BAD OLD DAYS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 05, Issue 83, 27 July 1942, Page 5

BAD OLD DAYS

FLOGGING IN THE ARMY THE DREADED ' CAT''

jmany die under the; lash

From the time of the. Romans

flogging was recognised as the -most effective form of punishjnent for soldiers. In those early days it was adminisitered for the most trivial breaches of discipline, and with vindictive and terrible cruelty. Mercy would appear to have been an- unknown quality among the officers gracing the military courts martial. Death was very often the result of these floggings. For hundreds and hundreds of years in the Christian dispensation, flogging continued to be the main "mode of punishment in the armies of Europe. Every guard house had its whipping bench, upon which, for the most absurdly small offences, in the name oT discipline, the men were flogged unmercifully. It will be interesting for Whakatane readers with relatives and friends in the military forces to compare the disciplinary measures J of to-day with the ruthlessness of ■a hundred or even fifty .years ago. According to Major-General 'Char'Jes J. Napier (Remarks on Military iLaAV and the Punishment of Flog-, ging, London, 1937), whose lot it had been to see the "cat" used' in hundreds of cases, "men are frequently convulsed and screaming, during the time they receive from one lash to three hundred lashes, and then tliey bear the remainder, even 'to eight hundred, or a thousand lashes, without a groan; they will often lie as if without life, and the drummers appear to be (logging b. "lump of dead, raw flesh." Sir Francis Burdett, foremost among those agitating for the abolition of flogging, mentioned , in Parliament the case of a private being -given fifty, lashes for making a cornplant respecting the bread which was being served to his regiment; and another case where a soldier died after the infliction of 250 of ithe 1000 lashes to which he was sentenced. There is no doubt but that the lash was applied under the most trivial pretext in both the army and the navy* —particularly in the latter service. The punishment was inflicted bv the cat-and-nine-tails, a monstrous :ilail of thick whipcord, each two feet in length, and knotted in three places. At each stroke the thongs cut through the skin like so much paper, the knots tearing out lumps of flesh. "The sensation of the whiplied individual," says Shipp, is "as though the talons of a hawk were tearing the flesh off the bones," and. as stroke follows stroke, and the "cat" becomes clotted with blood, it "falls like a massi of lead' upon the back."

Those charged with the whipping of their comrades Avcre instructed in the art of wielding the "cat," being trained from boyhood until they became experts. According to the statement of "An Old Artillery Drum Boy," writing in the Morning Advertiser, September 1832, in the course of this training a tree was used to represent the body of the prisoner, and the Uogger was taught to "throw the cats, first to the left, then to the right, and then with a flourish over the head."

"I have stood to the tree until 1 was quite exhausted," says the writer. "I often think, being brought up to exercise such tyranny, that 1 should not possess the feelings of a human being." At the end of one ♦of these lessons in whipping, the bark of the tree would often be found reduced to a pulp, a fact which convcys some indication of the state of a man's back alter half a dozen drummers in turn had used the "cat.'" Sir Samuel Romillv, writing in his diary under date April 1, 18G6, says:— "Attendted the Privy Council upon the examination of Mr Stephens, a lieutenant in the navy, under the statute 33. Hen. 8.C.23. He wias charged with the murder of three seamen at Bomr bay, in the year 1801.-They had been flogged without any court martial being held on them; and the punishment was inflicted with such horrible severity that they all 1 three died in less than, 24i hours after it was over. Stephens had been present at the punishment, but he acted only in obedience to the orders of his superior officer, Lieutenant Rutherford."

And again under daic February lti, 1811: —

"I happened to-dry, at dinner at the Duke of Gloucester's, to sit next to Lord Hufchinson, and had a good deal of conversation with him on the subjcct of miti-

tary punishment. He is a g'.eat enemy to those ignominous and cruel punishments which a e

now continually resorted to. .He told me, that while he at Gibraltar, a soldier, whese on T y offence was that he had come dirty upon the parade, was flogged with such severity that he died a few days after, in consequence of the punishment. He mentioned, too, a very recent instance of a man who had been thirty years in the Guards; and, his conduct there having been irreproachable (he not having, even in a single ins-np.ee, incurred the displeasure of hfs officers) had been removed into the veteran battalion in the Tower; and who there, because he had been absent a day, had, at the

age of sixty, been sentenced to receive three hundred lashes, and had the sentence actually inflicted on him."

John Shipp, a soldier whose duty it had been to inflict many Hoggings gives more than one instance where death was due directly or indirectly to the us„> of the "cat." Thus:—

"One morning, I attended parade, when a wretched-lookirg, half-dead young lad was tied up for flogging; but the doctor reported him unfit to receive his punishment, as the wounds on li s back, received in a former flagel-

lation, were not healed. lie was taken down and Sint to the licspital, and in one week after I followed him to his grave. Whether the poor fellow's death was to be attributed to the punishment he had suffered, or to the effect of that punishment on his mind, and consequently on his frame. I cannot take upon myself to pronounce; but I foar that it must be assigned to one or other of these causes." In many cases the miserable- victim, tortured with th; 1 fear of possible repetitions on the punishment, committed suicide. Shipp gives a case within bis own experience:-— "When the offender was tied, or rather hung by the hands, bis back, from intense cold and the effects of previous floggings, exhibited a complete blus and black appearance. When the poor fellow was taken down, he staggered and fell to the ground. His Tegs and arms, owing to the intense cold and the long period they had remained in one position, still continued distended, and he was obliged to be conveyed to the hospital in a dooly, a kind of palanquin in which sick soldiers are carried. This unfortunate creature shortly afterwards shot himself in his barrack room, in a sad' state of intoxication, and was borne to his solitary pit, and- hurled in like a dog." An example of the terrible disproportion between the punishments and the nature of the offences' for which" they were inflicted, is given by TyUler, a Scotch advocate and an authority on military law, who states:- — "In 1792 Sergeant George Samuel Grant was sentenced a thousand lashes for the crime gf having been instrumental in the enlisting for the services of the East India Company, two drummers, knowing them at the same time to belong to the foot guards." According to the statements of Napier, towards the close of the eighteenth century, sentences of from six hundred to a thousand lashes were common; and where the punishment Avas so rigorous- that the whipping had to be stopped before the complete number of lashes had been given, the prisoner was removed to the hospital, and the moment his wounds were healed he was dragged out again to be given the remaining number of lashes. In Sir Charles's own words: — "I, then, often saw the unhappy victim brought out from the hospital three and four times to receive the remainder of the punishment, too severe to be borne, without d'anger of death, at one flogging; and, some times, I have witnessed this prolonged torture applied for the avowed purpose of adding to its severity. On these occasions it was terrible to see the new tender skin of the scarcely healed

back again laid bare to receive the lash. I declare, that accustomed as L was to such scenes!, I could not, on these occasions, bear to look at the first bloAv: the feeling of horror which ran through the ranks was evident, and all soldiers knoAv the freiquent faintings that take place among recruits, Avhen they firsit see a soldier flogged. The bringing a man from hospital to receive a second, and third, infliction, cannot noAv take place." We are told that flogging in the navy Avas of an even more severe character than Avas customary in the army—a statement one is loath to believe. lloAvever that may be, the Avhip Avas undoubtedly used on the slightest provocation, and often with the most deliberate and inhuman cruelty. Tt is Avell to think that the "cat" is to-day rarely used either on sea or land. By the Army Act of 1881, flogging Avas restricted to offenders

in military prisons