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 BULL
STREET
– The art of the Con
Written
by G. E. Hanson in 1887
An
old rat, whose long residence in the city had given him great knowledge of the
wiles of civilized life, observed one evening a tempting bit of cheese close
by his favorite hole in the wall. Instead of greedily rushing at it, he called
a young friend, saying, “Whiskerando, some kind person has prepared a feast
for us. Help yourself.” The guileless innocent rushed on the cheese, which he
devoured voraciously: but, alas! In a few minutes, he rolled over on his back,
stone dead. The dainty was poisoned.
“My
experience in Wall Street has stood me in well,” mused the old rat as he turned
into his hole: “it is safer to give other folks pointers, and pocket your commission,
than to risk your all on a wildcat investment.”
This work will deal with the historic punishments
for crimes over the years, however, you will find as you peruse this material,
the degree of criminality often varies with the morality of the times. What
people consider to be of value and what the crime for taking it is, differs
as global sophistication increases. In compiling this material it seemed to
leap off the pages that the more anarchistic and less obsessive that rulers
over time became, the less the chance that the society as it was then constituted
had of surviving. As the pendulum swung to other side of the equation, we found
that excessively despotic rulers tended to overreach, annoying the daylights
out of population and eventually bringing down the house of cards. It would
seem that over-reaching and being a control freak are more synonymous than would
have been previously believed. Those that stayed to the middle of the road
seemed to create a longevity and personal survivability not seen in either of
the other two classes.
The dastardly nature of a crime would be primarily
viewed as to what the existing social customs were in any given community during
various epochs. The punishment for sedation and most other transgressions of
that sort would naturally have graver penalties attached to them during periods
of fighting with one’s neighbors then when there was peace. Plagiarism or forgeries
were not major criminal categories until there was something to copy that had
value. The same swindle could have dramatically dissimilar consequence when
consideration was given to the value of the objects that were stolen. However,
people like P. T. Barnum took money under false pretenses from people every
day of the week, and he was never criminally punished for his actions because,
he provided entertainment for local populations.
By tracing how laws have changed over time, history
tells us what the people of any given era thought was most valuable to them.
At times it could have been a cow, a wife, jewels or fire to keep one warm.
Murder is one of the few crimes to stay at the top of the list since the beginning
of record keeping, because one’s life was always considered his most valuable
property. Numerous timetables of legal history have been created to trace these
events and how regulations were created and enforced. My father was an attorney
and was once asked to create the events in the history of law that were the
most critical turning points and why they came about. Ultimately, after he had
put the chronology together, coins were made commemorating those events by “The
Legal Commemorative Society” and from that point they were engraved and turned
into sterling silver coins. Most of the events that we note in this short history
of crimes and punishments come from that series.
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