The Anglo-Saxons whipped prisoners with a whip of three cords, knotted at the end. It was not an uncommon practice for mistresses to whip, or have their servants whipped, to death. William of Malmesbury relates a story to the effect that when King Ethelred was a child, he on one occasion displeased his mother, and she, not having a whip at hand, flogged him with some candles until he was nearly insensible with pain. "On this account," so runs the story, "he dreaded candles during the rest of his life to such a degree that he would never suffer the light of them to be introduced in his presence." During the Saxon epoch, flogging was generally adopted as means of punishing persons guilty of offences, whether slight or serious.

For a long time in our history, payments for using the lash formed important items in the municipal accounts of towns or parish accounts of villages.

Before the monasteries were dissolved, the poor[210] were relieved at them. No sooner had they passed away than the vagrants became a nuisance, and steps were taken to put a stop to begging; indeed, prior to this period attempts had been made to check wandering vagrants. They were referred to in the "Statute of Labourers," passed in the year 1349. Not a few enactments were made to keep down vagrancy. In the reign of Edward VI., in 1547, an Act was passed, from which it appears "that any person who had offered them work which they refused, was authorised to brand them on the breast with a V, hold them in slavery for two years, feed them during that period on bread and water, and hire them out to others." The Act failed on account of its severity, and was repealed in 1549.

It was in the reign of Henry VIII., and in the year 1530, that the famous Whipping Act was instituted, directing that vagrants were to be carried to some market town or other place, "and there tied to the end of a cart naked, and beaten with whips throughout such market town, or other place, till the body shall be bloody by reason of such whipping." Vagrants, after being whipped, had to take an oath that they would return to their native places, or where they had last dwelt[211] for three years. Various temporary modifications were made in this Act, but it remained in force until the thirty-ninth year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when some important alterations were made. Persons were not to be publicly whipped naked, as previously, but from the middle upwards, and whipped until the body should be bloody. It was at this time that the whipping-post was substituted for the cart. Whipping-posts soon became plentiful. John Taylor, "the water poet," in one of his works, published in 1630, adverts to them as follows:

We give an illustration of the Waltham Abbey Whipping-Post and Stocks, as they appeared when they stood within the old wooden market-house, which was pulled down in 1853. The post bears on it the date 1598, and is 5 feet 9 inches high; it is strongly made of oak, with iron clasps for the hands when employed as a whipping-post, and for the feet when used as the stocks. It is rather more elaborate than others which have come under our notice. It will be observed the seat for the culprits placed in the[212] stocks was beside one of the immense oak pillars of the market-house. They are now placed with the remains of the Pillory at the entrance of the schoolroom, on the south-west side of the church.

Some of the authorities regarded with greater favour the punishment at the whipping-post than at the cart tail. An old writer deals at some length with the benefit of the former. Says he: "If to put in execution the laws of the land be of any service to the nation, which few, I think, will deny, the benefits of the whipping-post must be very apparent, as being a necessary instrument to such an execution. Indeed, the service it does to a country is inconceivable. I, myself, know a man who had proceeded to lay his hand upon a silver spoon with a design to make it his own, but on looking round, and seeing the whipping-post in his way, he desisted from the theft. Whether he suspected that the post would impeach him or not, I will not pretend to determine; some folks were of opinion that he was afraid of habeas corpus. It is likewise an infallible remedy for all lewd and disorderly behaviour, which the chairman at sessions generally employs to restrain; nor is it less beneficial to the honest part of mankind[215] than the dishonest, for though it lies immediately in the high road to the gallows, it has stopped many an adventurous young man in his progress thither." The records of the Worcester Corporation contain many references to old-time punishments. In the year 1656 was made in the bye-law book a note of the fact that for some years past a want has been felt "for certain instruments for applying to the execution of justice upon offenders, namely, the pillory, whipping-post, and gum-stoole." The Chamberlain was directed to obtain the same. We gather from the proceedings of the Doncaster Town Council that on the 5th of May, 1713, an order was made for the erection of a whipping-post, to be set up at the Stocks, Butcher-Cross, for punishing vagrants and sturdy beggars.

Notices of whipping sometimes appear in old church books. At Kingston-on-Thames, under date of September 8th, 1572, it is recorded in the parish register as follows: "This day in this towne was kept the sessions of Gayle Delyverye, and ther was hanged vj. persons, and xvj. taken for roges and vagabonds, and whypped aboyt the market-place, and brent in the ears."

