The Whip And The Rod - An Account Of Corporal Punishment Among All Nations And For All Purposes

By R. Yelyr

The whip and the stick has been used for much of human history, this fascinating history reveals why corporal punishment seems to be such a common thing among all cultures through much of recorded history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: May 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9781473391857

Book preview

The Whip and the Rod

CHAPTER I

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT AMONG SAVAGE RACES

THE whip or the stick has always been in constant use among savage and primitive races the world over, not only as a means of punishment for those trespassing against the laws and rules imposed by the chiefs and kings, but also for the purpose of developing hardihood, endurance, and resistance to pain. One of the most noteworthy characteristics of almost all savage races has been the ability to stand punishment without flinching. There is little room for doubt that this was the result of the training received during youth and the initiatory ceremonies, which, in so many cases, they were forced to undergo on the attainment of puberty.

Various minor offences and crimes have from time immemorial been punished with the whip, though among primitive races it is observable that no technique of flogging, such as that which evolved with the growth of civilisation, has ever existed. The Hottentots have always flogged their women for the most trivial of crimes. In many North American tribes of Indians it was customary to flog both children and women to keep them in order, and in some cases a man was chosen at stated intervals to act the part of official flogger.

FLAGELLATION IN THE HAREMS

Especially was flagellation common in the households and harems of many countries where polygamy flourished. Greenwood, in his Curiosities of Savage Life, tells us that in Fiji, when the chief added another wife to his harem, the older wives turned on her and beat her. Almost without exception were the beatings particularly severe if the newcomer happened to be young and pretty, as she very often was. Sometimes she did not take it lying down, but gave blow for blow, with the result that fights between the harem inmates were common occurrences. The chief, however, from long experience, had evolved a method of dealing with these domestic disharmonies. He always kept handy a good stout stick, and whenever a quarrel broke out, he rushed among his women, and, with an impartial hand, laid about him manfully. This method, he found, as one might well expect, worked admirably. Even the king himself found it necessary to adopt the same measures. Williams (quoted by Greenwood) says: Near to the King of Lakemba, and afterwards to the King of Mbua, I saw lying a stick of heavy wood about the size of a broom-handle. On enquiry I found that the free use of this truncheon was very effective in subduing the wayward wills of the women when they became disorderly. Tanoe’s staff used for this purpose was inlaid with ivory, but did not on that account, give less pain.

FLOGGING MAKES THE MAN

Not unnaturally, the children, like the wives, were disciplined from a very early age by the free use of the stick or whip, culminating in the initiatory ceremonies which are such important sociological features of nearly every primitive tribe. Thus, until he has undergone the ceremony known as Secho, no Caffre, says Greenwood, is regarded as worthy to rank as a man. The youths, as naked as the day of their birth, are paraded before certain of the more responsible tribesmen, who flourish long and tough switches. Questions such as Will you guard the chief well? are put to each of the boys, and simultaneously with each question, the switch is brought down with all the force of the man that wields it. As question after question are propounded, blows are rained upon the youngster, until his back is raw and bleeding.

Very similar is the Maquarri dance, described by Brett (The Indian Tribes of Guiana), in vogue among the natives there. The initiates, boys and young men, in this case flagellate one another. They are placed in two long, parallel rows, facing each other. Each bears in his right hand the notorious Maquarri, which is a whip with a thong measuring three feet in length and capable of inflicting severe punishment. At a given signal, the dancers, uttering strange cries, and flourishing their whips aloft, advance upon each other. No attempt, apparently, is made to escape punishment, for, says our informer, the youth whose turn it was to receive the lash stood firmly on one leg, advancing the other; while his adversary, stooping, took deliberate aim, and, springing from the earth to add vigour to his stroke, gave his opponent a severe cut.

Many of these initiatory rites are marked by features of the most appalling cruelty and brutality, following or coincident with the flogging rites to which I have referred. Thus, after being subjected to the dangerous and painful rite of circumcision, the Bavendas, stripped to the buff, were whipped unmercifully. Similarly, according to Livingstone, the youths of Bechuanaland were circumcised and beaten repeatedly.

The basic idea behind the use of the whip during the initiatory rites has three objects. It aims at hardening the youth and thus preparing him to meet, with stoicism and endurance, the trials and penalties of life. It also aims at the removal of the evil influence or power of demoniacal possession, which in the religion of most primitive races is a marked feature. Again, in many cases, any form of punishment or suffering—and flagellation, of course, occupies a prominent place—is, considered to be a species of sacrifice. We shall see how, in particular, this motive for whipping was developing under religious auspices with the evolution and extension of civilisation.

