ANCIENT PUNISHMENTS OF WOMEN.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1628, 5 August 1887, Page 3

ANCIENT PUNISHMENTS OF WOMEN.

In tho owly days of England men were too humane to hang wonion, but they drowor<s them. During the re'gn of Howry 111, however, a woumrwaa hanged, but as aha did not die after being on the gibbeit for a day, they cut her down and eho waa granted a pardon. Adulterous women and Borcareeßea were drowned or smothered In. mud. Stones wore f*?tenod to their neckßto^prevont their B-wimmiug, or thiey were ae^ed op m Baokß Sonietiinea they were drowned m company with a cat, dog, and a anaka. The AngloSaxons drowned womon guilty of thuft. The criminal was thrown from a cl ff and submerged. In ths tenth century a wom^n was drowned at London bridge. Women were punlahed by drowning m Scotland. In 1690 GrlsaoU Mather was coudemned by the High Ooart of Edinburgh, ' to betaken to ihe North loch and j there drowned t«ll she iadead.' A memorable inatai ca of drowning occurre 3 at Bavarfa on October 14>,h, 1436. Agnea Bernaarian, wifa of Dake Albert the Pioas, w.*b droppod off the bridge of the city of Strasburg into the Danube, bj order of her father. She appears not to have been put into a Back, and her limbs n ,t to have been securely bound, for sho rose to the surface of the water, and awam to'the shore, crying 'help, help,' but the ezeontioner put a long pole into her hair and kept her down. According to the Danish lawa women were buried alive for theft, a method of punishment not unknown m France. In 1331 Marote Daplaa was scourged and subjected to this oruel death at Abbeville, and m 1460 a woman named Perrote Manger, a notorious thief and receiver of stolen goods was, by order of the Provott of Paris, buried alive m front of the gibbet m that city. In imcient German history We read of female criminals holnp impokd m mad, and m .oompa-ativtly recant years the remaice of several bodes h^ve been found to prove the truta of this assertion. In eatly England a cock once poisoned fourteen persons, ' The authorities did not believe they had p -punißhraeut sufficiently tevere for i.ir case bo a law was panned making her crime puniahable by being boiled 6o death.'