d not unlike a butter churn," which was used to
punish women, who were led about the town in it. Howard notes its
presence in Danish prisons in 1784 under the name of the "Spanish
Mantle."

The only contemporary account I know of its being worn in England is in
a book written by Ralph Gardner, printed in 1655, and entitled
_England's Grievance Discovered_, etc. The author says:

"He affirms he hath seen men drove up and down the streets, with a
great tub or barrel open in the sides, with a hole in one end to put
through their heads, and so cover their shoulders and bodies, down to
the small of their legs, and then close the same; called the new-fashion
cloak, and so make them march to the view of all beholders, and this is
their punishment for drunkards and the like."

It is also interesting and suggestive to note that by tradition the
Drunkard's Cloak was in use in Cromwell's army; but the steps that led
from its use among the Roundheads to its use in the Army of the Potomac
are, I fear, forever lost.

XI

BRANDING AND MAIMING

There is nothing more abhorrent to the general sentiment of humanity
to-day than the universal custom of all civilized nations, until the
present century, of branding and maiming criminals. In these barbarous
methods of degrading criminals the colonists in America followed the
customs and copied the laws of the fatherland. Our ancestors were not
squeamish. The sight of a man lopped of his ears, or slit of his
nostrils, or with a seared brand or great gash in his forehead or cheek
could not affect the stout stomachs that cheerfully and eagerly gathered
around the bloody whipping-post and the gallows.

[Illustration: Branding.]

Let us recount the welcome of New England Christians to the first
Quakers on American soil. In 1656 the vanguard, two women, Ann Austin
and Mary Fisher, appeared in Boston, from the Barbadoes. They were
promptly imprisoned and speedily sent back whence they came; and a
premonitory law was passed to punish shipmasters who presumed to bring
over more Quakers. Others immediately followed, however, and fierce laws
and cruel sentences greeted them; within four years after that first
appearance scores of Quakers had been stripped naked, whipped,
pilloried, stocked, caged, imprisoned, laid neck and heels, branded and
maimed; and four had been hanged in Boston by our Puritan forefathers. I
know nothing more chilling to our present glow of Puritan
ancestor-wo