WHIPPING THE DEMONS AWAY

The idea of demoniacal possession is as old as mankind itself. It permeates practically every primitive form of religious belief, and in point of fact exists in many forms of modern religion. The notion that evil existed in each individual as a result of the power of the demons or evil forces to enter the living body at will, was responsible for the flagellations imposed as a means of driving these demons away. The screams and cries of the victims were considered to be those of the demons inside the body. This belief was extended to animals as well as human beings, and accounted for the whippings and other forms of punishment inflicted upon them regularly and habitually. The choice of an instrument of flagellation was influenced by the belief in the magical properties of certain plants. Many of these plants were particularly likely to inflict pain: thus the stinging nettle, and twigs covered with thorns. In other instances specific parts of the body, which were easily susceptible to castigation, were deliberately selected; thus, in Brazil, the aborigines scourged themselves upon the private parts with switches made from certain trees.

Analogous to the belief in demoniacal possession and the necessity for driving out these evil forces, was the notion that sacrifice and self-immolation were necessary to placate the gods when they were angry, or to please those deities who derived pleasure from witnessing the sufferings and torments of their subjects. In many cases one individual out of a tribe was selected as a scapegoat, and forced, irrespective of his own inclinations or wishes, to suffer for all the others. There are indications of this in the practice of whipping severely, as a means of eradicating evil influences, the men, the women, the children, and even the animals which were selected for the purpose of paying the supreme sacrifice, before they were actually put to death.

FLAGELLATION IN THE TREATMENT OF DISEASE

It was only to be expected that the practice of fustigation for the express purpose of driving out devils should develop and extend into the use of flagellation as a cure for disease. It should be noted that in most primitive tribes, disease has always been considered to be due specifically to the presence of devils or evil spirits in the body of the victim. Batchelor, in Ainus and Their Folklore, mentions that, among these natives, whipping with certain plants forms part of the treatment of disease; while the Indians of California, according to Hastings’s Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, in cases of paralysis, flagellated the patients with nettles. The same authority mentions that in Timor-Laut, people suffering from small-pox were beaten with branches.

Bloch quotes Martius as saying that among the Muras of the Magellan Straits it was customary for the men, on certain feast days, to beat one another with hide belts until they brought blood.

CHAPTER II

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT IN THE BIBLE

THAT flogging was a favourite punishment in the early days of Biblical history is evidenced in the frequent references that are made to it in the Old Testament. Moses gave specific power to those employing servants or slaves to flog them for derelictions of duty. As a punishment for penal offences, judges were empowered to order the culprits to be beaten, the number of strokes being restricted to forty. Thus we read in Deuteronomy: And it shall be, if the wicked man be worthy to be beaten, that the judge shall cause him to lie down, and to be beaten before his face, according to his fault, by a certain number. Forty stripes he may give him, and not exceed: lest, if he should exceed, and beat him above these with many stripes, then thy brother should seem vile unto thee.

NATURE OF THE PUNISHMENT

Apparently it became the custom for a judge to order, and for an executioner to inflict, thirty-nine stripes. Saint Paul was punished to this extent, as we read in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians: Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Some authorities are of opinion that the infliction of thirty-nine stripes was to ensure that the sentence of forty stripes should in no case be exceeded; while others contend that the reason for the changed interpretation of the law had nothing whatever to do with this, but was due solely to the introduction of an instrument of castigation consisting of a scourge with three thongs. Thirteen times was the culprit beaten with this deadly instrument of torture, a sentence amounting to the equivalent of thirty-nine single strokes.

In flogging, however, the severity of the punishment inflicted has never been dependent upon the actual number of strokes given, but on the nature of the flagellating instrument chosen, and the amount of force put into the blows. That the punishment was of great severity is evident from certain passages in the Scriptures, and the accounts of contemporary scribes. In the First Book of Kings there is a reference to scourging with scorpions: this, on interpretation, means whips with knotted thongs, to which also thorns were affixed. There is, in the twenty-first chapter of Exodus, the notable reference to the possibility of a servant or a maid dying under the rod. In this connection, too, one notes the nature of the retribution to be meted out to those guilty of certain crimes; thus: thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

Further, we read in the Mishnah, which is the source book of the Talmud, that in the event of a victim expiring under the whip, the executioner is absolved from blame, so long as the prescribed number of stripes is not exceeded. But in the event of this number being exceeded by so much as a solitary stroke, the executioner will be held guilty of manslaughter and punished accordingly.

