Commercial postcard from the Old Melbourne Gaol, now a museum, in Australia. The implements appear to be a cat, a birch and a cane. The flogging triangle itself resembles others we have seen, but the device attached to its front is unlike anything I have previously seen. A reader who has visited the museum writes to say that this is a hinged pad, "something like a folding table, covered in green billiard-table-type felt", to be locked down for birching on the buttocks (with the prisoner bending over it) and kept in the illustrated upright position for flogging on the upper back. Compare with the diagrams of English prison flogging apparatus in 1894 with removable padded block serving a similar purpose.

Different pictures of the same exhibits in Old Melbourne Gaol (see previous item), photographed by a reader. Here the triangle is viewed from above, and in the second photo the cat, birch and cane are seen more clearly.

Another version of the Melbourne triangle. Here the hinged pad is a different colour. This one has a strap attached to it, for use during a birching. A reader who has seen it writes: "What was particularly effective about this strap was that it came up from the pad through small slits in the pad, then round the man's waist, then back into another slit in the pad about 12-15 inches apart from the first. This would have had the effect of holding the man's waist (and hence his buttocks) immobile. Rather than being able to twist and move from side to side -- even though his wrists and ankles were strapped down -- which could happen with a "Pakistan"-type frame, he was fixed so that he could not move at all."

From Old Adelaide Gaol, another museum. It's not absolutely clear, but this looks like a frame that simply leaned against the wall and secured the prisoner in a standing upright position, which may mean that it was for flogging on the upper back only. It somewhat resembles the device in the inept Wandsworth drawing.

This is a perhaps slightly clearer picture of the contraption in Old Adelaide Gaol (see previous item), taken from a book about the prison. It also includes, on the right, the handle of a birch (the rest of the implement would have disintegrated), and on the left, what are said to be juvenile punishment canes. I'm slightly dubious about the latter claim, because the only juvenile judicial canings (as distinct from birchings) in Adelaide that I know of were done at home under police supervision, not in prison - see this May 1956 illustrated news item.

BRUNEI

This is clearly what it says it is, and it comes from the now-defunct webpage of the Brunei school at which the demonstration took place, as a live illustration for an anti-drug talk. However, on the same page was also this photograph (37 KB) of pupils passing round a picture, evidently of the wealed and bruised buttocks resulting from such a caning, though we can't be certain that that picture is itself genuine. Compare this September 1998 news report of an educational prison visit by another school group. This likewise involved a caning demonstration on a dummy (pictured) and the text states that "many cringed when pictures of lacerated and bleeding behinds were shown..." It seems a little strange that at both events, intended to scare kids off starting on drugs, all the students shown are girls, who can't be sentenced to caning anyway.

Evidently not the same picture as the one linked above. This seems to be from some sort of museum or display, because it has a caption, which reads in Malay: Kesan luka hukuman sebat ("marks of wounds from caning punishment"). Malay is an official language in both Brunei and Malaysia, so why do I think this is probably from Brunei? First, because the JCP material that we know to have been displayed in Malaysia, such as at the Pudu Prison Exhibition in Kuala Lumpur, was captioned in English. Second, because the previous item suggests that showing close-up pictures of caned buttocks is official policy in Brunei, whereas the Malaysian authorities have not done this as far as I know. But this is only a hunch, and I might be wrong. Anyway, this caning appears to have been of six or perhaps eight strokes. Assuming the picture hasn't been faked up, the accuracy of their placing over the target area is certainly impressive.

CHINA

Hand-coloured engraving from a painting by Thomas Allom, published in London around 1843. Most dictionaries define bastinado as a punishment applied to the soles of the feet, but this is clearly a caning on the clothed backside. You can buy a full-size print for £22 at www.oldprints.co.uk. For a glimpse of the long history of this kind of punishment in China, and a much older illustration, see this 2003 news item.

From an undated postcard, which had "punished for stealing" written on the back. Wei Hai Wei is a port and naval base on the north coast of the Shantung Peninsula. It was leased to the British (who called it Port Edward) from 1898 to 1930, hence perhaps the British-looking soldier who is evidently monitoring this infliction. However, the modus operandi shown here is more traditional Chinese than British.

CONGO (formerly BELGIAN CONGO)

This picture has appeared in various places, most recently in King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild (Boston, 1999). It seems likely to be from the period around 1900 when the King of Belgium was running the Congo as his personal fief with the aid of slave labour. The culprit is completely naked, but the strokes of the whip appear to be landing across the buttocks alone. It seems a bit odd that this is going on in what looks like a country lane. Perhaps other officials are present, but out of shot. Is the onlooker an assistant to the operation, or -- noting his rather hangdog posture, and the fact that he seems to be holding his own bottom -- another offender waiting his turn? The "lying flat" position is typically African, but note that the ankles and wrists are tied to crossbars on the ground to keep the recipient immobile. Flogging was reserved for Africans (see following item).

Painting dated 1884, on show at "Memory of Congo: The Colonial Era" exhibition in Brussels. The exhibition's caption says: "Flogging by whip or stick, a punishment reserved for Africans, was allowed by penal law until 1940. It was also allowed by army and prison regulations. It could also be used as a form of punishment wherever custom allowed it. Flogging had already been denounced when Stanley was 'founding the Free State'. It was then a vestige of pre-colonial slavery. Thus it is not enough to regard the whip as simply the symbol of colonial oppression." This punishment is being given on the upper back, in contrast to the previous item, which gives photographic proof of flogging on the bare buttocks. Does this mean that practice varied in an ad hoc manner from one occasion to another? Or could it be that the artist in 1884 was inhibited by the prudery of that era from showing the reality?

