Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities Journal

In the seventeenth century, Massachusetts Bay Colony leaders often meted out bodily punishments with the intention of shaming offenders. Both the type of crime presented and the bodily punishments given reflected a deliberate strategy on the part of Puritan leaders. By examining the Colony’s court records between 1630–1675, this paper explores what a Puritan legal system looked like with respect to early bodily chastisements. Almost all the crimes that were punished through physical correction also had some sort of bodily violation. No matter how gruesome, the punishments represented the community’s efforts to return the offender to the body politic.