{"product_id":"9780762775965","title":"Devil Made Me Do It!: Crime and Punishment in Early New England","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eTales of the country’s original criminals—and how the courts punished them for their misdeeds\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eScarlet Letters, wanton dalliances, Sabbathbreaking, and debt: Colonial laws were easily broken and the malefactors who broke them, swiftly punished. How did our ancestors deal with murder and mayhem? How did seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New England communities handle deviants? How have definitions of criminal behavior and its punishment changed over the centuries? What were early prisons like? What were the duties of a turn-key? Find out all this and more in \u003ci\u003eThe Devil Made Me Do It.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDrawing on early court dockets, diaries, sermons, gaolers’ records, and other primary sources, Juliet Haines Mofford investigates historical cases from a time when accused felons often pleaded in their own defense: “The Devil made me do it!” \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAmong the questions that emerge in this fascinating book: Would spinster Sarah Booker be punished today for her 1769 theft of three skeins of linen yarn? Would Joan Andrews still get a T for Theft pinned upon her bodice for cheating a client by placing two stones in the firkin of butter she sold him?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Rowman \u0026 Littlefield Publishers, Inc.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47108060610800,"sku":"9780762775965","price":8.43,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780762775965_p0.jpg?v=1769905411","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780762775965","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}