When was flogging abolished in the uk

Eventually, the rise of a massive wave against slavery and corporal punishment resulted in such practices withering away from the aforementioned regions.

For instance, towards the middle of the 20th century, the Criminal Justice Act of prohibited this practice completely in the UK. But there are still many countries like Indonesia, Iran, Sudan, Maldives, etc.

In the past decade , Maldives had become notorious for flogging its abused and raped women on charges of adultery. Earlier this year in Aceh the only Indonesian region that implements Sharia law , a female flogging squad was constituted in order to punish the women violating the Islamic law. Therefore, in the next section, we provide an insight into the international human rights standards prevailing in order to combat this problem.

It is noteworthy that the International Human Rights Law prohibits judicial verdicts imposing corporal punishment, including flogging, as constituting torture or inhuman or degrading treatment. Corporal punishment violates internationally recognized human rights to freedom from cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment, and freedom from physical violence.

Furthermore, in Osbourne v. Compare it with the London and Nottingham versions. The birch shown here consists largely of the handle alone, the business end having mostly disintegrated. This is what usually happens to birches in museums, giving the general public a misleading idea of what birches really looked like and how big they were. I have never seen a birching bench like this right before, which just goes to underline the extent to which different police forces invented their own solutions.

This one is said to come from a former police museum in Shropshire. I deduce that the offender had to lie along the diagonal slope with his legs on either side of it, fixed at ankle level with the rings shown, making his bare bottom available for punishment part way up the slope. Presumably the padding at the top end is for his head, and the rings at the far end for his wrists.

This design perhaps has the advantage that it would suit a lad of any height. On the other hand, it looks as if it must have been somewhat uncomfortable for the boy, and I should have thought there was a risk that the birch might strike the back of his testicles, unless some special precautions were taken.

This curious birching pony for boys left is in the Prison and Police Museum in Ripon, Yorkshire, originally from the police lock-up in Leeds, where it was allegedly last used in November Ignore the pipes along the back wall, which confuse the picture a little. The offender would have stood between the two side panels at left, with his upper body at 45 degrees along the top part.

Slightly puzzling is the section on the front, at right of picture, which can only have been to secure his arms. The whole thing seems unnecessarily elaborate. These two pictures right , in colour, of the above machine give us a clearer view of, particularly, the side panels with slots, which provided for the raising or lowering of a plank on which the boy had to stand, depending on his size.

However, in this view the plank itself is missing. This further and much earlier picture left of the same device, from a Yorkshire Post report on a police exhibition in , has now come to hand, complete with policeman wielding a birch.

Here we can just see the height-adjustable plank between the slots. Also visible are the various straps to tie the culprit's legs, torso and wrists to the pony. Procedures for administering the birch or the tawse in Scotland seem to have differed a little from those in England and Wales.

It appears that in many places the recipient was secured lying flat, face down, rather than in a bending position as was the preference in England and Wales. This splendid piece of furniture right , sadly, apparently now exists only as a photograph in a library in Glasgow. Regulations of laid down that, since unlike in England and Wales there was no right of appeal, the whipping was to be carried out on the day it was ordered. They added that the punishment must be "sufficiently severe to cause a repetition of it to be dreaded".

Courts did not hesitate to use their powers, and records can be found in parliamentary returns for the s of boys being sentenced in Glasgow to "36 strokes on the breech with a leather taws" [sic].

A gradual decline set in after the turn of the 20th century. According to the Cadogan Report , there were juvenile whippings in Scotland in , in , and in By that time, says Cadogan, the tawse was very rarely ordered, and nearly all JCP was with the birch. The culprit would be made to lie face down along the table with his head at the left end as seen in this view, and his arms put through one or other set of holes, depending on his size. His genitals are positioned over the padded section to cushion them against being crushed, and the padding would also have the advantage of raising up his buttocks slightly.

The straps are used to fix his torso and thighs securely to the bench. His lower legs and feet would stick out over the right-hand end of the apparatus. On top of the bench lies a birch; two more birches, of differing sizes for different age groups, are leaning against the wall at right. Hanging off the right-hand end is a tawse. Somewhat similar to the above, but of a rather more basic design, this whipping table left is at Inveraray Jail museum in Argyll , in the Scottish highlands.

Youngsters visiting the museum can "feel what it is like to be strapped to the Whipping Table". The picture is from the museum's brochure; of course the boy in reality would have had his trousers pulled down, but at least the birch is shown being applied to the correct part of the offender's anatomy. The picture does, anyway, illustrate how the "arms through holes" system would have worked.

This right is a clearer picture of the birching table at the Inveraray Jail museum. Note holes for the boy's arms and straps for his legs and feet. The remains of a birch are seen lying on the table. The notice says that the last birching in the town was in , in fact the last year when it was legally possible and by which time juvenile birchings were rather rare, even in Scotland.

