Facts about Flogging

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JfEDL TRMiSFEB.

HN 3ig^fa -

ilXPENCE NET

FACT5

ABOUT

FLOaOINQ

By
JOSEPH COLLINSON

:illtion

FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING.

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FACTS

ABOUT

FLOGGING

By JOSEPH
COLLINSON

BOM. SBCRSTARY, CRIMINAL LAW
AMD PBI80M COMMITTIS
■UMAMITASIAM LBAOUB

RBVISBD EDITION

LONDON : A. C. FIFIELD

44, FLEET STREET, E.G. 1905

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KD ^ I 7 1 1

HAPVAPD

^TS^

Published by A. C. Fifield
for the Humanitarian League^
53, Chancery Lane^ London.

PRIMTBD BY A. BONMBR, X & 3 TOOK'S COURT, LONDON

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CONTENTS.

HAP. PAQB

I. A Survival of Barbarism i

II. Recrudescence of Flogging ... 5

III. How We Flagellate ...... 9

IV. Medical Opinion 14

V. The Garotting Fallacy 18

VI. Flogging not a Deterrent .... 22

VII. Old Offenders Return 25

VIII. Increase of Floggable Crime ... 29

IX. Asking for the " Cat " 34

X. Flogging for Women 39

XI. The Economic Argument 42

XII. A Form of Torture 45

XIII. The Law of Revenge 47

XIV. Conclusion 50

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" All corporal punishments whatsoever, and upon
whomsoever inflicted, are hateful, and an indignity to
our common nature, which (with or without our con-
sent) is enshrined in the person of the sufferer. De-
grading him they d^^rade us Thanks be to

God, in this point at least, for the dignity of human
nature, that amongst the many, many cases of reform
destined eventually to turn out chimerical, this one, at
least, never can be defeated, injured, or eclipsed. As
man grows more intellectual, the power of managing
him by his intellect and his moral nature, in utter con-
tempt of all appeals to his mere animal instincts of
pain, must go on pari passu.'' — De Quincev.

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FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING.

CHAPTER L

A SURVIVAL OF BARBARISM.

There is no greater, no deeper injustice than that
which is committed in the name of law and order. It
is a melancholy reflection for the people of this
country that, in this respect, our history teems
with records of some of the most terrible
legal atrocities that it is possible for the hu-
man mind to conceive. How were members of
the so-called criminal classes treated in the past?
They were, for the most part, first tortured and then
got rid of. Under Henry VIII, 263 crimes were
punishable by death. It is estimated that in the reign
of this monarch over 72,ocx) men and women were
executed as a legal penalty. To-day there is but one
crime for which a person can be hanged — it is murder.
But even down to 100 years ago there were 223
capital offences ! If a man injured a public building,
or appeared in disguise in a public place, he was sen-
tenced to be hanged Many criminals were put to
death for stealing property to the value of five shillings.

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2 FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING.

In 1816, there were at one time over 50 persons wait-
ing to be hanged— one of them a child of tender
years.

The inefficacy and brutality of all this torture and
bloodshed became obvious to the people, through the
propaganda of a few daring and enlightened re-
formers, and it was swept away; but a remnant of
barbarism still remained, a revival of which, thanks
to the late Mr. Justice Stephen, is quite possible. I
refer to the torture of the lash. When Sir Samuel
RomiUy began his great work, he had to contend
against a callous Government and a brutalised public
of morbid desires, which rejoiced in its loathsome and
cruel punishments. The "robustness" of the peas-
antry of those days permitted of the public flogging of
men and women equally, at the cart's-tail and the
whipping-post, with lash and birch, for almost every
offence at common law (a fact which the modern
flagellomaniac would do well to ponder). These
people were vastly ignorant, and criminology was an
unknown science. Crime stood high, and was in-
creasing by leaps and bounds — crime more brutal and
much worse than any known in our day, and, in despite
of the difficulties of detection whidh then existed,
about ten times greater than it is now with double the
population.

The Times of November 24th, 1801, records

** the public sale into adultery of a man's wife at
Smithfield, and the barbarous mutilation of a bull at a
baiting, when his cowardly tormentors cut off the hoofs
of the animal. In God's name have we any Police at

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FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING. 3

all, or any Magistrates? Surely the hundred ought to
be prosecuted when these monstrous enormities are
committed ! Shall they indemnify the traveller who is
robbed before sunset, and make no reparation for the
portentous crimes they permit to be openly practised
in the noon-day? Crimes, too, not perpetrated in a
minute, nor in a bye-lane, but the horrible pastime of
hours and of multitudes."

Retaliation was then an exciting " sport," the ma-
jority of the crowd regarding the infliction of cruel
punishments in public simply in the light of a free
entertainment ; public decency was oflFended at every
ttun ; loathsome vice and barbarous treatment of both
human and non-human beings were rampant. A
return ordered to be printed by the House of Com-
mons shows that from 18 16 to 1821 over 6,000 men
and women were actually flogged! A member of the
House, Mr. J. Smith, made the following statement : —

** He had made enquiries with respect to the effect
which the practice of whipping had on the individuals
who were thus punished at the close of each session at
the Old Bailey ; he had learned from the keeper of
Newgate that the people so punished were, for the
greater part, in his custody again before the expiration
of twelve months. This was not surprising, for after
a wretched individual had received so public and in-
delible a disgrace as that of flogging, it was quite clear
that no decent individual would associate with him, and
that no respectable person would employ him.**

In this manner the state of things continued to go
from bad to worse, until discontinued, not so much

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4 FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING.

from motives of humanity and sympathy for the vic-
tims of injustice, but rather because the sense of
common decency was shocked at the scandal which
flourished on these public "pastimes." The law-
abiding citizen took alarm at the debased manners and
brutal customs prevalent among all classes of the com-
mtmity, which he rightly attributed to public punish-
ments, among other causes; but it was many years
before flogging entirely disappeared. In 1836 over
30 youths were flogged for petty crimes. That yesu:,
however, marked the great change in the criminal law
of this country, and the subsequent desuetude of
corporal pimishment From the beginning of the
century up to about 1840 great interest had been
evoked on the subject of criminals and crime — a ques-
tion which is again exciting widespread attention, and
has now become one of pressing and imperial impor-
tance.

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CHAPTER II.

RECRUDESCENCE OF FLOGGING.

Flogging in England was never formally abolished,
tut was superseded in different Acts of Parliament,
which stated what the particular punishment for
particular crimes should be. Let it be re-
membered that for full a quarter of a century
practically no flogging took place in England for
criminal oflFences.* What was the result? Did this
immense change in the treatment of our criminals
lead to a large increase of crime ? Did this vast modi-
fication of our penal system (as was confidently pre-
dicted) manufacture more criminals ? Nothing of the
kind ! There was a marked improvement Violence
diminished, disorder diminished, vice diminished, and
crime diminished The result was eminently satis-
factory to the State, though I do not pretend that it
was all cause and effect Nowhere in the history of
our legislation can there be found a period more preg-
nant of good work regarding our criminal law — a law
which is nevertheless still a hundred years behind the
times.

* In Scotland the last flogging sentence was pronounced
by the Circuit. Court of Justiciary in 1833, in 1862 the flog-
ging of adult offenders was absolutely forbidden under the
Scottish law ; and likewise in Scottish prisons floggii^ is en-
tirely illegal. Flogging is legal uMder l!ie Irish criminal
law, though never iaflkted ; while in Irish prisons the punish-
meal is forbidden, and is, in fact, illegal.

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O FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING.

Everything had gone well so far, but in an evil hour
a mania of garotting broke out in London, which
terrorised the people and created a panic in the House
of Commons, owing to one of its own members, Mr.
Pilkington, being knocked down and robbed while
passing through St James's Park on his way to attend
to his Parliamentary duties. In selfish care for the
M.P.'s, Sir C. B. Adderley, the late Lord Norton,
who had a perfect craze on the subject of flogging,
brought in the Security from Violence Bill, to
enable English Judges to order flogging (in
addition to penal servitude or imprisonment) for
robbery with violence and garotte robbery, in opposi-
tion, I may say, to the Liberal Home Secretary, Sir
George Grey. The floggers were pining after their
"old brutality," and this constituted the successful
beginning of a long series of reactionary attempts to
regfain the power to administer the lash for armed
burglary, indecent and brutal assaults, wife-beating,
train-wrecking, xmnatural crimes^ and the like. At
present there are very few offences for which a
criminal can be floggjed ; in practice, only for robbery
with violence, for breaches of prison discipline, and
for certain offences under the Vagrancy Acts. And
when a prisoner is convicted of robbery with violence,
the majority of judges will not flog.

Nevertheless there is an imdoubted recrudescence
of flagellomania among tmthinking people who, re-
gardless of history and experience, gabble about " the
wholesomeness of the lash " and the virtues of a good
birch rod* The outcry, taken as a whole, is in favour

♦ Psychopathically regarded, this cry is simply a mani-

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FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING, ^

of flogging all round, but an examination of the matter
reveals the fact that there is very little agreement
among the champions of penal torture as to who and
why they would flog.

