THE LASH

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 35, 4 November 1933, Page 18

THE LASH

“Cat For Criminals Flogging, one of the oldest forms of punishment, is still permitted in a few countries. A recent dispatch from London announced that “two 20-year-old youths were ordered floggings at Old Bailey for what was said to be the first armed robbery in Great Britain with sawed-off shotguns.” In their discretion English courts may order the “cat” used in the case of offenders over 16. By Act of Parliament (1912) the lash was made legal for the punishment of “white slavers.” But the “cat,” once used liberally in the British Army and Navy, was abolished by those services years ago. In certain British colonies the lash is used to punish criminals convicted of crimes against women, while persistent youthful offenders under 16 are “stroked”, with the birch rod. Flogging was practised in Russia under the Czars; in parts of Africa the whip is still a sharp reminder of misdeeds. But France, Italy, Belgium, Austria, Germany, and the Scandinavian countries all disapprove of this primitive custom. In the United States of America, all States except Delaware have legally abolished flogging, although occasionally there are reports of whipping in the prison camps of Mississippi, Florida, and Georgia. Two years ago the death of a prisoner in a Florida gaol brought the subject of illegal flogging into the limelight According to the records, the prisoner was a difficult case. He refused to obey rules, made trouble for his guards, and finally sawed off his shackles and jumped into the river. He was brought back to prison and died there. That he had been whipped with length of hose for' one of his misdemeanours gave impetus to the story that flogging was one of the causes.