USE OF THE CAT

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 70, 24 March 1938, Page 11

USE OF THE CAT

OPPOSED BY SHAW]

BUT SENTENCE SUSTAINED.

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, March 2.

Should a man be flogged as punishment for a crime? This question has been fiercely debated since Lord Hewart, the Lord Chief Justice, ordered two Mayfair men the "cat" after hearing a sensational jewel robbery case. The "Noes" have had it in newspaper correspondence; but Sir Samuel Hoare, the Home Secretary, said "Yes" when an appeal was made. The correspondence columns of the London Press have been filled with the subject, and the debate has been led by no less a declaimer of strong opinions than Mr. George Bernard Shaw. "May I be allowed to express my disgust at the sentences of flogging that have just been passed?" he asks. "What is the use of this relapse from civilised law. into savage retaliation? "The effect on the criminals will be negligible; they will spend a week in a fury of hatred of. society and of the law; but at the end of years of imprisonment this will have faded out. It will have no deterrent effect; for nothing is better established than the fact, that it is certainty of detection and not brutality, of punishment that.deters. These criminals, for instance, were not deterred by the sentence of flogging added to no less than ten years' imprisonment passed by the Lord Chief Justice some time ago which was made specially sensational by the prisoner committing suicide before it could be executed. "The transient pain to the flogged men is not worth considering in comparison to the gratification and encouragement given to all our Sadists and flagellomaniacs. ... . . "The whole business appears to me as a national shame and disgrace." OPINIONS THAT DIFFER. A student of early penal settlements in Australia bears out Mr. Shaw's opinion that corporal punishment never has beneficial results, by quoting John Barries, surgedn to the Penal Settlement at Macquarie Harbour from 1822 to 1823. "The opinion which.l had formed, upon that subject was that it had. the effect of demoralising them to the very greatest possible extent; I never knew a convict benefited by flagellation. I have always found him afterwards to be a more- desperate character than before and after the lash had been once inflicted, he was generally among those who had it repeated."' .Another writer states: Why the cruellest murder should be punished by an infinitely less severe penalty than robbery with violence.is hard to understand. Meanwhile, deterrent or no deterrent, so long as torture continues to disgrace our criminal code, the less we criticise Herr Hitler's concentration camps or Signor Mussolini's castor oil the better."' ' ' . , On the other hand, an ex-prison officer states that during his employment on the'staff of one of his Majesty's civil prisons he frequently overhead conversations between inmates who wera allowed that privilege for; good behavi. our Whenever the "cat" was discussed there was invariably unanimity of opinion that'it is a powerful deterrent. A stickler for exactitude points out that Mr. Bernard Shaw is not correct in stating in his letter that the sentence in the case of the prisoner who committed suicide was passed by the Lord Chief Justice. It was passed by Judge Gregory (afterwards Recorder bf London) at the Old Bailey in January, 1930. "The suicide of the prisoner was, perhaps, not altogether' surprising,'.' the correspondent adds, "but what did surprise me, and seemed, most unsatisfactory, was that 'it was within the power of a Judge who was not a Judge of the High Court.to.pass a sentence of such very. exceptional severity. . MR. SHAW'S REPLY. A more facetious commentator suggests: "As a substitute for that form: of corporal punishment, which Mr. Bernard- Shaw so' vigorously attacks, possibly the authorities would con-, sider solitary confinement, with access to the complete works of Mr. Shaw; volumes inadvertently defaced or destroyed by the prisoner to be replaced without penalty." v Mr. Shaw was moved to reply to his many critics:— "It "is unfortunately impossible to hammer into the heads of children and savages that the objection to flogging and cognate tortures is not that they hurt the criminal but that, they demoralise the nation and lower its standard of civilisation. ....-'

"Your pro-fustigation . correspondents are evidently in the mental condition of children and savages, for they ,are unable to reason on the facts. They ask me how the Mayfair criminals are to be punished if they are not flogged, forgetting in their fear 'of losing the promised treat that a man who has to suffer eight years' penal servitude can hardly be said to go unpunished. They repeat the old plea that flogging is the only effective deterrent with the Mayfair crime staring them in the face as a proof that it is not a deterrent at all. . '. .

"I hope Sir Samuel Hoare, the most humane Home Secretary within my recollection, will have cut out the cat from the sentences before this letter appears in your columns." Meanwhile, the Dean of Canterbury, Qi'. Hewlett Johnson, and the Dean of St. Paul's, Dr. W. R. Matthews, were among those who signed a protest' against sentences ,of flogging. "We submit," they'stated, "that the approval'widely expressed over these sentences is not due to'any belief that society has been made safer, but to a deeper emotional satisfaction at the thought' of the pain inflicted on these men. ...

"If the prospect of a seven years' sentence of penal servitude is not sufficient to act as a deterrent to others, a flogging sentence will not be either.

. . . The world cannot be made more moral or more law-abiding by the infliction of torture."

[The sentences were imposed in connection with the near murder and robbery of a West End jeweller by a gang of well-connected public school men prominent in Mayfair circles.]

WATER SHORTAGE AND A FIRE

The City of Wellington arrived today from Halifax and. berthed at Taranaki Street Wharf after a voyage marked by a shortage of water and a fire. .

On February 27, three days before the ship reached Panama, it was noticed that the water was running short and the pump was locked. The crew were only allowed to draw water at 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., and their names were taken as they did so. "In my twenty-six years of life at sea I have never known such a shortage to occur," said the quartermaster, Mr. R. Laughlan. It would be understandable on a very old ship, he said, but the City of Wellington was only twelve years old.

About a week ago a fire broke out in the cargo of sulphuric acid, but was suppressed before much- damage' was done. Only two cases were affected, but had the outbreak not been noticed early, it would very soon have become serious.

A plaque bearing Wellington's coat-of-arms, is affixed to the wall of the messroom. This was presented to the ship by Mr. G. A. Troup, then Mayor of Wellington, in -February, 1930, the last time^jshe was-here,