A few prominent nfien advocate the lash for
both sexes, old and young ; some think that
the punishment is too brutal and unseemly for
women, and would reserve it solely for the adult male
offender ; others again would abolish it altogether for
girls^ while at the same time they would extend it for
boys, and inflict it at a more advanced age than is now
permissible. Flogging is one of the oldest of known
ptmishments, and its antiquity is all that it has to boast
If any pimishment has received a fair trial it is flog-
ging. We tried the punishment, moreover, on others
than criminals— on children, on soldiers, on sailors. Did
the result establish the efficacy of the punishment?
Was a single flogging sdways sufficient to effect a re-
formation in the recipient ; and was the flogged man
or flogged child as a rule remarkable for subsequent
excellence ? For more than three-quarters of a century
we have not flogged womeiL Has the criminality of
women developed more rapidly than that of men since
the abolition ? On the contrary, was it not generally
believed that the man who had once been flogged
alwa}rs went to the bad? Even now we find that

festation (unconscious^ perhaps, but not the less real on that
account) of what has been termed '^ flagellomania." Those
who have studied pathology, as expounded by Continental
thinkers, know that the use of the rod, as at present inflicted,
is evidence that flagellomania is a real and widespread
disease.

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8 FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING.

when a young sailor is flogged for a criminal offence,
he is ahnost always dismissed the service as
part of the same sentence. This does not say
much for the efi&cacy of flog^fing in the opinion
of those who inflict it As Mr. Bernard Shaw
wittily puts it, cme would have expected rather that, in
view of his purified nature, a bounty would be offered
for the return of the flagellated offender.

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CHAPTER III.

HOW WE FLAGELLATE.

I will now quote an account of the infliction of the
" cat," which appeared in the Sydn^ Bulletin. Under
Lord Norton's Act of 1863, a criminal ofiEender (if a
male) may be sentenced to 150 lashes of the " cat," to
be inflicted in instalments of 50 lashes at a time. It
passes comprehension how anyone calling himself
humane can advocate this inhuman form of torture : —

'' As they bared the prisoner's back the officials
spoke in half whispers, but as soon as the subject was
strapped to the f ranie, with arms and feet spread wide»
one called out with startling loudness, ' Fifteen lashes 1*
Immediately the flagellator stepped forward, whirled
the knotted thongs once around his head and brought
them whistling down across the white shoulders. The
stroke was dealt with the precision of long practice,
and the victim, taken by surprise, caught his breath
with a gasp and strained desperately at the unreleasing
bonds, the muscles of his shoulders and arms quivering
convulsively in the effort to free his limbs and get one
solacing writhe under the sudden, unavoidable, tor-
menting sting. Failing this the wretch threw his head
and screeched forth the pent and raging resentment of
his body, with an intonation hideous, heart-piercings
and unforgettable. The sound was comparable to no*
thing else in nature ; it expressed all that is meant by
despair and mortal agony.

** The other strokes followed in orderly mechanical

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10 FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING.

sequence^ and I watched them every one. At each
stripe the tortured wretch howled anew, but above his
screams could be heard the shouts of the man whose
duty it was to count tKe strokes and — between — the
vicious * sing * of the lash and its gruesome * splash *
upcm the wealed flesh. At the ninth stroke the doctor
ordered the hangman to vary the direction of his blows.
He did so, after staying to run his fingers through the
clotted lashes and to flick the gouted blood from them
upon the floor. The last five strokes were punctuated
only by deep, rhythmic sobs from the victim, who now
seemed to be numbed and stupefied by pain.

** When it was finished, they covered up his face and
body and took him quickly away to the hospital.**

Mr. Terence M'Dermott, who served several years
in Portland Prison, thus referred to flogging in an
interview with a representative of the Glasgow
Record and Maili —

'* Flogging in prison has never been realised by a
British public. If they knew what it meant, I don't
believe it would for a moment be tolerated. Just let
me give you a picture of it. Imagine a big dull-looking
prison yard occupied by a dozen warders. In the centre
stands the awful triangles. At the back of this instru-
ment is placed a photographer's camera. The victim
is trotted out — guarded well, of course — and he is
strung up like a bullock after slaughter. The sign
is given. Down come the cruel thongs on tfie quivering
flesh, and as each stroke is registered a snap-shot is
taken of the condition of the prisoner's back. These
photos are made so that they may be available in case
an inquest is necessary in the event of the prisoner

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FAprS ABOUT FLOGGING. II

dying as the result af the lash. It's a terrible spectacle,
and turns the hardest wretch to pity- I have known
of big lumps of flesh being torn off a man's back. . . •
It's a pity some of the members of Parliament could not
witness one. They would never wait to see the end, I
am certain."

A flogging with the **cat" is brutal and bloody;
but there is no sort of punishment permitted by the
English law which is at once so loathsome and de-
grading as the birching of male offenders of mature
age ; like the " cat," the birch can be made cruel in
the extreme, scoring the buttocks for life ; and it is
always inflicted under conditions of gross and revolt-
ing indecency. In a pamphlet, called ** Flogging Not
Abolished in the British Army," E. Livingston
Prescott gives the following description of a
birching in a military prison : —

** The prisoner is strapped down in a half-kneeling,
half-lying position, with his head over the end of a
wooden frame following the curves of the body, called
in humorous prison parlance, the * Pony,* whipped as
a schoolboy is whipped, but with a strong rod pickled
in brine, and with so much severity, experts inform us,
that the flesh is more- or less raw — * like raw beef ' —

and the marks are indelible Punishment over,

the prisoner's back is dressed with lint and ointment,
and he either returns to his own cell, or, if too ill, to
the sick cells or infirmary."

(Other punishment, or dietary deprivation, or both,
may be added at the discreticm of the Visitor.)
" Straight Speaker," in a letter to the Naval and

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12 PACTS ABOUT FLOGGING.

Military Record of August i8th, 1904, gives a de-
scription of flogging with the birch as it is inflicted
on young men up to 18 years of age in the Royal
Navy: —

'' A young man has broken his leave, and is sentenced
to twenty-four cuts with the birch. At seven bells the
boatswain's mate pipes * All boys fall in to witness
punishment,' or something to that effect. The victim's
hammock is lashed across a gun, or carpenter's bench,
and the vTcfim is ordered to strip. The officer of the
watch, the surgeon, and a marine with a basin of water
and sponge arrive on the scene. The victim is rendered
helpless by being lashed across his hammock with his
head and feet downwards. A corporal then arrives
carrying a heavy birch, which has been steamed at the
galley, and resembles nothing so much as a bundle of
wires. He bares his arm, and measures his distance
with an accustomed eye. Then he swings the birch
round lus head, and brings it down with a terrific upper-
cut on the unhappy victim's naked flesh. A great red
blotch marks the spot where the stroke took effect, and
the spectators turn away their eyes in disgust. But the
punishment has only commenced. A second merciless
cut, and the skin is broken ; a third, and the blood
begins to flow. The marine applies his sponge to the
wound, and the water turns crimson with blood, which
is intended to be shed only when the honour of England
is at stake. Again and again the corporal swings the
instrument of torture round his head, and brings it
down with merciless vigour, until the mastei*-at-arms
has counted twelve. A fresh corporal then takes his
place, and inflicts another twelve strokes in a similar
manner. The unhappy victim is then released and cs-

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FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING. I3

corted to the sick bay, the portion of his body on which
the punishment has been inflicted resembling nothing
so much as a piece of raw beef.**

So far from befing " wholesome " (as a well-known,
though now discredited, writer on penology has de-
scribed it), birching has come to be regarded among
medical men in France, Germany, and other parts of
the Continent, as a sensuous gratification for people
of morbid tastes. To those who have overlooked the
disreputable associations of the birch referred to in
the above paragraph, I commend the study of a report
of a case heard at a London Police Court which ap-
peared in the Daily Telegraph of July 28th, 1904.
I give an extract : —

** Sub-divisional Inspector Roberts said that the place
was furnished in the usual way of a disorderly house.
.... In the centre of the studio was a large arm-
chair with brass rings fixed to the top of the frame.
In a wardrobe he found two birches and several wrist
and ankle straps, which could be fixed to the chair ; in
a room on the second floor another birch, and in a box
in a lumber-room two other birches or flagellettes. "

Yet the Common Serjeant passed a sentence of
this filthy and disgusting nature upon a yoimg man
at the February Sessions erf the Old Bailey in 1904.
It is really difiicult to be patient with a public of&dal
who passes such a sentence. The birching of men has
been abolished or abandoned in every European
country except Russia ; it is as futile as it is degrading*
alike to the flogger and to the flogged.

B 2

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CHAPTER IV.

MEDICAL OPINION.

