– fraudulent weights and measures used by grocers, coal-dealers, etc.
The term is a pun on the formal definition of the word: to lie in wait (lying weight).
Sources:
Note: See “Cant: The Language of the Underworld” to learn more about the background of the American Malefactor’s Dictionary.
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Note: This post continues Early American Crimes: Burglary, Part II.
Outside of murder, burglary and robbery were considered the most egregious crimes in England and colonial America. Since burglars and robbers threaten the well-being and lives of victims while taking their property, they are generally regarded as worse than thieves, who try to steal without detection or intimidation. Burglary also conjures up feelings of discomfort, fear, and disgust at the thought of a stranger rifling through your possessions after entering your residence uninvited.
Burglars in general do not face the same time constraints as robbers, who have to grab the goods from their victims and escape immediately after the confrontation. If burglars can find an unoccupied house, go undetected, or intimidate the occupants into inaction, they can empty the contents of the dwelling at their leisure. Under these circumstances, burglary can end up costing the victim much more than robbery.
Burglars from Philadelphia generally came from the poorer and transient classes, and probably came from immigrant, mariner, and servant groups. They most likely did not constitute a criminal class, i.e., a group of criminals who acted as full-time robbers, burglars, or thieves. They were probably opportunistic criminals, taking advantage of opportunities when they found themselves in desperate straits.
The urban setting of late eighteenth-century Philadelphia provided burglars and other criminals focused on property with more to steal than in rural areas. These opportunities, combined with greater deprivation among the poor, meant that property crime was higher in Philadelphia than in other parts of Pennsylvania.
Eighteenth-century Massachusetts, where there was more of a history of burglary, experienced a greater presence of chronic criminals who belonged to a quasi-criminal subculture than Pennsylvania did. The stories of their lives and of the many burglaries and robberies they committed regularly appeared in broadsides and pamphlets, which could often be purchased at their executions.
Burglars and other types of thieves tended to steal similar types of goods: money, food, fabrics, clothing and accessories, household goods, and silverware were all top targets. The burglary of shops or warehouses belonging to wealthy merchants could bring the biggest hauls, sometimes 20 to 200 pounds or more. Such operations often involved advanced planning and knowledge of the presence and location of the goods.
Burglars often acted with accomplices, in groups, or in gangs. Women usually did not commit burglaries or robberies, but when they did they were usually accompanied by males. Female burglars who were caught were often shown mercy by the courts during sentencing, since judges tended to believe that they were driven to the act by poverty.
African-American burglars also tended to act in groups, and they were often joined by whites, who usually took the lead in fencing the stolen items. Sixteen burglaries by African Americans were prosecuted in Pennsylvania between 1780 and 1800, and ten of them included white accomplices.
Because the criminal justice system in the colonies tended to be inefficient, burglars could commit numerous crimes over long periods of time before being caught. Professional burglars avoided detection by moving around and committing crimes in different places, where they would not be known and could more easily sneak off. If they were ever caught, they would sometimes try to strike deals with their victims to avoid bringing in the authorities and risk prosecution.
Burglary was considered a serious crime in early America, and it was dealt with harshly by the authorities. Over the coming weeks, Early American Crime is going to examine this crime more closely by profiling some of the burglars of colonial America and the early United States.
Click here to read more about burglary on EarlyAmericanCrime.com.
. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006.
. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.
– 1. a short term of imprisonment, hence “two stretches of air and exercise†means two years in prison; 2. working in the stone quarry at Blackwell’s Island or at Sing Sing.
State Prison at Sing Sing, New York, 1855 (Source: Wikipedia.org.)
In England, air and exercise originally referred to someone being whipped at the cart’s tail or, as it was more vulgarly expressed, “at the cart’s arse.†It could also refer to serving punishment in a revolving pillory. A revolving pillory consisted of four pillories attached to a central revolving post, so that the prisoners could be made to walk in a circle and enable spectators to see and abuse them from all angles. The phrase later referred to penal servitude in a convict settlement, and this version is the one that crossed over to America. The second, more specific, definition is from Matsell (1859), and both references are to New York prisons. Blackwell’s Island is now known as Roosevelt Island.
Sources:
. New York: George W. Matsell, 1859.Note: See “Cant: The Language of the Underworld” to learn more about the background of the American Malefactor’s Dictionary.
