Flagellation or
flogging is the act of methodically beating or
whipping (Latin
flagellum, "whip") the human body. Specialised implements for it include rods,
switches, the
cat o' nine tails and the
sjambok.
Typically, flogging is imposed on an unwilling subject as a punishment;
however, it can also be submitted to willingly, or performed on
oneself, in religious or
sadomasochistic contexts.
In some circumstances the word "flogging" is used loosely to include any sort of corporal punishment, including
birching and
caning.
However, in British legal terminology, a distinction was drawn (and
still is, in one or two colonial territories) between "flogging" (with a
cat-o'-nine-tails) and "whipping" (formerly with a whip, but since the
early 19th century with a birch). In Britain these were both abolished
in 1948.
Flogging was a common disciplinary measure in the
British navy that became associated with a seaman's manly disregard for pain. Aboard ships,
knittles or the
cat o' nine tails
was used for severe formal punishment, while a "rope's end" or
"starter" was used to administer informal, on-the-spot discipline.
Flagellation probably originated in the Near East but then spread throughout the ancient world. In
Sparta, young men were flogged as a test of their masculinity.
Jewish law
limited flagellation to forty strokes, and in practice delivered
thirty-nine, so as to avoid any possibility of breaking this law due to a
miscount. Additionally they would have a doctor monitor the punishment,
who would stop it if it became too much for the person to bear safely.
In the
Roman Empire, flagellation was often used as a prelude to
crucifixion, and in this context is sometimes referred to as
scourging.
Whips with small pieces of metal or bone at the tips were commonly
used. Such a device could easily cause disfigurement and serious trauma,
such as ripping pieces of flesh from the body or loss of an eye. In
addition to causing severe pain, the victim would approach a state of
hypovolemic shock due to loss of blood.
The Romans reserved this treatment for non-citizens, as stated in the
lex Porcia and
lex Sempronia, dating from 195 and 123 BCE. The poet
Horace refers to the
horribile flagellum (horrible whip) in his
Satires.
Typically, the one to be punished was stripped naked and bound to a low
pillar so that he could bend over it, or chained to an upright pillar
so as to be stretched out. Two
lictors
(some reports indicate scourgings with four or six lictors) alternated
blows from the bare shoulders down the body to the soles of the feet.
There was no limit to the number of blows inflicted - this was left to
the lictors to decide, though they were normally not supposed to kill
the victim. Nonetheless,
Livy,
Suetonius and
Josephus
report cases of flagellation where victims died while still bound to
the post. Flagellation was referred to as "half death" by some authors
and apparently, many victims died shortly thereafter.
Cicero reports in
In Verrem,
"pro mortuo sublatus brevi postea mortuus"
("taken away for a dead man, shortly thereafter he was dead"). In some
cases the victim was turned over to allow flagellation on the chest,
though this proceeded with more caution, as the possibility of
inflicting a fatal blow was much greater.
In the reign of
Henry VIII was passed (1530) the famous Whipping Act, directing
vagrants
to be carried to some market town or other place "and there tied to the
end of a cart naked and beaten with whips throughout such market town
till the body shall be bloody".
[1]
Whipping was used during the French Revolution. On 31 May 1793, the Jacobin women seized a revolutionary leader,
Anne Josephe Theroigne de Mericourt, stripped her naked, and flogged her on the bare bottom in the public garden of the
Tuileries. After this humiliation, she refused to wear any clothes, in memory of the outrage she had suffered.
[2] She went mad and ended her days in an asylum after the public whipping.
Punishment with a Great
Knout. Russia, 18th century.
Knouts were used in
Russia
for flogging as formal corporal punishment of criminals and political
offenders. A sentence of 100 or 120 lashes was equivalent to a death
sentence. Whipping was also a common punishment for
Russian serfs.
[3]
[edit] Use against slaves
A whipped slave, Baton Rouge, 1863. The original caption reads:
"Overseer Artayou Carrier whipped me. I was two months in bed sore from
the whipping. My master come after I was whipped; he discharged the
overseer. The very words of poor Peter, taken as he sat for his
picture." The pattern of scarring seen here is highly suggestive of
keloid formation.
Whipping has been used as a form of discipline against slaves. It was frequently carried out during the period of
slavery in the United States,
by owners of slaves and their employees. The power was also given to
slave "patrollers," mostly poor whites, who had among their powers the
ability to whip any slave who violated the
slave codes.
[edit] Present-day official flogging
No longer used in most Western countries,
flogging or whipping is still a common punishment in some parts of the world, particularly in many former British territories and in
Islamic countries under shariah law. Medically supervised
caning is routinely ordered by the courts as a penalty for some categories of crime in
Singapore,
Brunei,
Malaysia,
Tanzania,
Zimbabwe and elsewhere.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, European armies administered
floggings to common soldiers who committed breaches of the military
code. During the
American Revolutionary War, the American Congress raised the legal limit on lashes from 39 to 100 for soldiers who were convicted by courts-martial.
[4] Generally, officers were not flogged. However, in 1745, a
cashiered British officer could have his sword broken over his head, among other indignities inflicted on him.