Here follows the expression of a great medical au-
thority on flogging from a physiological point of view
— the late Marshall HaU, who figured conspicuously
among the agitators for the abolition of floggfing in
the Army; it is noteworthy: —

•* It may seem very hard if I say that the effect of
flogging is not fully appreciated even in my own, the
medical profession. But I have studied the subject,
and I beg to send you a few medical hints upon it.
Every lash, like every other kind of laceration or cut-
ting, affects the power of the heart. The skin, which
some persons seem to think may be treated like an in-
organic substance, has a special relation with the in-
ternal organs : i. A current of air falling partially on
the surface is sufficient by its action on the skin, and
the sympathy of this, through the ganglionic system,
with the internal organs, to induce inflammation of the
lungs or of the heart, or of the membranes which cover
these organs, 2. The same event occurs from burns
or scalds. 3. The same event occurs from flogging.
It is not the extent of the infliction merely which is to be
considered ; much depends on the peculiarity of the con-
stitution. The healthy are less affected than the un-
healthy, the sober than the drunken. But any person
may, as the effect of any of the inflictions to which I
have adverted, become diseased — diseased for life, or
diseased unto death ; and no man — no medical person—*

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FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING. I5

can tell, hpriori^ who is to suffer or who is to escape.
.... If the surgeon wishes to appreciate the effects
of flogging on the culprit, let him stand not afar off and
look on, but let him draw near and keep his finger on
his patient's pulse. At each lash he will find that pulse
falter! The man may brave it out, may suppress all
expression of pain under this modern torture ; but, sir,
his heart, both physically and psychically, quails under
it, and the pulse tells the tale ; the heart sometimes so
quails as to refuse to perform its pump-like office, and
the silent patient turns pale and faints away !

*• I assert from positive knowledge that each lash
goes literally to the very heart, paralysing or enfeebling
its action. But, it does not go to the heart only, but
through the associated nervous and arterial systems, to
every part of these, the most distant, the most minute,
there inducing, not a mere transitory loss of power and
action as in the heart, but a more permanent morbid
condition — a state of disorganisation commonly called
inflammation, with its dire consequences— disease and
death."

** Flogging is objectionable,** writes Dr. Havelock
Ellis, in his standard work on "The Criminal,"
''because it is ineffectual (as was shown long
since), and because it brutalises and degrades
those on whom it is inflicted, those who inflict
it, and those who come within the radius of its in-
fluence. These facts are well known to those who
have more than a superficial acquaintance with the
insides of prisons, and should have been ascertained
by those individuals who presume to legislate, before
they voted in the face of reason and experience. To
flog a man for whatever offence, however brutal, is to

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l6 FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING.

sanction his brutality. Capital punishment, whidh is
brutal like flogging, is comparatively free from the
brutalising influence of flogging. The method of
flogging is so obviously unfit to humanise and socialise
any human being, that the impulse to inflict it can
only spring from a relic of savagery of the same kind
which inspires the criminal, without his excuse of a
morbid and defective organisation."

Dr. James Devon, Medical Officer of H.M. Prison,
Glasgow, in a paper on "The Treatment of the
Criminal and Offender," read before the Royal Philo-
sophical Society of Gla^ow, 1904, says: —

•• With milder methods of repression we have not
more, but less, crime : and certainly much less bru-
tality. There are some who would drive out crime
with the lash ; one usually finds that they are very
kindly people who spare the rod in their own homes ;
if they had to attend the administration of their pre-
scription they would probably alter their opinion. There
is no argument for the infliction of the lash that would
not equally apply to the use of the rack and thumb-
screw. Indeed, with modem machinery these might be
so finely graded that they could be made to inflict far
greater torture than the lash, without making it neces-
sary to put the culprit in hospital afterwards and dress
his wounds. Electricity, too, offers endless possibili-
ties ; and as it cures so many things, it might not only
torture but reform the criminal. Its application would
certainly not have such a sickening and brutalising
effect on the operator and spectators ; and, after all, not
only has the effect of a punishment on the subject to be
considered, but also its effect on the person administer*

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FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING. I7

ing it. For my part, I do not think that past experi-
ence of the lash encourages the idea that its revival
would deter from crime."

Professor Lawson Tait was a strenuous opponent
not only of the tortiure of animals by vivisection but
also of the torture of criminals by the lash. When
presiding at a meeting of the Humanitarian League,
March 14th, 1899, ^^ spoke with intense disgust of
the cruelties of the criminal law, and severely con-
demned the cry for more flogging raised by a clique
of old-fashioned woman suffragists.

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CHAPTER V.

THE GAROTTING FALLACY.

While I am convinced that the success of the re-
actionary attempts to return to a savage and useless
punishment would be on every account disastrous, I
wish more particularly to point out that such legisla-
tion would be especially injurious to the interests of
the working classes. It is working men who alone
would be sentenced to be flogged with the " cat " or
birch by those who would have the administration of
such a law, for, as Lord Justice Mathew has remarked,
the flogging of highly-placed offenders would be so
rq>ugnant to public feeling that juries, in such cases,,
would often refuse to convict Moreover, floggfing
for sexual offences of which men are often accused by
women out of malice, revenge, or for blackmailing pur-
poses, would render innocent men liable to an irre-
vocable and degrading penalty.

The leading advocates of flogging in this coimtry,
in and out of Parliament, mainly rely upon sudi
** facts," for instance, as that garotting was stamped
out in London, Liverpool, Manchester, and other great
towns by an unsparing use of tJie lash— their great
stock-in-trade. This reckless statement, which has
been made by Mr. Justice Darling, Mr. Montague
Cradcanthorpe, K.C,*and Lord Norton (though Lord

*Mr. Cratckanthorpe, in the course of a lengthy corre-
^MBdence with the present writer, admitted that he was

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FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING. IQi

Norton, above all men, should have known better) is
absolutely without foundation. This has been proved
over and over zgaia — ^the whole story being, in short,
a childish myth. No credence is to be placed in the
annihilation of the " comer men ** of Liverpool, or the
previous annihilation of the garotters by the lash.
Garotting declined elsewhere than in England, and in
Scotland it was ifever punished by floggfing. A refer-
ence to the Government Records, or to Hansard^
shows that garotting declined more rapidly before the
passing of Lord Norton's Bill of 1863 than after it
The late Lord Herschell, one of our most upright
public men, was strongly adverse to the use of the
lash, and his speech on the subject in the House of
Lords is now historic Anyone who reads that ex-
posure as to the ineffectiveness of the statute will
. cease to chatter about its having put down garotting;

The last important attempt to extend the pimish*
ment of the lash in our penal system was made in
1900, when Mr. J. Lloyd Wharton, chairman of the
Durham Quarter Sessions, introduced a retrograde
Flogging Bill that had been before the House eleven
years previously — a measure which sought, among-
other things, to empower the " Great Unpaid," who sit
at Quarter Sessions, to flog adult persons with a " cat '*^
or a birch, for a variety of oflFences. The Bill was
then read a second time by a large majority, though*,
forttmately, it never became law, for reasons best
known to the Cabinet of that day. On tl^is last

unable to maintain th« statement, and published his re«
cantation in the Tinas.

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20 FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING.

occasion, an overwhelming refutation of the sophis-
tries of the modem flagellomaniac was set forth in the
Parliamentary debate.

The following are extracts from speeches— delivered
by two Home Secretaries in the House of Commons —
which preceded tihe crushing defeat of Mr. Wharton's
Bill*: —

Mr. Asquith (Home-Secretary 1892-95) : "As to
garotting, that crime had been brought to an end as a
serious danger before the House, in a fit of panic, due
to one of its own members having been garotted, re-
sorted to l^islation. Garotting was put down, without
resort to the lash, by a fearless administration of the
'existing criminal law."

The late Lord Ridley (Home Secretary 1895-1900) :
*•* Reference has been made to the Garotting Act. He
agreed with the history of that Act, at all events as far
as London was concerned, given by the right hon.
gentleman opposite (Mr. Asquith), and that the rapid
and severe action which put down garotting took place
before the passing of the Act of 1863.''

OfiGicial corroboration of these facts has also been
given by Lord Aberdare and other Home SecretarieSi
and the fallacy has been exposed by the late Sir Ed-
mimd Du Cane, Chairman of the Board of Directors
of Convict Prisons.

♦Mr. H. D. Greene, K.C., Mr. J. Lloyd Morgan, Dr.
Kobert Farquharson, Lieut-Colonel Lockwood, Mr. John
Dillon, and other members, spoke against this prepos-
terous measure, which was defeated by a majority of 123.
The voting was as follows : For, 75 ; against, 197.

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FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING. Z^

Here is the opinion of Mr. Horace Smith, a well-
known Metropolitan magistrate: —

•• What stopped garotting was that the blackguards
who practised it b^an to think it best to drop it, not
because of any Act of Pariiament, but because they
knew that Society had determined to put an end to it,
had determined to catch them and convict them, and
punish them with the utmost severity/*— (Ttm«5, April
loth, 1900.)