The birch shown is described as a modern replica. The Cadogan report informs us that in some parts of Scotland it was common for juveniles to be laid flat on a simple bench to be birched, in contrast to the more elaborate contraptions used elsewhere.

This birching bench left , with the remains of a birch sitting at one end of it, was found in the Edinburgh Police Museum. The picture at right was in a museum in Glasgow. This strange "flogging stand" looks to have been adapted from a domestic wardrobe. It is difficult to see otherwise why it would be made of polished wood or have an elaborate cornice at the top.

At all events, the picture is highly misleading in showing the lad stripped down TO the waist, implying that the punishment was applied to the upper back. He should be stripped FROM the waist down: juvenile police court birchings and tawsings in Scotland were always administered across the offender's unclothed seat. Note padding on the front of the thing to cushion the boy's abdomen. That in itself suggests that the impact was intended to be at a level somewhat lower than his shoulders.

From another museum, the Summerlee Museum in Coatbridge, this left is clearly the same piece of furniture, described as dating from The slots for the knee-straps can be seen, but the straps themselves are missing. The leather pad can be moved up and down in its slot according to the size of the culprit.

Note also the holes at base for the feet. I am greatly indebted to Harold A. Hoff for this rare picture right of an actual Scottish judicial tawse, produced for government use some time between and see King George V royal crown stamp. It would have been applied across the bare backsides of boys aged 14 to 16, up to 36 strokes according to the order of the sentencing court.

The instrument is over 21" long, rather bigger than the typical school tawse. Almost as soon as judicial birching and flogging had been abolished in began calls for its reintroduction. Judges and newspaper editorialists and members of the clergy were loudly bemoaning the abolition. Among those leading this campaign was no less a figure than the Lord Chief Justice. A parliamentary Bill to this effect, defeated in , was to be only one of many over the decades.

In , the people who run post offices called for the return of the cat. Some backbench Tory parliamentarians repeatedly rebelled against their own party's government to demand the restoration of birching in and again in , at which point the government went so far as to publish an updated edition of the Cadogan Report to bolster the case against CP.

In another Lord Chief Justice echoed his predecessor's support. And so it went on. Further backbench attempts at reintroduction were made as recently as the s see External Links, below but by that time it was a hopeless cause.

JCP remained abolished. Its proposals for abolition were implemented ten years later. This first part, called Historical Introduction, sets out the evolution of the relevant legal provisions. Birches and Cats-o'-nine-tails Official circular to prison governors in giving instructions on the ordering, stocking and disposal of whipping implements.

The birching of adult men for robbery with violence Research by "Diogenes" on a gradual change from cat to birch in the early 20th century. Whip hand of the state Feature in Glasgow Herald on juvenile birching in Scotland before Flogging triangles Official diagrams, dated , showing the contraptions used in two English prisons for securing prisoners to be flogged with the cat or birch.

Corporal Punishment in Northern Ireland In considering British legal matters, the existence within the UK since of a semi-autonomous jurisdiction for the statelet "Province" of Northern Ireland, with its own local parliament and laws, is generally overlooked.

This article from a law journal reminds us that Northern Ireland did not follow the rest of the UK in abolishing JCP in , and reveals that the penalty was available for a much wider range of offences than on the mainland. Little-known statistics on the incidence of CP are quoted, from which it is apparent that in practice the penalty was never actually applied in the post-war era as far as adults were concerned. It is not clear whether or not there were any juvenile birchings in the period in question.

Corporal punishment as an internal prison disciplinary measure is also considered. For the British, however, no such tolerance was considered necessary for men who had enlisted of their own volition. In its criminal code Britain was consistently more reliant on capital punishment than most other European countries.

During the period there were on average twenty-seven death sentences passed annually by criminal courts in England and Wales, with an average of fifteen executions carried out.

By contrast, in France, where juries could accept mitigating circumstances in order to avoid the death penalty, the figures were twenty-three and five respectively. Capital punishment was not practised in nineteenth-century Prussia and in other German territories executions were rare although it was reintroduced by Bismarck in Despite the change during the Wilhelmine era, when clemency was generally refused as a matter of state policy 61 , Britain remained exceptional in its reliance on the death penalty.

Even in Tsarist Russia the death penalty was rarely used in criminal cases — although continued use of the knout resulted in many deaths and little restraint was shown in the army. In America too, many states had abolished the death penalty Britain, though, clung on to capital punishment -a practice reflected in its military code.

There is a parallel here with the role performed by the Home Office in the nineteenth-century, which acted to mitigate capital convictions especially where insanity was suspected. The process of assessing a condemned prisoner's sanity to prevent injustices and avoid adverse publicity, in spite of the assumption of adult responsibility established by Common Law 64 , anticipated the role the Commander-in-Chief later performed in relation to soldiers suspected to be suffering from the condition known as shell-shock.

