Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Even though William Linsey was orphaned at a young age, this rough start did not appear to have any negative impact on him. Linsey was originally born in Palmer, MA in 1746, but at the age of two he went to live with Phinehas Mixture in Dudley, MA. By Linsey’s own account, Mixture raised him [...]
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Tagged Branding, Burglary, Connecticut, Forgery, Fraud, Imprisonment, Massachusetts, New England, New Hampshire, Prisons and Jails, Theft, Whipping
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Wednesday, January 20, 2010
In May 1744, Elizabeth Robinson was sentenced at the Old Bailey in London to transportation to the American colonies for her involvement in the theft of 104 China oranges from a warehouse. She was loaded onto the Justitia that same month and eventually landed in Virginia. She ended up in Maryland, where she reportedly continued [...]
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
All of you who read these Lines may see
The sad and dire Effects of Sin:
Therefore if Sinners still you’l be,
Leave off to read ere you begin. (from A Few Lines)
These lines form the opening of A Few Lines upon the Awful Execution of John Ormesby & Matthew Cushing, one of two poems written [...]
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Sometime around midnight on June 10, 1664, Arthur Nottool, a tailor by trade and a servant living in Abington Cliffs, broke into the house of John Hunt of Eltonhead Manor in Calvert County, Maryland. Poking around in the dark, Nottool spotted an open trunk and removed a shirt from it. He also spied a gun, [...]
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Note: This post is the conclusion of the story of the “Harvard-Educated Burglars.”
In his History of New England, John Winthrop notes on June 5, 1644,
Two of our ministers’ sons, being students in the college, robbed two dwelling houses in the night of some 15 pounds. Being found out, they were ordered by the governours [...]
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
James Ward and Joseph Welde were positioned for success. Both were sons of prominent Puritan church men who were respected members of Massachusetts society, and both were enrolled at Harvard College, which would help them follow in their fathers’ footsteps and become leaders in their community.
One night in March 1644, Ward and Welde burglarized the [...]
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Tom Cook was a notorious New England thief who happens to have been born in my hometown of Westborough, MA. He called himself “The Leveller” and cultivated a reputation for stealing from the rich and readily sharing his ill-gotten gains with the poor.
Stories of his exploits have been handed down for generations. Alice Morse Earle [...]
As part of the 150th anniversary of the Massachusetts Superior Court, the trial of Bathsheba Spooner will be reenacted on June 4, 2009 at the Worcester Trial Court on 225 Main St. in Worcester, MA. The original trial took place at Worcester’s Old South meetinghouse on April 24, 1778 and lasted all day. [...]