This particular epidemic of garotting was sup-
pressed quite nine months before the punishment of
flogging was made a I^^al pwialty for the offence,
.The precise facts are as follows : In 1862 there was a
sudden outbreak of garotte robberies in the streets of
London. The epidemic began in July and lasted just
four, montiba At the November Sessions of the
Central Criminal Court 27 persons were sent to im-
prisonment, without flogging. At the January Ses-
sions, 1863, the calendar showed very few offences of
this character, and at the March Sessions Mr. Recorder
Russell Gumey observed to the Grand Jury: —

** I am very glad to say that there is an absence of
those peculiar charges of robbery with violence of which
there was a large number towards the end of last year,
and which have been gradually decreasing during the
last two or three months*"— (Times, March 3rd, 1863.)

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CHAPTER VI.

FLOGGIND NOT A DETERRENT.

But of course the case against flogging does not rest
on isolated instances of this kind. The very latest
statistics issued from the Press prove that the use of
the lash has no effect upon the class of crime known
as garotting and robbery with violence. Non-flog-
gable crime of every class has decreased, almost fart
fassUf with a just and humane modification of the
criminal law ; whereas oflFences against the person with
violence, for which floggings are inflicted, have in no-
wise diminished. Here may fitly be adduced the re-
markable testimony of Major Arthur Grifiiths, who
was, until quite recently, one of the Inspectors of our
Prisons. In his "Mysteries of Police and Crime,'*
Vol II, it is stated ; —

•* Garotte robberies are still of common occurrence in
lonely streets at all hours, and the process is much the
same. While one practitioner throttles, the other
rifles. Through the winter of 1895-6 they were most
numerous in the Borough, and no less than fifty were
committed in a couple of months. They were the i^oric
of a number, all of whom were eventually taken into

custody The streets of London are to this day

strangely insecure.**

This was written at a time when the amount of
flogging under the 1863 Act had ahnost reached its
highest point Before the garotting epidemic of

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FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING. 23

1 861-2 there were about 60 cases of robbery with
violence per annum; in 1897, after 34 years of fled-
ging, the number was 132. In the words of Mr. H.
B. Simpson, who wrote the preface to the Home Office
statistics for the year 1 897 — ^"oflEences against pro-
j>erty with violence fluctuate greatly, and if they show
a tendei^cy, it is towards an increase." These facts
cannot be disproved ; they are, in every sense of the
word, accurate and thoroughly reliable, and embody
the testimony of a painstaking expert Why do the
pro-floggers not face them? This appalling increase,
I may add, took place imder a Judge whose adminis*
tration of the law was frequently the subject of ad-
verse comment in the Press — the late Reowrder of
London, Sir Charles Hall, M.P. If we take the com-
bined sentences of Sir Charles Hall and Sir Forrest
Fulton, passed at the Central Criminal Court, we find
that they far outstrip those passed by Mr. Justice
Day. While (according to a Parliamentary return)
Mr. Justice Day was responsible for ordering, on an
average, 269 lashes a year. Sir Charles Hall and Sir
Forrest Fulton passed sentences involving, on an
average, no less than 318 lashes a year ! And yet t^e
only apparent result of these brutal floggings has beto
an increase of the class of crime for which they were
ordered to be inflicted — an increase which is' admit-
tedly altogether out of proportion to the increase of
population. The ofiicial figures show that elsewhere
the crimes of garotting and robbery with violence in
general, tmder non-Flogging Judges, declined

The first Judge to order the punishment of flogging
was Mr. Justice Lush, at the Leeds Autumn Assizes^

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^4 FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING;

in 1863, shortly after the Act which gave Judges of
the High Court tihis power became law. He ordered
flogg^gs in every case within the statute. Mr. Justice
Keating says that he went to Leeds on the following
circuit, and Mr. Justice Lush wrote to him to inquire
how far the result of his system of administering the
law had been salutary. Mr. Justice Keating states that
he was obliged to inform him that the "number of
such cases happened to be considerably larger, so
much so that I was forced to pass very severe sen-
tences of imprisonment. I have been also told by
another of my brethren that at the same town of
Leeds he had had prisoners before him, again charged,
having already been flogged"* " I have myself tried
more than one prisoner for offences of that descrip-
tion (garotting), who had been flogged and imprisoned
by other Judges " ; so wrote Mr. Justice Denman in
the year 1874. ''The poor wretches who undergo it
[flogging] are not improved, are not deterred," said
Mr. C. H. Hopwood, KC, in an addresi^ delivered at
a meeting of the Humanitarian League. "I frt-
quently have men before me for other offences com-
mitted shortly after undergoing this correcticML'*

* Reports to the Home Secretary^ 1875.

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CHAPTER VII.

OLD OFFENDERS RETURN.

The Criminal Statistics of the Home Office, which
are published annually, teem with cases of men who
have been flogged more than once — two and three
times, some of them. Ned Wright, the Hoxton
burglar, was flogged six times.

Here are some cases which I have come across in a
cursory reading of the newspapers: —

Arthur Smith, 24, and John Rooney, 23, were con-
victed at the Central Criminal Court of robbery with
violence. The prisoners had been previously convicted,
and Rooney was last year flogged for garotting. The
prisoners were associates of a desperate gang of thieves.
The Recorder said the time had arrived when the pri-
soners must be got rid of for a long time. — Daily
Chronicle, December 15th, 1900.

Before Mr. Cluer, Thomas Tamplin, 21, described as
a labourer, was charged on Monday last with assaulting
a detective. The ofiicer in court proved several con-
victions against the prisoner, one of which included the
punishment of the ** cat " for robbery with violence. —
Daily Telegraph, January ist, 1901.

Thomas Thompson, 22, tailor, well-known to the
police, was convicted at the Central Criminal Court of
highway robbery. There were 14 convictions against
him. In 1899 he was convicted of robbery with vio-
lence, part of his sentence on that occasion being a

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26 FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING.

flogging with the "cat." — Morning Post, February
6th, 1901.

Thomas Walker, 18, and Arthur Walker, 17, con-
victed at the Croydon Police Gjurt of stealing hair from
the manes and tails of two horses and maliciously
damaging the animals to the extent of ;£'io ; sentence —
Thomas Walker sent to prison for one month, Arthur
Walker remanded, to be sent to a Reformatory. Both
boys had been birched for felony. — Morning Post^ June
i8th, 1901,

George Taylor, 48, who hit a woman over the head
and ran off with her money, was sentenced to five
years' penal servitude at the Old Bailey yesterday.
There were 17 previous convictions against him. Once
he had been flogged. — Echoy June 27th, 1901.

At the Kent Assizes, William Thomas and Thomas
Bennett were found guilty witH robbery with violence
from James Ovenell. Mr, Justice Lawrence said that
Thomas had already been imprisoned and received 12
strokes with the ** cat ** for a similar offence. The
prisoner : Yes, my lord, the ** cat " has made me fight
shy of this sort of thing. His Lordship : It does not
seem to have done so. Bennett was sentenced to six
months* imprisonment, and Thomas to three years'
penal servitude. — Daily News^ December 3rd, 190 1.

At the Mansion House Henry Marsh was charged on
remand with stealing a gold watch. Warder Cook,
of Holloway Prison, stated that in 1899 prisoner was
convicted at the Central Criminal Court of robbery with
violence, and received three years' penal servitude and
20 lashes with the ** cat." Marsh was committed for
trial at the next sessions of the Central Criminal Court.
— Times, January 7th, 1902.

William Higgins, at the Central Criminal Court, was

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FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING. 2^

convicted of highway robbery with violence at the East
End. Five convictions, including a sentence of 20
lashes, were proved against Higgins, who had only re-
cently come out of prison. — Morning Advertiser^ May
7th, 1902.

A carter named John Dalton, who had previously re-
ceived the lash, and was called by Mr. Justice Ridley
at the Leeds Assizes on Tuesday, ** a violent brute,"
was sentenced to five years' penal servitude for throw-
ing a bottle at Samuel Clarke on January loth, the blow
causing Clarke to lose an eye. — Weekly Times and
EchOf March 17th, 1902.

William Wilkinson and Joseph Smith were indicted
at the Middlesex Sessions for wounding four men at
Wood Green. A wild scene ensued, in which knives,
belts, and other weapons were freely used. The police
quelled the disturbance and said the men looked as if
they had been in a slaughter-house. It was stated that
Wilkinson had been flogged, receiving 20 lashes, for
robbery with violence. — Daily Telegraphy July 7th,
1902.

Albert Johnson, for stealing a watch, was committed
for trial at the North London Police Court. Prisoner
had been flogged for robbery with violence, and Mr.
d'Eyncourt said he could not deal with a man with such
a record. — Morning Leader y July nth, 1902.

Chas. Bailey pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to piirse-
snatching. Warder Cook proved a long list of pre-
vious convictions, including one of seven years' penal
servitude and the infliction of the lash. The Recorder
said it was not the slightest use to deal leniently with
a man of the stamp of the prisoner. Society must be
protected against him. He sentenced him to five years'
penal servitude. — Daily News, September ist, 1902.

