FLOGGING IN NEWGATE.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 222, 8 January 1877, Page 2

FLOGGING IN NEWGATE.

A prisoner named William Leonard underwent the punishment of 20 stripes from a cat-o'nine-tails yesterday morning within the gaol at Newgate. This was the second instalment of the infliction. He was convicted in 1870 at the Central Criminal Court on a robbery with violence, and was sentenced to receive 25 lashes, and to be kept in penal servitude for seven years. The flogging was duly administered, and the prisoner obtained his liberty upon a ticket-of-leave about the middle of last year, and appears to have almost immediately relapsed into his old habits of crime. He was convicted of attacking a young lady in the evening in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and after robbing her of her watch he knocked her down and ran off, and was not apprehended until the following day. For this offence Commissioner Kerr sentenced him to receive 40 lashes, to be inflicted in two floggings of 20 lashes each, at an interval of a month. The prisoner received his first instalment of twenty lashes on August 25th, and on this occasion he exhibited the greatest possible cowardice. Previously to the carrying out of the sentence the prisoner pretended to be very ill, and wished to make Dr. Gibson, the medical officer of the prison, believe that he was suffering from heart disease, and that if he were flogged it would endanger his life. Dr. Gibson, however, was too experienced in such matters to be deceived by this pretence, and he certified that the prisoner was in a lit condition to receive the punishment, and that he was not likely to suffer any greater inconvenience from the flogging than it was intended he should experience, and the punishment was consequently inflicted upon him. In consequence, however, of his violent contortions, the warder who was employed had great difficulty in avoiding striking the prisoner on the head or on the side of the face, and the prisoner certainly escaped a good deal of the punishment he would otherwise have received. When his shirt was taken off his skin did not exliibit any trace of the former punishment. The moment he was brought into the room where the whipping-block is placad, he began to howl piteously, and exclaimed, " Oh, doctor ! oh, doctor ! don't let me be flogged." Dr. Gibson shook his head, and the prisoner then appealed piteously to Sydney Smith, the Governor .of the prison, and begged him to let him off. Mi". Smith paid no attention to the appeal, and the prisoner, finding this was of no avail, made a violent resistance to the warders, and it was with considerable difficulty that they were able to secure him to the whipping-block. He shrieked wildly, and made the most violent contortions wliile the punishment was being inflicted, and when Mr. Mapperson, the chief warder 1 , who called out the number of each stroke as it was inflicted, ejaculated "Twenty !" denoting that the sentence had been carried out, the prisoner appeared to be completely exhausted by the efforts he had made, and it was necessary for the warders to assist him to his cell. He will now have to undergo an additional punishment of seven years penal servitude. —London Examiner.