Cropping (punishment)

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Cropping is the removal of a person's ears as an act of physical punishment. [1] It was performed along with the pillorying or immobilisation in the stocks, [2] [3] and sometimes alongside punishments such as branding or fines. [2] The punishment is described in Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. [4]

Contents

Description

Cropping sometimes occurred as a standalone punishment (such as in the case of William Prynne for seditious libel), [5] where criminals' ears would be cut off with a blade. Cropping was also a secondary punishment to having criminals' ears nailed to the pillory (with the intention that their body movements would tear them off). [5] In 1538 Thomas Barrie spent a whole day with his ears nailed to the pillory in Newbury, England, before having them cut off to release him. [6]

History

Cropping is mentioned in ancient Assyrian law and the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi.

Cropping was quite rare in England, but more common in Guernsey. [7] Notable cases of cropping in England include Thomas Barrie in 1538, who reputedly died from shock following his cropping, [6] and John Bastwick, William Prynne, and Henry Burton in 1637. [8] In the 16th century, Henry VIII amended the laws on vagrancy to decree that first offences would be punished with three days in the stocks, second offences with cropping, and third offences with hanging. [9]

Records show that croppings took place in the United States in the late 18th century, particularly in states such as Pennsylvania [2] and Tennessee. [3] In the United States this practice, called ear cropping, was one of a number of livestock-management practices—including branding, castration, chaining, and whipping —that were used against the enslaved. [10] Ear cropping, toe removal, and castration were amongst the most extreme measures used to enforce subservience. [11] [12] The intent behind ear-cropping specifically was permanent, visible mutilation, and thus implied ongoing shaming and contempt of the person so mutilated. [13] Evidence that Tennessee slave owners practiced ear-cropping appears first in an issue of the Knoxville Gazette from 1796. [14] As summarized by the editors of American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses in 1839, slavery entailed a veritable panoply of violence: "The slaves are often branded with hot irons, pursued with fire arms and shot, hunted with dogs and torn by them, shockingly maimed with knives, dirks, &c.; have their ears cut off, their eyes knocked out, their bones dislocated and broken with bludgeons, their fingers and toes cut off, their faces and other parts of their persons disfigured with scars and gashes, besides those made with the lash." [15]

From page 153 of Reverend Samuel Peters' General History of Connecticut, written during the colonial period, there is this account:

Newhaven is celebrated for giving the name of "Pumpkin Heads" to all of New Englanders. It originated from the "Blue Laws" which enjoined every male to have his hair cut round by a cap. When caps are not to be had, they substituted a hard shell of a pumpkin, which being put on the head every Saturday, the hair is cut by the shell all round the head…….. and fourthly, such persons as have lost their ears for heresy, and other wickedness, cannot conceal their misfortune and disgrace.

In Rhode Island, cropping was a punishment for crimes such as counterfeiting money, perjury, and "burning houses, barns, and outbuildings" (but not amounting to arson). [16] Cropping (along with the pillory and stocks) was abolished in Tennessee in 1829, with abolition further afield starting from approximately 1839. [17]

American Notes , a work written by Charles Dickens in 1842, describes the cropping of fleeing slaves' ears being used as identification after capture. [18]

See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Stronghold Knights (2010)
  2. 1 2 3 Warner (2005 , p. 244)
  3. 1 2 Corlew, Folmsbee & Mitchell (1990 , p. 163)
  4. ↑ Hugo (2009 , p. 139)
  5. 1 2 Du Cane (2005 , p. 13)
  6. 1 2 Ford (2001)
  7. ↑ Ogier (1996 , p. 14)
  8. ↑ Dearmer (2009 , p. 189)
  9. ↑ Adams (1998 , p. 41)
  10. ↑ Chapter 5: Slaves by Nature? Domestic Animals and Human Slaves by Karl Jacoby The Atlantic Slave Trade: Volume IV Nineteenth Century. (2022). United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis. p. 92
  11. ↑ Morgan, Philip D. (2012). Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry. UNC Press Books. p. 394. ISBN   978-0-8078-3853-2.
  12. ↑ Schlotterbeck, John (2013). Daily Life in the Colonial South. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. p. 250. ISBN   978-1-57356-743-5.
  13. ↑ Will, George F. (2019). The Conservative Sensibility. Grand Central Publishing. ISBN   978-0-316-48091-8.
  14. ↑ Carey, Bill (2018). Runaways, Coffles and Fancy Girls: A History of Slavery in Tennessee. Nashville, Tennessee: Clearbrook Press. p. 8. ISBN   978-0-9725680-4-3. LCCN   2018903570. OCLC   1045068878.
  15. ↑ "American slavery as it is: testimony of a thousand witnesses". HathiTrust. p. 77. Retrieved 2025-05-20.
  16. ↑ Prison Discipline Society (1826 , p. 19)
  17. ↑ Kellaway (2003 , p. 64)
  18. ↑ Dickens, Charles (2000) [19 October 1842]. "XVII. Slavery". American Notes for General Circulation. Chapman & Hall. p. 118. ISBN   978-0140436495.

Sources

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