What singled out military law, however, was the absence of any appellate system : other officers and indeed the JAG made recommendations, but the Commander-in-Chief was the only authority who could set aside the sentence of the court. In the German army soldiers were protected to a certain extent by statutory rights and French soldiers had the theoretical protection of the President of the Republic Even Russian and Austrian soldiers were not theoretically denied a right of appeal to a higher court But British soldiers had to place their faith entirely in the hands of a Commander-in-Chief who was required to put discipline above justice.

The role of the Commander-in-Chief has to be understood in this context. So too had varying attitudes towards crime and punishment. For these reasons the British army adopted a code more closely resembling those of the old authoritarian empires of Eastern Europe than those of Germany or France.

In one respect this is surprising : this does not appear to have been the intentions of the legislators who, by removing the old practices of flogging and branding, were attempting to ring the changes to what had become the unacceptable face of military discipline.

However, the new code reflected much of the criminal law, which itself placed enormous emphasis in the death penalty as a means of deterring crime. During the First World War military commanders adopted just such an approach and the law encouraged them to do so.

For the answer we must again look to the criminal code. The parallels are not so elusive and tradition remained an important influence.

Military law, as represented by the Army Act , simply followed earlier British models and reflected traditional fears about control of the army and the quality of recruits.

In fact it was highly unlikely that the British could have envisaged a military code such as existed across the Channel or the Atlantic. The result was a code that placed additional responsibility on the Commander-in-Chief during wartime. His function as the final arbiter in legal matters bore a marked similarity to the role of the Home Office : both were expected to mitigate condemnations from the courts to an acceptable level.

One had to balance public opinion against public order, the other troop morale and discipline. Yet in practice this judicial role was not compatible with the Commander-in-Chief's overriding responsibility for army discipline. Unlike the French or American armies, which placed ultimate judicial responsibility on their respective Presidents, British tradition dictated that politicians were not be to be trusted with a modicum of control over the military.

In peacetime the Crown fulfilled the role which was delegated to the Commander-in-Chief during wartime. No doubt his role was delegated further, but the important feature of the system was that British soldiers had to rely on the benevolence of senior officers who were virtually unaccountable, at least for the duration of the war.

Like the Crown, the army was not as apolitical as it was usually painted. Despite the reforms the army retained its traditional approach to discipline in a code that remained immune from interference from civil servants such as the JAG or from politicians.

The army's reputation as a non-political organisation is indeed mythical. As Hew Strachan has shown, the army, far from being apolitical, was capable of political intervention and not always was it subtle about its actions : take for instance the Curragh incident of The law was framed in a manner that offered at least a degree of tolerance of desertion. It is no coincidence that such a view existed in Germany and France, but not in Britain where there was no tradition of compulsion and it was not thought necessary to show leniency to men who had accepted the regulations when they volunteered German soldiers also benefited from statutory rights whilst French poilus enjoyed the theoretical protection of their President, which although slow to be enacted doubtless saved many from the firing squads after Pre-war attitudes and traditional military practices were also markedly different in these continental armies with commanders accustomed to other forms of managing discipline such as the penal battalions.

Alternatives were limited in the British code. In this they were aided by the law, which was constructed around the concept of deterrence. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that when confronted by a stalemated war, British commanders invariably grasped at traditional ideas rather than exploring less well-trodden paths. This approach was epitomised by General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, commander of the 2 nd Army, when reviewing a case in :.

There is a serious prevalence of desertion to avoid duty in the trenches, especially in the 8 th Brigade and I am sure that the only way to stop it is to carry out some death sentences [my italics] Paradoxically, the abolition of flogging — one of the few progressive features of the reforms — was a contributory factor.

Lacking alternatives, British commanders were simply bereft of ideas short of capital punishment when it came to controlling the army during wartime. This had not proved to be a major problem in the minor wars at the end of the nineteenth-century — not even the war in South Africa.

But the intensive nature of warfare on the Western front in particular cruelly exposed the inadequacies in the rules for management of the army. Commanders, fearful of losing control of a much-enlarged army, were encouraged, expected even, to resort to capital punishment. Complicit in all this were the legislators who followed draconian criminal as well as military traditions when they acquiesced and allowed the army to maintain its grip on such a harsh and rigid system.

Babington, A. Blake, R. Chadwick, R. Denman, T. Englander D. Evans, R. Grierson, Capt. Fisher Unwin, Galliher, J. Griffith, P. Hurst, G. McConville, S. Offenstadt, N.

Oram, G. Putkowski, J. Radzinowicz, L. Rubin, G. Schieuter, D. We have a large archive of soldier records. Trace your military heritage through our Research Database. The last cat o'nine tails used in the 83rd Regiment. Research Database We have a large archive of soldier records.