On December 13, 1775, a soldier of the 59th Regiment of the British army stationed in Boston and his wife were tried by a general court martial and convicted for theft. Thomas and Isabella McMahon were tried for “receiving sundry stolen goods knowing them to be such” (it was not unusual to have two or more defendants on trial at the same time if they faced charges for the same crime). They were found guilty; he was sentenced to receive one thousand lashes, a fairly typical punishment for this type of crime.
Isabella was sentenced be stripped to the waist and “to receive one hundred lashes on her bare back at the Cart’s end in different portions in the most conspicuous parts of the town, & to be imprisoned for three months.”
The number of lashes was low compared to sentences for soldiers, and the mode of giving them was quite different. Whereas soldiers were usually lashed in front of their regiments to set an example, Isabella McMahon was to be stripped to the waist—in the teeth of a New England winter—then tied to the end of a cart and lashed in front of the townspeople of Boston, which would both humiliate her and show everyone that the army would not tolerate crimes against the civilian population.
Isabella was to be stripped to the waist, display her bare breasts to everyone, and receive 25 lashes on her naked body at the cart’s end on the following dates:
December 16, 1775
December 30, 1775
January 13, 1776
January 27, 1776