LORD DARLING ON THE “CAT.”

Hokitika Guardian, 22 March 1930, Page 8

LORD DARLING ON THE “CAT.”

“IT CANNOT LOGICALLY BE CO ADAM ALL.

VIOLENCE PENALTY

LONDON, January 30,

An outcry against, corporal punishment is again being raised because a prisoner at Wandsworth, due to receive fifteen lashes of the “cat,” leap ed to his death over the low banisters of a stone staircase.

But, on this question of flogging, the following characteristically illuminating expression of opinion has been received by “The Evening News” from Lord Darling:—

No one is flogged except lie has been guilty of personal violence. Public opinion, wliich approves of prise-fighting including the knock-out blow, cannot logically condemn Hogging as at present administered.

The men and women who flock to the exhibition of “Game Chicken” and “Battling Brown” would gladly attend to see “Burglar Bill” punished by the “Wandsworth Walloper.” The Chancellor of the Exchequer might as well get entertainment tax on that as on the other.

Sir Montagu Sharpe, chairman of the Middlesex Quarter Sessions, defends the use of the lash as a valauble instrument for checking violence. “I remember,” he declared, “that my nredecessor, Sir Ralph Littler, put down garrotting (the seizure of the victim by the throat from behind and the choking of him or her insensible), when he went as Commissioner of Assize, by giving sentences of the “cat”. He practically stamped out the crime in districts where it had been comnioti previously.

DEGRADING? YES.” “Years ago, when I was visiting justice to the prisons, I saw a man receive 20 strokes with the “cat.” “I had been one of the committee that had ordered the punishment and 1 though I ought to see what these punishments were really like. “There was a doctor with his hands on the man’s wrist, and the man himself took all the strokes with great courage, I think. “People say this punishment is degrading. It is. But the men to whom it is applied were degraded before and after all this is one of the punishments those fellows fear.

“It does more good, in my opinion than . keeping them in prison.-It is a very effective ‘last resource.’ ’ PLEA TO HOME OFFICE. Some people are to renew pressure, on the Home Office in the hope of getting flogging abolished.

Some embarrassment may be caused to Mr Clynes (the Home Secretary) by the death of the prisoner, James Edward Spiers, a thirty-seven-year-old Londoner, who had been sentenced at the Old Bailey to ten years’ penal servitude and fifteen lashes for a brutal attack on two city cashiers in an attempt to seize nearly £3OOO.

Dr Hastings ''Soe., Yearling) will ask the Home Secretary in the House of Commons on Thursday how many children and adults were sentenced to tho “cat” last year, and whether he will iii future, forbid this form of punishment.

Many Socialists M.P.’s are pledged against the continuance of whipping. They contend that as floggings, formerll,v ordered for disciplinary reasons, have ceased in the Navy, they should no longer be applied to civilians. But nothing has led the advisors of the Home Office to alter previously expressed opinions and the great majority of the of quarter sessions, and visiting justices consider the retention of this form of punishment, which is now sparingly administered, both necessary and desirable.

ONE LASH ONLY. Mr Justice Avery, Mr Justice Horridge, and Mr Justice Swift have on several recent occasions imposed flogging sentences as a corrective for criminals guilty of personal violence. The formula of 15 or 20 strokes with the cat-o’-nine-tails is still used in court, but, in fact, the old whip with nine lashes has disappeared from most prisons.

The “cat” at Wandsworth has one long tapering throng, about an inch thick at the top and without the knots that are still a feature of the whips used in some of the provincial gaols. The following interesting comments made during court cases may be recalled : yery much needed. The Recorder (Sir Ernest Wild): The penalty of flogging is the one punishment that ruffians fear. There is no power to inflict a whipping for armed burglary, and the consequence is that armed burglarly flourishes. The Common Sergeant (Sir K. E. Wckerfs): The real reason for giving the cat is not to reform the man to whom you give it. He is generally a brute.