[5]
In the
Napoleonic Wars,
the maximum number of lashes that could be inflicted on soldiers in the
British Army reached 1,200. This many lashes could permanently disable
or kill a man.
Oman, historian of the
Peninsular War,
noted that the maximum sentence was inflicted "nine or ten times by
general court-martial during the whole six years of the war" and that
1,000 lashes were administered about 50 times.
[6] Other sentences were for 900, 700, 500 and 300 lashes. One soldier was sentenced to 700 lashes for stealing a beehive.
[7] Another man was let off after only 175 of 400 lashes, but spent three weeks in the hospital.
[8]
Later in the war, the more draconian punishments were abandoned and the
offenders shipped to New South Wales instead, where more whippings
often awaited them. (See
Australian penal colonies section.) Oman later wrote:
If anything was calculated to brutalize an army it was the wicked cruelty of the British military punishment code, which Wellington
to the end of his life supported. There is plenty of authority for the
fact that the man who had once received his 500 lashes for a fault which
was small, or which involved no moral guilt, was often turned thereby
from a good soldier into a bad soldier, by losing his self-respect and
having his sense of justice seared out. Good officers knew this well
enough, and did their best to avoid the cat-of-nine-tails, and to try
more rational means—more often than not with success.[9]
Meanwhile, during the
French Revolutionary Wars the French Army stopped floggings altogether. The
King's German Legion
(KGL), which were German units in British pay, did not flog. In one
case, a British soldier on detached duty with the KGL was sentenced to
be flogged, but the German commander refused to carry out the
punishment. When the British 73rd Foot flogged a man in occupied France
in 1814, disgusted French citizens protested against it.
[10]
At the urging of
New Hampshire Senator
John P. Hale, the
United States "Congress banned flogging on all U.S. ships in September 1850."
[11] Hale was inspired by
Herman Melville's "vivid description of flogging, a brutal staple of 19th century naval discipline" in Melville's "novelized memoir"
White Jacket[11]. Melville also included a vivid depiction of flogging, and the circumstances surrounding it, in his more famous work,
Moby-Dick.
Military flogging was abolished in the United States Army on 5 August 1861.
[12]
One of few countries where corporal punishment is still officially used in the armed forces is
Singapore, where military legislation provides that errant soldiers can be sentenced by court-martial to
strokes of the cane.
[edit] Australian penal colonies
Once common in the
British Army and British Royal Navy as a means of discipline, flagellation also featured prominently in the British
penal colonies in early colonial Australia. Given that
convicts
in Australia were already "imprisoned", punishments for offenses
committed in the colonies could not usually result in imprisonment and
thus usually consisted of corporal punishment such as hard labour or
flagellation. Unlike Roman times, British law explicitly forbade the
combination of corporal and
capital punishment; thus, a convict was either flogged or hanged but never both.
Flagellation took place either with a single whip or, more notoriously, with the
cat o' nine tails.
Typically, the offender's upper half was bared and he was suspended by
the wrists beneath a tripod of wooden beams (known as 'the triangle').
In many cases, the offender's feet barely touched ground, which helped
to stretch the skin taut and increase the damage inflicted by the whip.
It also centered the offender's weight in his shoulders, further
ensuring a painful experience.
With the prisoner thus stripped and bound, either one or two floggers
administered the prescribed number of strokes, or "lashes," to the
victim's back. During the flogging, a doctor or other medical worker was
consulted at regular intervals as to the condition of the prisoner. In
many cases, however, the physician merely observed the offender to
determine whether he was conscious. If the prisoner passed out, the
physician would order a halt until the prisoner was revived, and then
the whipping would continue.
Female convicts were also subject to flogging as punishment, both on
the convict ships and in the penal colonies. Although they were
generally given fewer lashes than males (usually limited to 40 in each
flogging), there was no other difference between the manner in which
males and females were flogged.
Floggings of both male and female convicts were public, administered
before the whole colony's company, assembled especially for the purpose.
In addition to the infliction of pain, one of the principal purposes of
the flogging was to humiliate the offender in front of his mates and to
demonstrate, in a forceful way, that he had been required to submit to
authority.
(See also:
History of Australia).
[edit] Association with religion
Flagellants. From a fifteenth century woodcut.
[edit] Judaism
According to the
Torah and
Rabbinic law lashes may be given for offenses that do not merit capital punishment, and may not exceed 40. However in the absence of a
Sanhedrin, corporal punishment is not practiced in Jewish law.
Halakha
specifies the lashes must be given in sets of three, so the total
number cannot exceed 39. Also, the person whipped is first judged
whether they can withstand the punishment, if not, the number of whips
is decreased.
[edit] Pre-Christianity
During the
Ancient Roman festival of
Lupercalia
young men ran through the streets with thongs cut from the hide of
goats which had just been sacrificed, and women who wished to conceive
put themselves in their way to receive blows, apparently mostly on the
hands.
[citation needed] The eunuch priests of the goddess
Cybele, the
galli, flogged themselves until they bled during the annual festival called
Dies sanguinis.
Greco-Roman mystery religions also sometimes involved ritual flagellation, as famously depicted in the
Villa of the Mysteries at
Pompeii, apparently showing initiation into the
Dionysian Mysteries
