Fowle's New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

Last week a woman stood in a white sheet in S--y church, for calling another woman a whore. The circumstances attending the trial and punishment being somewhat curious, we shall relate them in the words of our correspondent: —

B---, a married woman, and mother of several children, caught C--- on the bed with her husband, and said to her, get out of my house, you strumpet. C--- applied to a certain magistrate for redress, who had not long been acquainted with Burn's Justice, and who probably could not read it. His worship putting on his office-wig, and laying the book open before him, ordered the parties into his presence.

Pray, woman, says his worship, how came you to call your neighbor a whore? An please your worship, says the trembling wife, because I found her on the bed with my husband, and because I, and all the neighbors, long suspected he was wronging me. But, woman, says his worship, did you find them in the bed; for there the law (looking in the book) says the point lies. No, replied the poor wife, I found them on the bed, and in such a way, an please your worship, as made my blood boil within me, and I could not help calling her a strumpet.

Strumpet and whore, says the Justice, are synonymous terms; it is only potayto nonine. The law lays it down, that they must be actually in bed, and the covering over them, as in cases of marriage fumatum test. Therefore, for calling the woman so found on the bed with your husband a strumpet, I adjudge you to stand for one hour in a white sheet, in the aisle of S--y church. No crying; take her away, constable.

The poor woman, thus tried without a jury, convicted on the evidence of the person found guilty in the fact, and sentenced to punishment in this summary way, was taken to the aisle of the church, and there placed in an erect posture, with a sheet about her. Being far gone with child, she fainted twice, when the humanity of the vestry clerk pitied her into a pew. She has kept her bed ever since, and her life is thought to be in danger.