In the early nineteenth century the Australian
penal settlements were the scene of floggings of so severe a nature as to rival
the worst that were inflicted in England during the sixteenth century, or in
the Southern States of America during the days of slavery. George E. Boxall,
author of the History of the Australian Bushrangers, writes;
'It is said that there were two floggers in Sidney
who were regarded as artists in their profession. These men performed together,
the one being right-handed and the other left. They prided themselves on being
able to flog a man without breaking the skin, and consequently there was no
blood spilled. But the back of the flogged man is described as having been
puffed up like "blown veal". The swelling, "shook like
jelly," and the effects were felt for a much longer period than when the
back was cut and scored as it generally was, for we are told that the ground in
the Barrack Square in Sydney, all round where the triangles stood, was
saturated with human blood, and the flogging places elsewhere must have been in
the same condition'.
All the way to Australia these convicts, men, women
and boys, upon the most trifling of pretexts, were beaten within an inch of
their lives and then arrived in the penal settlements, where they were whipped,
hammered and tortured repeatedly. The following account gives a graphic
picture:
'Here are some entries from the official journal
kept upon the Island'.* "In 1844 the convict Richard Henry received 200
lashes for insubordination, and for endeavouring to trump up a charge of
unfairness in dealing with prisoners on the part of Warder McChuskey."
'Earlier, on 5 Nov., 1842', "James
Macdonald sentenced to receive 100 lashes and to work for three months in
irons; and James lliot to seventy five lashes and 3 months in irons, for having
been seen to associate with each other by signals, when silence was enjoined in
the gang".
"Thomas Downie was ordered to dark cells for
seven days, and to receive 200 lashes for insubordination and refusing to work".
*Norfolk Island
A Flogging At Sea
BRIDEWELL
In
1552 London citizens petitioned the Privy Council to convert the Royal Palace
at Bridewell into a 'house of correction' - a place, they explained, where
'needy and miserable persons' should be housed and given work. Other towns
followed suit, and in time these Bridewells, as they were called, became more
like prisons and were called Houses of Correction, where unruly inmates were
required to maintain themselves by their labour.
In the words of Bishop
Ridler, the Bridewells were intended "for the strumpet and idle person, for the
rioter that consumeth all , and for the vagabond that will abide in no
place."
Both young women and young men, sent to the
Bridewell, were stripped and whipped in the presence of the governors of the
prisons and some members of the public, for the most trivial of offences. The
witnessing of flagellation was often looked upon as an entertainment.
It has been reported that a fifteen year old boy
was fastened down upon the whipping bench, and with birch specially prepared
for hours in water, was thrashed on his naked backside until blood was drawn.
This horrific punishment was imposed for bedwetting.
The two most used whips in the Bridewells were the
bull's pizzle and the birch. A terrible weapon, the bull's pizzle, elastic and
capable of standing enormous strain, was reserved for the more severe
chastisements. In a strong man's hand it was not only deadly in its punishing
powers but dangerous to life and limb, and care had to be taken to avoid
striking the lower end of the spine. The birch, a bundle of birch twigs bound
together at one end and tied to a handle, was, on occasions, steeped in vinegar
and salt to increase the pain of the flogging.
Bridewell
Punishment with Brushes
A Bizarre Form of Flogging - From a Seventeenth-century Copper-plate Engraving
As late as 1899 whipping appears to have been a
common form of punishment in certain American prisons. This was the most
dreaded form of punishment when men were 'whipped into bleeding insensibility'
for certain 'crimes' against the prison regulations. This was known as 'seventy
five' and there was a case of the victim, bound hand and foot, secured across a
trough and flogged with razor-edged 'paddles' until, with his flesh hanging in
ribbons and lacerated to the very bones, became a mere lump of bleeding and unconscious
flesh.
As recently as the 1930's flogging was still
ordered with the birch-rod still used, although the most severe form of
corporal punishment was the dreaded cat-o'-nine tails. The type of 'cat' used
had nine tails made of whipcord. The tails were whipped with silk thread at
their ends to prevent fraying. The flogging was across the bare back, not the buttocks.
The kidneys and the neck were protected by means of leather bands. A doctor was
present and he had the power to stop the flogging at any moment. In England,
the head of the prisoner was screened so that he could not see the officer who
was wielding the 'cat'; in Scotland no such method of screening was employed.
No offender under eighteen was given the 'cat'.
Flogging Children - 'Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child '
Throughout the ages the maxim 'spare the rod and
spoil the child' was accepted and used to justify the flagellation of
children of both sexes, until comparatively recently. In the twentieth century
many people had vivid recollections of the sting of the birch or the cane.
Children of working class families were flogged by their parents at home, by
teachers at school and by employers at work; while the children of the middle
classes and upper classes received their floggings at the hands of their
teachers, governesses or private tutors.
From the days when schools were first established
to the early part of the twentieth century the birching of boys has been inseparable
from the discipline of nearly every school in Britain. Even the royal family
did not escape chastisement. Frederick the Great was flogged repeatedly by his
father; in a letter to his mother he remonstrated as follows:
"The King has entirely forgotten that I am his
son. This morning I came into his room as usual. At first sight of me he sprang
forward, seized me by the collar, and struck me a shower of cruel blows with
his rattan. I tried in vain to screen myself. He was in a terrible rage -
almost out of himself. It was only weariness, not my superior strength, that
made him give up. I am driven to extremity. I have too much honour to endure
such treatment, and am resolved to put an end to it one way or another."
Milton was flogged at Cambridge, for the practice
of whipping was in those days as common at the colleges and universities as in
the schools.
Occasionally the floggings were so severe as to
cause death as in the account of the trial of a schoolmaster named Robert
Carmichael, in 1699, for the murder of one of his scholars. According to the
evidence, Carmichael gave the boy three successive beatings 'and in rage and
fury did drag him from his desk and beat him with his hand upon the head and back
with heavy and severe strokes, and after he was out of his hands he immediately
died'. The jury found the beating to be the cause of death and Carmichael
was sentenced to seven stripes and banishment from Scotland for life. (From The
Percy Anecdotes )
Flogging appears to have been accepted by the
school authorities as the panacea for every breach of discipline, as the comments in the Edinburgh Review, April 1830,
indicates:
'For all offences, except the most trivial, whether
for insubordination in or out of school, for inability to construe a lesson, or
to say it by heart, for being discovered out of bounds, for absence from chapel
or school - in short, for any breach of the regulations of the school - every
boy, below the sixth form, whatever be his age, is punished by flogging. This
operation is performed on the naked back, by the headmaster himself, who is
always a gentleman of great abilities and requirements, and sometimes of high
dignity in the church'.
Wm. M. Cooper, in The History of the Rod, mentions
that at Eton, the English public school, notorious for whipping, 'a charge
of half-a-guinea for birch was made in every boy's bill', perhaps based on
the principle that every boy would be better for a flogging whether he deserved
it or not.
Three Kids Gripped By Evil By Polly Mullaney
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