Captain John Hathorne (a relative of Nathaniel Hawthorne), to sit upon
the gallows with a rope about his neck for an hour, to be whipped with
thirty-nine stripes, and to be confined to hard labor on Castle Island
(Boston Harbor) for three years. "It is observable of this man," the
account continues, "that he has been lately released from a two years'
service at the Castle, that during the trial he was very merry and
impudent, and continued in the same humor while his sentence was
reading, holding up his head and looking boldly at the Court, till the
three years' confinement was mentioned; when his countenance changed,
his head dropped on his breast, and he fetched a deep groan,--an
instance of how much more dreadful the idea of labor is to such
villains than that of Corporal punishment."

At a session of the Court of Oyer and Terminer held at Norristown,
Pa., for the county of Montgomery, Oct. 11, 1786, we are furnished
with a case in point. "A bill was presented against Philip Hoosnagle
for burglary, who was convicted by the traverse Jury on the clearest
testimony. He was, after a very pathetick and instructing admonition
from the bench, sentenced to five years' hard labour, under the _new_
act of Assembly. It was with some difficulty that this reprobate
was prevailed upon to make the election of labour instead of the
halter, ... a convincing proof," the report says, "that the punishments
directed by the new law are more terrifying to idle vagabonds than all
the horrors of an ignominious death."

Probably there are many more cases on record where criminals preferred
death to imprisonment. Burglary and forgery were once punished by
death. We have all noticed on the old Continental currency these
words: "Death to counterfeit this."