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Note: This post continues Early American Crimes: Burglary, Part I.
In the earliest days of colonial America, burglary was not considered much of a problem. Most people in the community knew each other, and strangers could be quickly identified. But as more people settled in America and cities grew bigger, burglary became a much more frequent occurrence, and it increasingly was treated with harsh punishment.
Even though Massachusetts established harsh penalties for burglary in the seventeenth century, the rate of burglaries continued to rise as the province became more urbanized. Burglaries were a constant worry for people who lived in Boston, and in the spring and summer of 1712, Boston merchants, shopkeepers, and craftsmen experienced a spike in nighttime break ins. The rise in burglary in Boston prompted the General Court to take action, and in 1715 burglary became a capital crime in Massachusetts unless the offender could prove that the house was empty at the time of the break-in.
Despite the strengthening of the penalty, by 1770 burglary continued to be such a problem that the Massachusetts legislature made it a capital crime even if the house was empty when the burglar entered it. At the time, Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson claimed the reason why incidences of burglary were so high in Massachusetts was that burglars were coming from other colonies, where the punishment for the crime was death. Once burglars crossed into Massachusetts, they would only receive a small fine or light corporal punishment if they were careful enough to enter a house that was uninhabited.
After the American Revolution, burglary continued to be a capital offense in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, although after 1805 the death penalty only applied to burglaries where the occupants were in the house and where the offender was carrying a dangerous weapon or committed assault. Burglary did not cease to be a capital crime in Massachusetts until 1839.
While the general trend in the colonies during the eighteenth century was to increase punishment for burglary, Pennsylvania’s criminal code continued to remain relatively mild, mostly because its burglary rate remained fairly low. In 1705, Pennsylvania revised its criminal code and made burglary punishable by whipping, six month’s imprisonment at hard labor, and restitution for the victim. Even though this string of punishments was less severe in relation to other colonies, the fact that property crime was the only category of crime that was punished by a combination of penalties shows how seriously Pennsylvania took it.
Pennsylvania’s mild criminal code did not apply to all of its citizens, however. African Americans, slave or free, were subject to a different set of punishments. Under these separate provisions, burglary–as well as murder, the rape of a white woman, and buggery–was punished by execution.
No doubt inspired by England’s Transportation Act, Pennsylvania created a provision in 1718 whereby burglars and other felons could be banished from the colony in lieu of execution. After Ann Mitchell was convicted on burglary charges in 1725, she was pardoned on condition that she and her husband leave the colony, probably because she was pregnant at the time. Two other burglars, Cornelius O’Brien and Edward Fitzgerald, were pardoned in 1735 after they agreed to leave the colony and “never return.â€
The low burglary rate in Pennsylvania did not last. Starting in 1760, the burglary rate began to soar, to the point where more burglaries were prosecuted in Pennsylvania during the decade of the 1760s than were prosecuted in Massachusetts between the years of 1750 and 1800. In the end, an astounding 61 burglars were executed in Pennsylvania during this time. Not surprisingly, most of the burglaries took place in and around Philadelphia.
In 1786, Pennsylvania reclassified burglary and other crimes as noncapital and substituted instead “continued hard labor, publicly and disgracefully imposed†in an attempt to rehabilitate the offender instead. Connecticut took a similar tactic after it founded New-Gate Prison in 1773. It passed an act making burglary, robbery, and counterfeiting punishable by imprisonment not exceeding 10 years for the first offense, although second time offenders received sentences of imprisonment for life.
Go to Early American Crimes: Burglary, Part III.
. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006.. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.
. New and Expanded Edition. Camden, ME: Picton Press, 1996.
. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1938.
. Beverly, MA: Commonwealth Editions, 2005.
– River thieves; river-pirates (obsolete by 1900).
The word is an American variant of Ark Ruffians, who rob and murder on fresh water. One of their schemes is to pick an argument with a passenger on board the vessel and use the occasion to strip the passenger, throw him or her overboard, and then plunder his or her belongings. They are considered a species of badger in the old cant sense of the word, i.e., a robber who worked near a river and would throw the bodies of his murdered victims into the water. Ark is cant for a ship, boat, or vessel and probably derives from Noah’s ark.
Sources:
Note: See “Cant: The Language of the Underworld” to learn more about the background of the American Malefactor’s Dictionary.
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