"At Cambridge she was tied to the whipping-post, and lashed with
ten stripes with a three-stringed whip, with three knots at the end: At
Watertown she was laid on with ten stripes more with rods of willow: At
Dedham, in a cold frosty morning, they tortured her aged body with ten
stripes more at a cart's tail." The peculiar atrocity of flogging from
town to town lay in this: that the victim's wounds became cold between the
times of punishment, and in winter sometimes frozen, which made the
torture intolerably agonizing. Then, as hanging was impossible, other
means were tried to make an end of her: "Thus miserably torn and beaten,
they carried her a weary journey on horseback many miles into the
wilderness, and toward night left her there among wolves, bears, and other
wild beasts, who, though they did sometimes seize on living persons, were
yet to her less cruel than the savage-professors of that country. When
those who conveyed her thither left her, they said, 'They thought they
should never see her more.'" [Footnote: Besse, ii. 229. See _New England
Judged_, p. 413.]
The intent to kill is obvious, and yet Elizabeth Hooton suffered less than
many of those convicted and sentenced after public indignation had forced
the theocracy to adopt what their reverend successors are pleased to call
the "humaner policy" of the Vagabond Act.
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