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28 FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING.

A constable told Mr. Paul Taylor at Southwark
Police Court that David Murray threatened to ** rip
him up " Ivith a waterside labourer's hook, and
to perform other graceful acts, which he frustrated.
Convictions were proved against him, including one of
the ** cat " for highway robbery with violence. He got
three months. — Morning Leader y October ist, 1902.

John Barry (36), labourer, was charged yesterday at
the Bradford City Police Court with stealing four oil
barrels, value £1. The Chief Constable stated that
Barry had previously been sentenced to a term of six
months' hard labour and forty lashes with the ** cat." —
The prisoner : That was fifteen years ago. — The Sti-
pendiary Magistrate : Did you receive forty lashes ? —
I received twenty. — The Stipendiary Magistrate : It
does not appear to have cured you. — He was committed
for six weeks' hard labour. — Yorkshire Daily Ohservery
December 30th, 1903.

For assaulting and attempting to rob a gentleman in
Commercial Street, Spitalfields, Frank Wheeler, a
young man of twenty-two years, was at the Old Bailey
yesterday sentenced to twelve months' hard labour and
fifteen strokes with the birch. He had previously re-
ceived the ** cat " for robbery with violence. — Daily
Chronicle^ February loth, 1904.

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CHAPTER VIII.

INCREASE OF FLOGGABLE CRIME.

At Liverpool, where flogging was largely resorted
to, the crimes of violence did not decrease, but actually
increased, in despite of terrible long sentences
of imprisonment and double and treble doses
of the lash. The men who were flogged came
up again for a precisely similar oflEence, and were
sentenced to flogging a second time. I have the
names, dates, and every particular. Before Mr. Justice
Day began his flogging system at Liverpool, in 1882,
there were 56 cases of robbery with violence ; eleven
years after there were 79 such cases. In that year
the Judge had completed the infliction of 1,961 lashes
— every lash as harmful as it was unnecessary. In the
records of the Government are given the entire
figures; they are as follows, and furnish most con-
clusive evidence as to the utter futiUty of flogging* : —

Robbery Sentences

with of

violence. flogging.

1882 56 ... None

1883 59 - 4

1884 60 ... 2

1885 26 ... None

♦All these sentences of flogging were passed by Mr.
Justice Day, with the exception of 10, which were passed
by other Flogging Judges ; Mr. Justice Day did not attend
these Assizes in 1885, 1889, 1890, and 1892.

c 2

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30

FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING.

Robbery

with
violence.

Sentences

of
flogging.

44

12

67 .

25

59

8

57
73

3
None

66

10

62

I

79 •

II

1886
1887
1888
1889
1890
1 891
1892

1893

The Liverpool High Rip Gang, we are told, were
stamped out by a vigorous application of the
lash. This, too, is an oft-repeated fallacy, but it would
seem that it is quite as persistent as the fallacy
about garotting, though less notorious. It may be re-
membered that Dr. Andrew Wilson, in a controversy
which the present writer had with him, gjave currency
to the mischievous statement. Mr. Justice Day, he
said, stopped the Liverpool " corner-men " by a free
application of the *' cat " ; and he added, in effect, that
any Liverpool man of an age to remember would cor-
roborate that. On his error being pointed out to him
he indulged in some genial abuse of humanitarians,
and tried to slink out of his own definite statements by
the irrelevant remark that at any rate it was the
universal belief, or something amounting to the same

Now, what are the facts? I do not dispute the
statement that a stop was put to street ruf-
fianism (not " robbery with violence ") in Liverpool ;
my contention is that this was done without -flog-
gings as mere ruffianism, which gangs like the High

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FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING. 3\

Rips commit, is not a floggable offence. The story
appears to have several variations, one of the most
familiar being that the Judge had all the prisoners
brought before him at the end of the Assizes and
sentenced them to varying terms of imprisonment of
twelve months and upwards, and, in addition, to a
double dose of the "cat" — fifteen strokes on going
into prison and fifteen strokes on coming out But if
it were true, as stated, that the Judge did this, and
that the floggings were carried out in the manner
described, then such sentences and floggings would
have been distinctly illegal! Writing to me under
date of September 6th, 1899, Mr. Charles H. Hop-
wood, KC, the Recorder of Liverpool, said : " I can-
not with my opportunities of observation, recognise
Liverpool in the description."

It may be well to repeat with insistence, in the
first place, that Judges of the High Court have
only power to flog men under the Security from
Violence Act of 1863, e.g.y for robbery with violence,
and not for the violence only which the street
ruffian commits; and, secondly, if the Judge in
this instance ordered the second instalment of
flogging on the offender "coming out" of prison
after having served twelve months and upwards —
then his action was as lawless in its way as that of
the men whom he was condemning. In all sentences
of flogging, including double doses (a refinement of
cruelty which I may say is not approved by the Home
Office), 26 and 27 Victoria, chapter 44, which au-
thorises the punishment, provides that "in no case
shall such whippings take place after the expiration

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32 FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING.

of six months from the passing of the sentenced It
appears that some of the members of the High Rip
Gang were flogged not for rufiianism or violence, but
for robbery with violence; but, as I have already
pointed out, they were the very men who, during the
eleven years that Mr. Justice Day sat at the Liverpool
Assizes, came up for trial and sentence for the same
class of offence.

Again, talce the "Scuttling Epidemic" in Man-
chester. In this case it looks, at first sight,
as if there were evidence that robbery with
violence and garotte robbery were really put
down in that city by the action of Mr. Justice
Lush, who made an unsparing use of the lash. In a
formal report to the Home Secretary, the eminent
Judge said :

** When I first went to Manchester in the spring of
1866 there was a general feeling of alarm at the pre-
valence of garotting. It had increased notwithstand-
ing that heavy sentences of penal servitude had been
awarded at the previous Assizes. I flogged every one,
as many, I think, as 20 or 21. I went again in the
summer of the same year, and had to administer the
same punishment to about half the number. I have
been there five times since, and have, I believe, only had
one such case, and that was three or four years since."

Now it is a very remarkable fact that the learned
Judge, in thus speaking from memory, was absolutely
wrong in every point and particular. The Criminal
Statistics of the Home Office show — ^first, that Mr.
Justice Lush did not flog 20 or 21 persons at the Man-

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FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING. 33

Chester Assizes of 1866, because there were only 13
prisoners liable to such punishment, and of these he
flogged 12 ; secondly, the number of such charges had
not increased, for at the previous Assizes there were
19 such convictions instead of 13 ; thirdly, his lord-
ship's severity had no such effect as he supposed, for
at the following Assizes there were again 13 such
cases, and at the next after that 15.

So that the severity of the Judge at the Spring
Assizes of 1866 was not justified by an increase of
garotting, and was not followed by a diminution of
such offences. The real facts and figures would point
to the conclusion absolutely the converse of that which
the Judge reported to the Home Secretary.

Here is another " clincher." As those who are in-
terested in prison reform are doubtless aware, the
Prisons Act of 1898 restricts flogging for breaches of
discipline in prison to two serious offences, and the
sentences of visiting justices can only be carried out on
confirmation by the Home Secretary. Under this rule
the pro-floggers have chafed for some time, and cer-
tain visiting justices made bold to ask for more flog-
ging, the result being that the Prison Commissioners
looked into the matter and brought to light the start-
ling fact that there had been no increase of prison
offences for which flogging had been abolished, and
that the increase was among those very classes for
which flogging is still being inflicted.

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CHAPTER IX.

ASKING FOR THE "CAT."

Harking back to Mr. Justice Day, it may be well to
remind the reader that as a judge he was a veritable
Draco. He rarely, if ever, missed an opportunity of
inflicting the lash, giving in some cases double
doses of flogging of forty strokes each. Moreover, as
an ardent flagellant, he sought to extend the penalty
to many offences besides those at present punishable
in this way. His example was not destined to sur-
vive his retirement, as the Parliamentary Returns as
to corporal punishment clearly show. In 1902 only
sixteen sentences of flogging were passed by Judges of
the High Court; and precisely the same number of
flogging sentences were passed in 1903. In no case
was the flogging to be inflicted more than once. Six
times this amount of flogging has been given in one
year in the hey-day of the Flogging Judges. It is
interesting to note that not more than three or four
Judges of the High Court make use of the lash.
" Flogging Judges," to quote the words of the Law
Times, "are now happily in the gfreat minority, and
the most eminent criminal judges and lawyers at pre-
sent are strongly opposed to this mode of punishment.
.... Flogging at no time has ever assisted in the
suppression of crime."

