THE DELAWARE WHIPPING-POST.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 2769, 12 April 1890, Page 6 (Supplement)

THE DELAWARE WHIPPING-POST.

This is what Governor Biggs, of Delaware, says of a certain custom peculiar to this little state:—We are old-fashioned people in Delaware, and I presume we are behind the times in a good many things, and rather rig id in our ways, and that the method of dealing with certain classes of criminals is one of our ways. Now I am not an apologist for the whippingpost, because I don't think that Delaware needs any apologies to be made for her people or her acts, and if they did, they wouldn't come with very good grace from her Executive; but I can tell you some facts. There is not in the state of Delaware to-day a single prison. If a man beat his wife or set fire to a neighbour's barn, or breaks into a house, he isn't shut up with a lot of other criminals, with full time and opportunity of learning all their tricks that he did not know before. As a preventative of crime the whipping-post has a much greater terror than a sentence of imprisonment, and I have never known of a man that came back for a second dose. He simply loaves the State. You may rest assured that if he stays in Delaware he lives a very quiet life. To be sure it is a relic of barbarism, but it is our way.