Rambles about Portsmouth. Sketches of persons, localities, and incidents of two centuries: principally from tradition and unpublished documents. By Charles W. Brewster.

118 RAMBLES ABOUT PORTSMOUTH.
through the remissness of the tithingmen and other conservatives of religion and morals, that the good order of the
town had so greatly deteriorated as to alarm the orderloving portion of its inhabitants, lest a worst condition of
morals should ensue. Though the evils of which they
complained were not in amount, a tithe of the abuses
for which the good citizens of Portsmouth now have just
cause of complaint, they required the most efficient and
prompt measures to abate.
Then, crimes such as are now characterized as rowdyism,
were unknown by the inhabitants of Portsmouth. If minor
offences against personal rights were committed, which did
not, in the estimation of a discerning public, require legal
measures to be resorted to, either to punish the offenders
or to serve as preventives of a repetition of them, the
disapprobation of the good people of the town was a sufficient rebuke and corrective. In thos e days the offenders
had no apologists.
Offences of graver consequence to the public, which
were within the final jurisdiction of justices of the peace,
and which subjected the offenders to corporeal punishment,
were sure to meet with prompt attention by our vigilant
officers of the law. Instance the case of a hostler employed in one of the stage stables, who in the night next
preceding his detection, stole a water bucket full of West
India rum from the cellar of his employer. He was arrested
the next morning, upon a warrant issued by Justice Penhallow-arraigned-tried-found guilty, and sentenced
by him, to suffer the infliction of ten lashes upon his bare
back, which in about thirty minutes thereafter were faithfully applied at the town pump, in the presence of many
witnesses; and before the town clock struck the hour of
eleven, the convict was again at work in the stable of his
employer! Such was then the majesty of the law, and the
promptness of its execution.