Speaking in the House of Commons in the year
1889, in support of the rejection of a Floggfing Bill,

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FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING. 35

which had been moved by Mr. Bradlaugfa, Sir Edward
Clarke, K.C. (then the SoUcitor-General), said he op-
posed the lash on the ground that " no one ever suc-
ceeded in proving that in any class of oflEence the
punishment of flogging had a deterrent effect" Mr.
Justice Keating, in a letter to the Home Secretary,
said : " I think the resort to flogging will have a ten-
dency to create a criminal class even more desperate
than any that now exist" Lord James of Hereford,
referring to the Youthful Offenders Bill, recently be-
fore Parliament, said in the House of Lords:
"Throughout the whole of my Parliamentary life I
have been an opponent of flogging as a pimishment
I beUeve it amounts to torture, and has no good effect
in the end." Lord Justice Mathew has frequently
denounced the lash. In 1898 he told a Birmingham
jury that flogging was the punishment of the slave.
"An Englishman," he is reported to have said,
" punished with the lash, was either for the rest of his
days a broken-hearted man, or he became a reckless
criminal." Mr. Justice Hawkins, Commissioner Kerr,
and other judges tried flogging, but soon discontinued
it " You make a perfect devil of the man you flog,"
said Mr. Justice Hawkins in 1899,* shortly after his
retirement from the judicial bench. Mr. Justice
Phillimore's view of the matter is that " the certainty
of punishment is the great thing," and he points out
that "if Judges had the power to inflict corporal
punishment for assaults on children, it would be still

♦See also "The Reminiscences of Sir Henry Hawkins,**
1904.

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36 FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING.

more difficult to get juries to convict" (Liverpool
Winter Assizes, 1904).

There is a wonderful story in circulation about a
man who is reported to have "bellowed like an old
cow " at the mention of the cat-o'-nine tails ; of which
I gather the meaning to be that if the culprit screams
and begs for mercy when flogged, or even when sen-
tenced to be flogged, it must follow that this mode of
inflicting corporal pain is a valuable deterrent What
nonsense! Fear at the time is no proof of the de-
terring influence of any particular ptmishment; the
permanent effect of this or that system is not to be
judged by momentary terror or its absence. The
argument, moreover, cuts both ways, but I do not
think that either fact proves much. It will be re-
membered by many readers that a man named
Hackett, on being sentenced, a few years ago, to seven
years' imprisonment, shouted at the top of his voice,
" Oh, my Lord, flog me !" and he left the dock shout-
ing, "My God! seven years!" This man had been
flogged before.

Here is another case: A prisoner, described as a
Hooligan, when his sentence was pronounced, cried
piteously for mercy. Yet in this case the sentence was
a short term of imprisonment, without flogging.

I give four more instances, of which there are many ;
but it is too much to hope that they will in any way
influence the minds of those who think that a man
who " bellows " at the mention of the lash is a good
instance of the wholesomeness of their pet specific : —

Asked for the ** Cat.'*— A young Hooligan named
Blakemore was brought before the Recorder of Bir-

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FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING. 37

mingham yesterday for a murderous assault on a youth.
The police said prisoner had ** done time " for nearly

murdering a policeman On the jury finding

Blakemore guilty he handed a written request to the
Recorder, that instead of a long sentence he would give
him a short sentence and the **cat." — Morning
Leader y May ist, 190 1.

Prisoner Pleads for a Flogging. — A well-dressed
man, named Arthur Mannell, 31 years of age,
pleaded not guilty at the Manchester Assizes yesterday

to a charge of bigamy at Eccles The Prisoner :

I ask your lordship, in preference to a long term of
imprisonment, which only hardens a man's heart, to
give m^ a short sentence and a flogging. His Lord-
ship : This is quite premature, I have no power to inflict
a flogging for this offence. The prisoner repeated his
request, and pleaded that he fell into the trap of a de-
signing woman. His Lordship : You cannot have it.
I cannot see any grounds for clemency [sic]. —
Manchester Dispatch, June 25th, 1901.

" I Would Willingly Take That, My Lord." —
Richard Bracewell, 28, carpenter, was indicted for
stealing as a bailee a Liverpool gig, value £26, the pro-
perty of G. T. Cheetham and Co. The jury returned a
verdict of guilty, and prisoner pleaded for leniency on
the ground that he had a wife and four children. His
Lordship said that unfortunately any punishment he
might mete out to the prisoner would practically fall
upon his wife and family. He only wished he could
order a flogging. The Prisoner : I would willingly take
that your lordship, if I might have my liberty. His
Lordship : Unfortunately, we cannot come to termt.
(Laughter.) — Yorkshire Daily Observer, December 4th,
1903.

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38 FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING.

Flogging Preferred. — At Newingtan Sessions,
before Mr. McConnell, K.C., Reuben Vaughan, 24,
pleaded guilty to obtaining by false pretences a watch
and other articles, value ;;^i8, etc. Mr. McConnell :
In 1894 you had the advantage of being birched, in
1895 yGU were sent to a reformatory, in 1899 you got
to the Old Bailey for forgery, in 1901 you had a sen-
tence of twelve months for stealing a bicycle, and then
you were sentenced at Maidstone to two years. The
Prisoner : Will your lordship order me the cat-o'-nine-
tails? That would be better than sending me back to
pnson for a long time. Mr. McConnell : I daresay it
would be better, but I have no power. The prisoner
was sentenced to eighteen months' hard labour. —
Daily News^ October 21st, 1904.

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CHAPTER X.

FLOGGING FOR WOMEN.

It is really difficult to resist the argument that it is
just as right to flog a woman as it is to flog a man.
Pain, shame, flesh, and blood are alike common to
both sexes, and a man's back is no less sacred tihan a
woman's. In England women are guilty of terrible
crimes — acts of violence such as the use of the hat-
pin and the throwing of vitriol, by which men have
been maimed and blinded for life. Some of the most
cruel offences against children are committed by wo-
mea Indeed, with regard to the latter class of crime,
the records of the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children show that the great majority of
the offences of brutality to children have been per-
petrated by the so-called "gentler sex." So to all
enthusiastic advocates of flogging, I would put this
question — Does their zeal extend to male and female
offenders equally ? If not, why not ?

I believe there is no more favourite theme among a
certain section of the public than that of floggfing for
the wife-beater. Imagine a sober, industrious man,
with a drunken shrew for a wife, who, in a fit of rage,
throws a lighted paraf&n lamp at him, as is often done,
and the woman yelling, " If you touch me I'll get you
birched!" Here, again, if the Legislature sanctions
flogging for wife-beating, it would also, if it had any
regard for logical consistency, be obliged to extend
the same punishment for the husband-beater. Weak

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40 FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING.

and feeble men need protection from big, brawny
women, just as much as defenceless women need pro-
tection from brutal mea Undoubtedly if birching is
good for the husband it cannot be bad for the wife ;
but what sort of home-life is likely to be the result of
such treatment to either ? " If you flog the husband,"
wrote Mr. Judge Digby Seymour, the Recorder of
Newcastle-on-Tyne, in 1874, "you will for ever de-
grade him as a married man. For the wife's sake the
hopeless degradation of her husband is most imde-
sirable." The case against flogging for wife-beating
has been very well put by Mr. John R. W. Hildyard,
for many years chairman of the Quarter Sessions of
the North Riding of Yorkshire. He said : —

' ' In the case of assaults upon wives and children, the
offence is seldom premeditated, and in almost all other
cases it is committed by persons of brutal passions when
inflamed and excited by drink, and by habits of drink-
ing. At such moments, when reason and reflection are
blinded, and all feelings but those of the brute are
blunted, it is unlikely that the punishment of flogging,
if Imposed, would be present to the mind, or, if pre-
sent, would have a deterring effect. And, therefore, I
doubt much whether such a punishment would repress
the offence, or have any other effect than that of
hrutalisingy when sober, the feelings of a man who had

proved himself a brute when drunk In brutal

assaults upon wives, the better feeling often returns in
sober moments ; the attachment of the wife is not extin-
guished, and though compelled, for her own security, to
give evidence against a brutal husband, whose conduct
is to be punished by imprisonment, there would be a
greater reluctance (and consequently a less certainty of

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FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING. 4I

conviction) if the wife were to give evidence that would
subject her husband to flogging. The certainty of
punishment is, I think, an element in repressing all
offences."

As a matter of fact there is neither decency nor
common-sense in the proposal to flog either men or
women.

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CHAPTER XL

THE ECONOMIC ARGUMENT.

Let US turn to the economic argument ; this surely
will be admitted even by those who dismiss with
scorn the appeal to sentiment, to fairness, or to hu-
manity. The only object of the State is to protect the
citizens. But the criminal is a citizen, and is entitled
to protection against undue or excessive punishment
— as would be admitted, for-iCxample, if we proposed
to flog a man for obstructing the thoroughfare. Any
pimishment which goes beyond what is requisite for
the adequate protection of the public is always too
severe; and any punishment which is futile is im-
necessary, if it is not indeed a crime ; and to that must
be added the cost of the prisoner to the ratepayer. It
has been well said : —

** The lashed and hacked prisoner has no future. He
is no longer a man ; he has been degraded to a brute,
and for the rest of his life alternates between ticket-of-
leave and prison. He is alive and yet dead. When
you have broken the spirit of a criminal, lacerated his
flesh as far as human endurance is possible (gauged by
the medical itmn in attendance), be sure of one thing :
You will have to support that man, in or out of prison,
for the rest of his life. Let the advocates of the * cat *
note that fact. To lacerate and smash up, morally and
physically, the criminal is — apart from all questions of
humanity — a somewhat expensive luxury for the already
over-burdened people of this country."

