FLOGGING A TORTURE?

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21019, 7 May 1930, Page 24

FLOGGING A TORTURE?

OPINIONS HELD IN ENGLAND. A man sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude and 15 strokes with the “ eat ” committed suicide l in Wandsworth Prison, England, by jumping over the balcony outside his cell. He crashed to death on the stone floor 20 feet below. Although evidence at the inquest pointed to the ten years and not the “cat” as being the affair has raised a great outcry in England against flogging, and the London New Statesman says:— _ 1 “ The case against the cat-o’-nihe-tails is twofold. ' “It is 9. barbarous and brutal form of punishment, and it is not (pace Lord Darling and other men of law) a necessary or even, so far as one can judge, an effective deterrent. “ It is, in fact, a savage form_ of reprisal, a relic of the old doctrine of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Its brutalising effect is as great, or even greater, on the whipper than on the whipped, and Lord Darling’s jeer at sentimentalists who approve of boxing and denounce the ' cat ’ is beside the mark.” The above allusion to' Lord Darling, formerly one of the most noted Judges on the Bench, is’ elicited by a statement he gave to the London Evening Star:— “No one is flogged except when he has been guilty of personal violence. “In my opinion, a public opinion which approves of prize-fighting; including the knockout blow, can not logically condemn flogging. “ Men and women who flock to ah exhibition between the ‘ Game Chick ’ and the * Battling Brown,’ would gladly see ‘ Burglar Bill ’ punished, by the ‘ Wandsworth Walloper.’ The Chancellor of the Exchequer might as wqjl set an entertainment tax on this as on the former exhibition.” Meanwhile London press despatches advise that the flogging question has been raised in Parliament. A special committee, it is reported, may be appointed to consider the effect of corporal punishment upon prisoners.