Even in cases where the individual took the law into his own hands and administered to his servant or wife, in the course of a quarrel, a beating which subsequently caused death, he was not held guilty of committing a crime. Only when the flogging resulted in death during its actual execution did the law step in. Thus: And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand, he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished.

The offender, stripped naked from the shoulders to the middle, was securely tied by the arms to a low pillar in such a position that it was possible for him to lean forward. This posture enabled the executioner all the more easily to place his strokes upon the culprit’s back. The count was made by a witness reciting three verses, each verse consisting of thirteen words, and the last invariably being But he, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and destroyed them not. According to the Jewish Encyclopaedia, if the pain occasioned by the flagellation was sufficient to force an excretion, the punishment must come to an end forthwith, lest thy brother become vile in thy eyes.

CRIMES PUNISHED BY FLOGGING

Throughout the Old Testament mention of any specific crimes for which the punishment of scourging applies is restricted to two instances. They are: If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her, and give occasions of speech against her, and bring up an evil name upon her, and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid: then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel’s virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate: and the damsel’s father shall say unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto this man to wife, and he hateth her: and, lo, he hath given occasions of speech against her, saying, I found not thy daughter a maid; and yet these are the tokens of my daughter’s virginity. And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city. And the elders of that city shall take that man and chastise him. The reference to the second crime for which flogging is named as a specific punishment reads: And whosoever lieth carnally with a woman, that is a bondmaid, betrothed to an husband, and not at all redeemed, nor freedom given her; she shall be scourged; they shall not put her to death because she was not free.

That many other offences were punished with flogging is, however, certain. According to Calmet’s Dictionary of the Bible there were no fewer than 168 faults liable to this penalty. And they held that all punishable faults, to which the law had not annexed the penalty of death, must be punished by the scourge.

In the New Testament we find Christ using the scourge upon the money-lenders, thus: And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the table. Further, he prophesied the beating of His disciples, and we read of Paul and Silas being whipped: And the multitude rose up together against them: and the magistrates rent off their clothes, and commanded to beat them. And when they had laid many stripes upon them, they cast them into prison.

SPARE THE ROD AND SPOIL THE CHILD

Other aspects of flagellation are mentioned in the Bible. There is Solomon’s oft-repeated dictum: He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes. And again: Withhold not correction from the child; for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell. These extracts have been delightfully repeated by those parents and schoolmasters who contend that corporal punishment is the best available medicine for every boy. And truly if sheer repetition counts for anything, they are right. Solomon reiterated, in variegated drops of wisdom, the essence of his advice. The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame. And again: Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.

Indeed the Bible presents fertile soil in which to dig if one’s object is to justify flagellation as a form of discipline likely to prove beneficial to those upon whom it is inflicted. In the Book called Hebrews we read: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Which is, after all, pretty plain speaking!

In the martyrdom of Christ, culminating in His scourging and crucifixion, we see a belief on the part of His followers analogous to that of primitive man. Christ was looked upon as equivalent to a scapegoat, suffering for the benefit of the community at large. In Isaiah we read an expression of this sentiment which could not well be bettered: But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

SELF-FLAGELLATION

There is a good deal of dispute as to whether Saint Paul practised or advocated self-flagellation. Of the two foremost modern authorities, Mr. George Ryley Scott is emphatically of opinion that Saint Paul, in the celebrated passage, I keep under my body and bring it into subjection, reveals himself as a practitioner of self-flagellation; while the Rev. Wm. M. Cooper appears to incline to the opposite opinion. Taking into consideration the character, opinions, and extraordinary asceticism of the saint, I am disposed to agree with Mr. Ryley Scott. It would appear extremely unlikely, at a period in history when celibacy and misogyny were widely practised and encouraged in every possible way, that one of the most potent known countering and solacing agents, in cases of repression, should have been overlooked or ignored. There is, too, the statement of King David: For all the day long have I been plagued, and chastened every morning, which would appear to be a specific reference to the practice of voluntary or self-flagellation by himself and in his time.

CHAPTER III

FLAGELLATION AND RELIGION

MUCH of the whipping that has been so pronounced a phenomenon in the life of the people of the majority of countries from the most remote times until comparatively recent days, has been featured in the religions of these countries. Under the name of self-discipline, this method of performing