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FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING. 43

Reifying to a presentment in favour of flogging for
men convicted of criminal and indecent assault, Mr.
Justice Channell, who is opposed to the lash, at the
Derbyshire Assizes, said : —

*' I notice by the calendar that the people charged
with this o£fence are chiefly colliers and such like people ;
that rough class of the population who have not that
r^ard for women and children that one would like to
see. The whole matter was one that deserved the con-
sideration of those anxious to improve the character
of the population, and put down those offences. There
was one thing unquestionably that would have a ten-
dency in that direction, and that was giving those sort
of people more opportunity of observing the decencies
of life. I have noticed the conditions under which
many people live — several families in one house, and
many living and sleeping in one apartment. Let some*
thing be done to improve such conditions as those, and
there would be less offences against public morality."

The true cure for much of the crime of to-day is to
be sought not in mere barbarous retaliation but in im-
proved social conditions, and it is always the op-
ponents of such social reform who are loudest in
demanding the lash.

The " reformer " who urges that flogging is cheap,
knows now just how cheap it ist In view of such an
indisputable fact, could anything well be more sense-
less than to lash and ruin a man if the only result is a
burden to the rates and an increase of brutal violence
and crime? As a punishment flogging tends to in-
crease the general brutality of the moral atmosphere,
and is productive of much of the modern spirit of re-

D

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44 FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING.

venge and outrage. To pamc, prejudice, and passion
must be ascribe4 all the silly tsJk about the virtues and
cfficaqr of the ** cat" In brief, to quote the words o£
Herbert Spencer, " the truth is that savageness begets
savageness, and gentleness begets gentleness."

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CHAPTER XII.

A FORM OF TORTURE.

And there is another point on which no mistake
need be made. Flogging with the "cat" — or the
birch — is torture pure and simple, and while it is re-
tained in our penal system, it is a patriotic fallacy to
assert that torture is imknown in English law. It is a
pimishment of violence and blood ; and violence, even
State violence, is but force backed up by passion,
stimulated into action by malice and hatred and lust
for revenge, and as such, is a treasonable outrage on
our common humanity. " These instruments of tor-
ture," as Dr. Douglas Morrison well says, " breed in
the heart and mind of the community that spirit of
callousness to human suffering which produces crime."

The Russian reformer, Dostoieffsky, who was fami-
liar with the various forms of floggfing in use, both in
Russia and in Siberia, has recorded his convictions
in his " Recollections of the Dead-House." He refers
to the demoraUsing influence which flogging exercises
upon those who inflict it, and concludes : —

'* Let me add that the possibility of such a license
acts contagiously on the whole of society ; such a
power is seductive. A society which regards these
things with an indifferent eye is already infected to the
bone. The right accorded to a man to punish his
fellows corporally is one of the sores of our society ; it
is the surest method of annihilating the spirit of citizen-
ship."

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46 FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING.

Sir Robert Rawlinson has witnessed flogging with
the " cat,** and has written a vivid account of it To
quote his words 2 —

"I will strive in my mind to judge those members of
Parliament who now advocate the revival of corporal
punishment charitably, by considering that they have
never seen it as I have freely attempted to describe it i
the degraded man lashed to the triangles, the white
clean skin of the Englishman exposed to the cool mom*
ing air, to be scored, cut up, and scarred into a pulpy,
blood-smeared lump of living human flesh. Take the
vision away ; it is too hideous even to remember."

Manifestly the chief effect of flogging is to brutaHse
the offender rather than elevate him ; not only that,
it degrades the executioner and all concerned in its
infliction, even more than the sufferer; and perhaps
no argument against the continual perpetration of
such legalised brutality is more powerful than this.
Consider Mr. Owen Pike's significant words: **It is
far from an agreeable task to watch the face and
figure of the flogger as he executes his sentence,"
Prison warders do not willingly seek the particular
duty of inflicting the lash — far from it ; they are paid
extra money to perform the loathsome task! We are
told in Hansard, on the very highest authority, that
in Scotland, when flogging was allowed by the comir
mon law, the prison governors had the utmost difiK-
culty in carrying out a sentence of flogging owing to
the refusal of the warders to inflict in cold blood such
a barbarous punishment upon a fellow being. The
same remarks hold good in regard to Ireland.

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CHAPTER XIII.

THE LAW OF REVENGE.

•• He is a brute ; give him the ' cat ' " ; that is the
cry of those sentimental savages who desire to gratify
their feeling of indignation or to fit tihe punishment
to the crime by means of the lex talionis. But why
always the lash ? — the thing which the sensuous desire.
If anyone gains in any way by "fitting the punish-
ment to the crime " (as the flagellomaniacs pretend to
call it), why not do the thing thoroughly, and bring
back the torture of the boot, the stake, the rack, and
the thumb-screw?

But what would htunanitarians themselves do, if
they were the victims of violence? In reply to this
question, which is frequently put to the opponent of
physical torture, it may be well to point out that the
nature of a pimishment to be inflicted on a criminal
is not usually decided^ in civilised countries, by the
amount of exasperation aroused in the minds of his
victims. That is a method still adopted in some out-
landish parts of the world, in cases of outrage
on white women, with the result that the offending
n^^roes are tied to trees, drenched with paraffin, and
burnt aUve before the mob. Our opponents
would doubtless condemn such cruelties; but
none the less they themselves appeal, on a smaller
scale, to just tJie same retaUatory instinct — the same
spirit of irrational revenge — ^when they clamour for

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48 FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING.

greater powers to inflict the torture of the lash on
criminals, without in the least considering whether
such punishments are, on the whole, beneficial or in-
jurious to the community. \

People speak of "sympathy with the criminal
classes." Is it sympathy with the criminal classes to
denounce a punishment as unnecessarily cruel and
severe? — the pernicious pimishmcnt of the lash, which
is irrevocable if an innocent person should suflfer it
Had Sir Samuel Romilly, John Howard, Elizabeth
Fry, Sturges Bourne (who abolished flogging for wo-
men) more regard for the criminal than for his victim ?
These reformers, in their day, were attacked, dc-
noimced and told to mind their own business and let
well alone. Were the supporters of " law and order,"
then as now, the only party who possessed a monopoly
of rational sympathy? All the same, by persistent
and determined agitation, Romilly and Howard re-
moved the cause of a widespread misery, while the
good their opponents did was buried with their bones.

The object of humanitarianism in relation to crime
is to protect the public a^[ainst criminals at the smallest
possible amount of suffering to the latter. Says
Lombroso, the great Italian criminologist: —

** There are very few who understand that there is
anything else for us to do, to protect ourselves from
crime, except to inflict punishments that are often only
new crimes, and that are almost always the source of
new crimes." — Revue Scientifique^ July 13th, 1901.

We believe this; and those people who fed so
strong an indignation against crime that, as a rule.

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FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING, 49

they would select of two equally efficacious punish-
ments that which caused the larger amount of suffer-
ing to the criminal, ought to be taken care of as a
danger to society. A Judge, for instance, who metes
out sentences which dwarf the mind and deform the
body of the criminal should be removed from the
Bench. The savagery and barbarity of his sentences
either beget sympathy with his victim or imbrute the
feeling of the people. Men who possess these violent
passions often become criminak themselves^— Judge
Jeffre)^ for example. Reed, who wrote to urge the
hanging of Mrs. Maybrick, was afterwards hanged
himself. The State should keep perfectly clear of
malice, hatred, and revenge in every shape and form.
It should simply aim at doing what is best for the
entire community — a community which includes both
the injured person and the criminaL Flogging and all
severe punishments* evoke a feeling of sympathy for
the victim (I do not complain of this) ; but to work on
such a feeling is to injure society and defeat the ends
of justice. Savage penalties do far more harm than
good — ^that is becoming a recognised truth. Indeed,
a maxim on which many jurists have laid stress is that
it is the certainty, not the severity, of punishment which
deterS) and, therefore, that it is chiefly to the Police
and the Crown prosecutors, not to long terms of im-
priscmment and doses of the " cat," that we have to
look for the repression of crime.

*Even so considerate a man as Mr. Justice Manisty gave
a woman twenty years for stealing a blanket to pawn for
gin, and r^retted baring to be forced to reduce tbe senttnct
by »M ytafik

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CHAPTER XIV.

CONCLUSION.

