HOW PRISONERS ARE FLOGGED TO-DAY.

Bruce Herald, Volume XXXXIV, Issue 61, 6 July 1908, Page 2

HOW PRISONERS ARE FLOGGED TO-DAY.

Although the eleven floggings ordered by Mr Justice Lawrence to be inflicted upon prisoners at the recent Glamorgan Assizes are unprecedented in For at that time the army-pattern point of numbor since the old garrotting days, the actual whippings themselves will not be nearly so painful as they then were.

"cat," as it was called, was in use. This was made of whipcord, and was furnished with "blood knots" specially designed to lacerate the flesh of the culprit. The modern cat, on the other band, is made of a special kind of strong twine, carefully bound with silk at the ends to prevent it unravelling, and as it is destitute of knots, it does not break the skin, much less injure the underlying tissues.

Nevertheless, the punishment inflicted by it is not exactly pleasant; for each of the nine tails is, of course, a separate whip to all intents and purposes, so that a sentence of twelve lashes means 108 distinct cuts.

Floggings nowadays, it may be mentioned, are inflicted out of sight and hearing of the other prisoners, so that the culprit's "pals" cannot jeer at him afterwards for having whimpered before he was "seized up," or for having "given tongue" during the operation. Neither does the sufferer carry with him in after life evidence of having been flogged, as was the case formerly, when the peculiarly shaped cicatrices which were left on his back by the healing of the wounds made by the blood-knots were such as were easily recognisable ever afterwards by any prison governor or other gaol official.