At the Quarter Sessions in Devonshire, held at[216] Easter, 1598, it was ordered that the mothers of illegitimate children be whipped. The reputed fathers had to undergo a like punishment. A very strange order was made in the same county during the Commonwealth, and it was to the effect that every woman who had been the mother of an illegitimate child, and had not been previously punished, be committed for trial. Mr. Hamilton, in his work on the "Quarter Sessions from Queen Elizabeth to Queen Anne," has many curious notes on the subject. The Scotch pedlars and others who wended their way to push their trade in the West of England, ran a great risk of being whipped. At the Midsummer Sessions, in the year 1684, information was given to the court showing that certain Scotch pedlars, or other petty chapmen, were in the habit of selling their goods to the "greate damage and hindrance of shopp keepers." The Court passed measures for the protection of the local tradesmen, and directed the petty constables to apprehend the strangers, and without further ceremony to strip them naked, and whip them, or cause them to be openly flogged, and sent away.

The churchwardens' accounts of Barnsley contain references to the practice of whipping.[217] Charges as follow occur:

The constable's accounts of the same town, from 1632 to 1636, include items similar to the following:

It appears from the Corporation accounts of Congleton, Cheshire, that persons were whipped at the cart tail. We find it stated:

The notorious Judge Jeffreys, on one occasion, in sentencing a woman to be whipped, said: "Hangman, I charge you to pay particular attention to this lady. Scourge her soundly, man; scourge her till her blood runs down! It is Christmas, a cold time for madam to strip. See that you warm her shoulders thoroughly!"

At Worcester, in 1697, a new whipping-post was erected in the Corn Market, at a cost of 8s.[218] "Men and women," says a local historian, "were whipped here promiscuously in public till the close of the last century, if not later. Fourpence was the old charge for whipping male and female rogues."

The next note on whipping is drawn from the church register of Burnham, Bucks, and is one of several similar entries: "Benjamin Smat, and his wife and three children, vagrant beggars; he of middle stature, but one eye, was this 28th day of September, 1699, with his wife and children, openly whipped at Boveney, in the parish of Burnham, in the county of Bucks, according to ye laws. And they are assigned to pass forthwith from parish to parish by ye officers thereof the next direct way to the parish of St. [Se]pulchers, Lond., where they say they last inhabited three years. And they are limited to be at St. [Se]pulch within ten days next ensuing. Given under our hands and seals, Will. Glover, Vicar of Burnham, and John Hunt, Constable of Boveney." In some instances we gather from the entries in the parish registers, after punishing the vagrants in their own parish, the authorities recommended them to the tender mercy of other persons in whose hands they might fall.[219]

At Durham, in the year 1690, a married woman named Eleanor Wilson, was publicly whipped in the market-place, between the hours of eleven and twelve o'clock, for being drunk on Sunday, April 20th.

Insane persons did not escape the lash. In the constable's accounts of Great Staughtan, Huntingdonshire, is an item:

A still more remarkable charge is the following in the same accounts:

In 1764, we gather from the Public Ledger that a woman, who is described as "an old offender," was conveyed in a cart from Clerkenwell Bridewell to Enfield, and publicly whipped at the cart's tail by the common hangman, for cutting down and destroying wood in Enfield Chase. She had to undergo the punishment three times.

Persons obtaining goods under false pretences were frequently flogged. In 1769, at Nottingham, a young woman, aged nineteen, was found[220] guilty of this crime, and was, by order of the Court of Quarter Sessions, stripped to the waist and publicly whipped on market-day in the market-place. In the following year, a female found guilty of stealing a handkerchief from a draper's shop, was tied to the tail of a cart and whipped from Weekday-Cross to the Malt-Cross. It was at Nottingham, a few years prior to this time, that a soldier was severely punished for drinking the Pretender's health. The particulars are briefly told as follows in Adams's Weekly Courant for Wednesday, July 20th, to Wednesday, July 27th, 1737: "Friday last, a dragoon, belonging to Lord Cadogan's Regiment, at Nottingham, received 300 lashes, and was to receive 300 more at Derby, and to be drum'd out of the Regiment with halter about his neck, for drinking the Pretender's health."