It is abundantly dear from the foregoing statements
that what we hear of the efficacy of flogging in our
penal and prison systems is of the most shadowy de-
scription. When anyone asks the advocates of this
discredited system for the gromids of their
belief, be is met with those handy but meaning-
less e^Hthets about hysteria, maudlin sentimentaUty,
and so forth, as if aJI sympathy with the tortured
criminal meant sympathy with liie crime. There is
no sentiment more ** maudlin '^ or " sickly " than that
which, under the guise of sympathy with the victims
of violence, periodically raises the cowardly cry for
the lash. It is sympathy with the crime, not
sympathy with the criminal, which is to be
dreaded Indifference to suffering, be the victim only
a brutal criminal, is injurious to the community by
whose will the punishment is imposed

Even if it be assumed that the infliction of physical
pain may,in particular cases, exercise a deterring effect
on other would-be offenders, there remains the grave
consideration tihat in thus repaying violence with vio-
lence we outrage the very principle which it is our
object of safeguard We want a scientific treatmcsit
for criminals. Flogging is never salutary or curative ;
it always injures. It does not reform, for if the
culprits are naturally brutal, it makes them

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FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING*

more so, and if one was tempted to the com-
mission of crime, the flogging makes him desperate
(on the principle that one may as well be hanged for a
sheep as a lamb), stifles every regret or desire of
amendment, and sends him forth a branded and hard-
ened criminal.

In conclusion, let me commend to the attention of
those devotees of corporal punishment, in and out of
Parliament, who imagine that the case against flog-
ging rests on mere pity for the offender, and
that the humanitarian objections to it are merely
"sentimental," the following passage from the
writings of De Quincey: —

'* At present there is but a dim and very confined
sense, even among enlightened men (as we may see by
the debates in Parliament), of the injury which is done
to human nature by giving legal sanction to such bru-
talising acts ; and therefore most men, in seeking to
escape it, would be merely shrinking from a personal
dishonour. Corporal punishment is usually argued
with a single reference to the case of him who suffers
it ; and so argued, God knows that it is worthy of all
abhorrence ; but the weightiest argument against it is
the foul indignity which is offered to our common nature
lodged in the person of him on whom it is inflicted.
His nature is our nature ; and supposing it possible
that he were so far degraded as to be unsusceptible of
any influences but those which address him through
the brutal part of his nature, yet for the sake of our-
selves — no, not merely for ourselves, or for the human
race now existing, but for the sake of human nature,
which transcends all existing participators of that
nature — we should remember that the evil of corporal

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52 FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING.

punishment is not to be measured by the poor transitory
criminal, whose memory and offence are soon to perish ;
these, in the sum of things, are as nothing ; the injury
which can be done him, and the injury which he can do»
have so momentary an existence that they may be
safely neglected ; but the abiding injury is to the most
august interest which for the mind of man can have
any existence — viz. , to his own nature ; to raise and
dignify which, I am persuaded, is the first, last, and
holiest command which the conscience imposes on the
philosophic moralist.

V* On which account I am the more struck by the
ignoble arguments of those statesmen who have con-
tended in the House of Commons that such and such
classes of men in this nation are not accessible to any
loftier influences. Supposing that there were any truth
in this assertion, which is a libel not on this nation
only, but on man in general, surely it is the duty of
law-givers not to perpetuate by their institutions the
evils which they find, but to presume and gradually to
create a better spirit.''

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^^ FACTS ABOUT FLOGGING/'

By JOSEPH COLLINSON.

Some Press Opinions of the Hrst Edition*

Mr. Tighe Hopkins writes in the Law Times : « Persons
whose minds are open to conviction on the flogging question
may read to their profit a remarkable article by Mr. Joseph

Collinson in a recent number of the HMmam Review

Mr. Collinson goes over the whole ground again in the most
careful manner, and there is no getting behind the elaborate
series of proofs here adduced that garotting was suppressed
without the assistance of the ' cat '—the whole story being in
shoit a childish myth.''

The Evening Standard says: ''Mr. Joseph Collinson
established a very strong case against flogging. ....
Happily, Parliament has shown no disposition of late years
to encourage useless methods of barbarism, as the fate of
Mr. Wharton's Bill a couple of Sessions ago amply testified ;
though the flogging of grown-up persons is only one degree
more foolish than the shamefully extensive practice of caning
school-children. **

The New Age says: ^ Mr. Collinson has rendered yeoman
service to the cause of humanitarianism. . . • • He has
collected evidences from all quarters, and it all points to the
same conclusion, namely, that of the various forms of legal
punishment in existence flogging is at once the most foolish
and the most futile.''

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THE HUMAHITARUN LEAGUE'S
PUBLICATIOHS.

Humanitarian Essays. Crown 8vo, is.

Humane Science Lectures, is.

The New Charter: A Discussion of the
Rights of Men and the Rights of Animals, is.

The Need of a Rational and Humane
Science. By Edward Carpxntxr. 2d.

Animals' Rights Considered in Relation to
Social Progress. By Hxnry S. Salt. 6d. net.

Duty of Man to the Lower Animals; By
Frsdxric Harrison, id,

Literse Humaniores : an Appeal to Teachers.
2d.

The Shadow of the Sword. By G. W. Fooxi.
2d,

Empire in India and Elsewhere. By Edward
Carpbntxr. id.

The Treatment of Prisoners. By W. Douglas
Morrison, LL.D. 2d.

The Death Penalty. By Hypatia Bradlaugh

BONNXR. 3i.

Vivisection. By Edward Carpbmtbr. id.

What It Costs to be Vaccinated : The Pains
and Penalties of an Unjust Law. By Josxra CoL-
LIN8ON. 2d,

The Truth about the Game Laws. By J.
CoNNSLL. Vnih a PrttCioe by I^obxrt Bvcbamaii. 6d.

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THE HUMANITARUH LEAGUE'S
?UBLICkTIOV&— continued.

British Blood Sports, zd.

The Mercilessness of Sport. By Lady
Floksncb Dixib. id.

Sports, Legitimate and Illegitimate. By
Rev. J. Stratton. li.

On Vegetarianism. By Elisbb Rbclus. id.

Behind the Scenes in Slaughter- Houses.
By H. F. Lbstbr. ad.

Slaughter - House Reform. By Rev. John
Vbrschoylb. zi.

The Foreign and Irish Cattle Trade. By I.
M. Grbg. id.

Food and Fashion: Some Thoughts on
What we Bat and What we Wear. 2d,

The Fate of the Fur Seal. By Joseph Col-
LIN8ON. 2d.

The Horse: his Life, his Usage, and his
End. By Colonel W. L. B. Coulson. 2d,

The Dog: his Rights and Wrongs. By
Edith Carrimgton. 2d,

The Cat : her Place in Society, and Treat-
ment. By Edith Carmngtom. 4^.

HUMANITARIAN LEAGUE,
53, Chancery Lane.

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imS ilD ONECTS OF THE IDIUITiBIUI LEiGDE.

I » I

Thx Hnmanitarian League has been established to enforce the
pindple that it is iniqm$<ms to inflict avoidable sujfmng on ai^ smtimi
biing. This principle the League will apply and emphasise in those
cases where it appears to be most flagrantly overlooked, and wUl
protest not only against the icruelties inflicted by men on men, in
the name of law, authority, and conventional usage, but also, in
accordance with the same sentiment of humanity, against the wanton
ill-treatment of the lower animals.

Among the reforms advocated by the Humanitarian League the
following are prominent : —

A thorough revision and more humane administration of the
Criminal Law and Prison system, with a view to the institution of
a Court of Criminal Appeal, the discontinuance of the death penalty
and corpond punishment, and an acceptance of the principle of
reclamati(m instead of revenge in the treatment of oflenders.

The humanising of the Poor Law ; and the prohibition of the
industrial use of substances that endanger the heauth of the workers.

The establishment of public hospitals under municipal control,
where experimentation on patients shall be impossible. The com-
plete abandonment of the medical tjrranny wnich would enforce
vaccination by fines or imprisonment.

The extension of the principle of International Arbitration, and
the gradual reduction of armaments.

A more considerate treatment of subject races in our colonies.

A more vigorous application of the existing laws for the preven-
tion of cruelty to animsds, and an extension of these laws for the
protection of wild animals as well as domestic.

Prohibition of the torture of animals by Vivisection in the alibied
interests of science.

Insistence on the immorality of all so-called "sports*' which seek
amusement in the death or suffering of animals. Legislative action
in the case of the most degraded of such sports.

The prevention, by the encouragement of a humaner diet, of the
sufferings to which animals are subjected in Cattle-ships and
Slaughter-houses ; and, as an initial measure, the substitution of
well-inspected public abattoirs for the present system of private
butchery.

An exposure of the many cruelties inflicted, at the dictates of
Fashion, in the fur and feather trade.

Recognition of the urgent need of humaner education, to impress
on the young the duty of thoughtfulness and fellow feeling for all
•entient bdngs.

In brief, the distinctive purpose of the Humanitarian League is
to consolidate and give consistent expression to the principle of
humaneness, and to show that Humanitarianism is not m^ely a
kindly sentiment, a product of the heart rather than of the brain,
but an essential portion of any intelligible system of ethics or social

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EDWARD CARPENTER: s^'Jil^gS' '^IS
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CAPTAI N J I N KS, , a satirical mUitary romance,
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