect, which had become polluted.

Soon after The Collect was filled in, people started building on the landfill. Within a decade, water began to rise under the new shops and homes and factories, and the buildings began to sink. Cholera and other diseases spread, and the denizens who could afford to move from the area, did. Slumlords bought up chucks of the Five Points and the nearby Bowery.

Historians call New York City's Bowery America's first slum. Since the 19th century, the street has boasted more than its share of saloons, flophouses, bawdy houses, and dance halls. Places like McGurk's Suicide Hall, where its backroom girls (most of whom were between the ages of 16 and 18) killed themselves by drinking carbolic acid, and brothels that catered to specific preferences helped herald the Bowery as the Devil's Own Street.

Less-sinister establishments like Steve Brodie's saloon (Brodie claimed to have jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge), McKeon's and Morgue were more abundant, and it was in places like these that a teenager named Irving Berlin started his career by singing and dancing. Vaudeville got its start here, at Tony Pastor's Opera House, and America's first permanent zoo, the Zoological Institute, was opened in 1821.

In 1826, the Bowery Theater opened at No. 46-48, and is considered the first gas-lit theater. On that very site was the Bull's Head Tavern, where George Washington and General George Clinton celebrated after freeing New York from British rule in 1783. The theater was burned down in an 1834 riot when one of its actors was rumored to have made anti-American remarks. The theater was rebuilt, and in 1879 the theater hosted the US debut of the H.M.S. Pinafore.

A century later, the Bowery was still fighting reformers, and kept adding to the rep it had begun building so long ago. It's no surprise that punk music found its home at CBGBs, and in the past decade, the city officially designated a stretch of East Second Street, along the Bowery, "Joey Ramone Place," and a bloke could get a room at the Andrews for $9 a night. The infamous road has attracted many a history-savvy celeb, too, with models trafficking the former Bowery Bar (now the B Bar and Grill) and Denzel Washington and Lenny Kravitz's exclusive club, Kos.

There are a hundred more stories and legends about the Bowery, and so many ghosts of ne'er-do-wells just begging to have their stories embellished that I will never, ever run out of something big, brash and brilliant to write about. While the Bowery’s past is as grievous as it is colorful, I am drawn to the street every time I visit New York. Here's hoping the recent gentrification doesn't stick, and thanks for taking a quick tour with me.