Whipping at Wakefield appears to have been a common punishment. Payments like the following frequently occur in the constable's accounts:

A fire occurred at Olney in 1783, and during[221] the confusion a man stole some ironwork. The crime was detected, and the man was tried and sentenced to be whipped at the cart's tail. Cowper, the poet, was an eye-witness to the carrying out of the sentence, and in a letter to the Rev. John Newton gives an amusing account of it. "The fellow," wrote Cowper, "seemed to show great fortitude; but it was all an imposition. The beadle who whipped him had his left hand filled with red ochre, through which, after every stroke, he drew the lash of the whip, leaving the appearance of a wound upon the skin, but in reality not hurting him at all. This being perceived by the constable, who followed the beadle to see that he did his duty, he (the constable) applied the cane, without any such management or precaution, to the shoulders of the beadle. The scene now became interesting and exciting. The beadle could by no means be induced to strike the thief hard, which provoked the constable to strike harder; and so the double flogging continued, until a lass of Silver End, pitying the pityful beadle, thus suffering under the hands of the pityless constable, joined the procession, and placing herself immediately behind the constable, seized him by his capillary club,[222] and pulling him backward by the same, slapped his face with Amazonian fury. This concentration of events has taken up more of my paper than I intended, but I could not forbear to inform you how the beadle thrashed the thief, the constable the beadle, and the lady the constable, and how the thief was the only person who suffered nothing." It will be gathered from the foregoing letter that the severity of the whipping depended greatly on the caprice of the man who administered it.

A statute, in 1791, expressly forbade the whipping of female vagrants. This was certainly a much needed reform.

Mr. Samuel Carter Hall, born in the year 1800, in his interesting book entitled "Retrospect of a Long Life" (1883), relates that more than once he saw the cruel punishment inflicted.

On the 8th of May, 1822, a man was whipped through the streets of Glasgow by the hangman for taking part in a riot. He was the last person to undergo public whipping at the cart's tail in Glasgow.

At Coleshill are standing a whipping-post, pillory and stocks, and as might be expected they attract a good deal of attention from the visitors[223] to this quiet Midland town. Several writers have stated that this is the only whipping-post remaining in this country; this is, however, a mistake, as we have shown in the present chapter. We have not been able to discover when last used. Our illustration is from a carefully executed drawing made some years ago.

The old town of Kirton-in-Lindsey, Lincolnshire, in bygone times was a place of importance, and amongst the names of those who have held its manor is that of Piers Gaveston, the favourite of Edward II. Near the modern police station is a post on which are irons, enabling it to be used as a whipping-post and stocks. No references relating to it can be found in the local old-time accounts or other documents. Old folk say that in years agone people were detained at the post by means of the irons, but no instances are remembered of a whip being employed.[224]

It was formerly the custom in London and other places, at the time of executions, for parents to whip their children, so as to impress upon their minds the awful lessons of the gallows. Executions were very often occurring, for people were hanged for trifling offences. Down to the year 1808, the crime of stealing from the person above the value of a shilling was punishable with death. Children must have had a hard time of it, and been frequently flogged.

Whipping servants was a common practice in the olden time. Pepys and other old writers make note of it.

The well-known "Diary of a Lady of Quality" contains some interesting glimpses of old days and ways. Under date of January 30th, 1760, Lady Francis Pennoyer, of Bullingham Court, Herefordshire, refers to one of her maids speaking in the[225] housekeeper's room about a matter that was not to the credit of the family. My lady felt that there was truth in what the girl said, but it was not in her place to speak, and her ladyship resolved to make her know and keep her place. "She hath a pretty face," says the diarist, "and should not be too ready to speak ill of those above her in station. I should be very sorry to turn her adrift upon the world, and she hath but a poor home. Sent for her to my room, and gave her choice, either to be well whipped, or to leave the house instantly. She chose wisely, I think, and, with many tears, said I might do what I liked. I bade her attend my chamber to-morrow at twelve." Next day her ladyship writes in her diary: "Dearlove, my maid, came to my room, as I bade her. I bade her fetch the rod from what was my mother-in-law's rod-closet, and kneel and ask pardon, which she did with tears. I made her prepare, and I whipped her well. The girl's flesh is plump and firm, and she is a cleanly person—such a one, not excepting my own daughters, who are thin, and one of them, Charlotte, rather sallow, as I have not whipped for a long time. She hath never been whipped before, she says, since she was a child (what can her mother and late lady have[226] been about, I wonder?), and she cried out a great deal." Children and servants appear to have been frequently flogged at Bullingham Court, both by its lord and lady. In other homes similar practices prevailed.

[227]