EGYPT

Pictures from the 1950s. The man is being whipped for charging too much for his bread. It appears the punishment took place in public. Note the curious crucifix-style whipping post with a hole for the offender to put his head through. The second picture shows a doctor attending to him afterwards.

GERMANY

This Prügelbock (whipping trestle) is at the prison museum at Celle, Lower Saxony. On it sits a cat with perhaps six tails. The museum's German-language website says that this particular example was used until 1913. There don't seem to be any other details. It's hard to work out from the picture what goes where, or what the bits and pieces to the left and underneath are for. Suggestions welcome. Meanwhile, the following tiny and very unclear picture, provenance and date unknown, seems to show the same or similar equipment in actual use:

This picture has a blurred and furtive look about it, as though taken secretly, which suggests that it could actually be "the real thing". The prisoner's ankles are apparently tied athwart the vertical pin on the left of the main picture and he bends over the contraption to receive the punishment on his seat. Perhaps in that case the main purpose of the device is simply to raise the buttocks to a convenient height. See this page for a bit of hard information about judicial and prison flogging in Germany.
A reader in Norway writes that he thinks this was used during World War II in Germany and the occupied countries: "A few years ago there was a documentary of the punishments the Germans used, and a Norwegian woman was describing the punishment she got while in a German prison. They showed pictures of this block". However, it is quite different from the flogging block that has been pictured in various places as the standard item used in the Nazi era both in ordinary prisons and in the concentration camps.

HONG KONG

I assume that this is from the press launch in 2002 of the Hong Kong Correctional Services Museum. There are two trestles exhibited side by side, a smaller one and a larger A-frame of the familiar kind (so tall that a recess has to be made for it in the ceiling). A correspondent who has visited the museum tells me the big frame was for adult men and the smaller trestle for juveniles under 18. If so, the latter might have been for reformatory canings rather than judicial ones. A description of the judicial caning of a 16-year-old in 1990 says "the boy's hands were secured by leather straps to a wooden platform" as he was made to bend over with his trousers down. In a different article, an officer who formerly supervised these events said the offender had to "lie on a rack" to which he was strapped, and a leather strap was put round his back to protect the spine -- which makes it sound more like a lying flat position than anything one could envisage involving the equipment shown here. All a bit mysterious. Suggestions and information welcome.

From the same event as the previous item. The VIPs are standing by the A-frame. The cane looks excessively rigid but perhaps in actual use it would have been soaked in water to make it flexible.

This is a different photo of the same exhibit in the Correctional Services Museum. It shows more clearly the padded bar at the level of the culprit's abdomen.

A better picture of the juvenile caning trestle, with an appropriately young visitor leaning on it (it would have made a better demonstration if he was bending over it with his pants down, as he would have had to if being caned on it). Note padded bar for abdomen, and straps for wrists and ankles near the bottom of each of the contraption's four legs. The cane is also in view.

Picture on a Hong Kong government website, the Hong Kong 2003 photo gallery, captioned "Students learn about corporal punishment (abolished by Hong Kong in 1990) at the Correctional Services Museum in Stanley, which has a wide range of exhibits depicting more than 160 years of penal history". It doesn't perhaps add much to the other pictures, but it's interesting that present-day schoolboys are being officially shown this stuff.

INDIA

The Andaman Islands are off the Burma/Thailand coast, but belong to India. A large prison was built at the main town, Port Blair, under British rule, and part of it is now a museum. These two pictures are of two slightly different flogging frames there. The colour picture shows one on display with a model of a prisoner mounted on it, and comes from this tourist web site. Note that these metal frames are very similar to the one used in this 1978 Pakistan flogging and also in the second picture from the top on this page of miscellaneous Pakistan floggings, all presumably inherited from the days of British India.

INDONESIA (formerly DUTCH EAST INDIES)

From a Dutch book, Uit onze Koloniën: Uitvoerig reisverhaal (From our colonies: Detailed account of a journey), by Henri Hubert van Kol (Leiden, 1903). The prisoner's buttocks have been bared, though only just. He is tied, rather loosely it would appear, to a post that looks as if it has been installed and fitted out specially for the purpose. Two officials (at left of picture) are pulling on a rope attached to a ring holding his wrists. Everyone looks rather stiff, as if consciously posing for the photographer, and the man with the cane is holding it still in the air and is plainly not in motion, so I think the whole scene is probably staged. Even so, there's no reason to suppose that this isn't an authentic representation of the procedure. The chap towards the right in western clothes is presumably in charge. Apart from the official next to him wearing a policeman's helmet, all the other staff are in native costume with bare feet.

The entire scene is, mutatis mutandis, surprisingly "British"-looking. It has been drawn to my attention that Britain did, contrary to what I wrote here previously, have some brief involvement in that part of the Indies before the Dutch took over. As far as I know, back home in Europe the Dutch had no tradition of this sort of thing by the date in question. Today, neither do the Indonesians themselves, unlike their Malaysian, Singaporean and Bruneian neighbours, who have so enthusiastically embraced the CP system bequeathed by their former colonial masters.

UPDATE: Judicial flogging has now started in Indonesia, but only in Aceh province, and deriving from a quite separate Islamic tradition. These newly-instigated public punishments are applied to the clothed upper back -- see these June 2005 news items, one of which includes a photograph.

IRAN (formerly PERSIA)

Persia is the country now known as Iran. Note that exactly the same punishment is still applied there to this day, with the offender similarly stripped to the waist, in front of a crowd likewise gathered in the street -- see this February 2001 news photograph. However, in 1910 they used a proper flogging triangle rather than a lamp post, and had two operators inflicting alternate strokes from opposite sides.

MALAYSIA

I'm virtually certain this is from Malaysia, though it appears on another website as being from Singapore and on yet another as from Thailand. The men are of Malay/Indonesian racial type -- with the Malay-Muslim penchant for moustaches much in evidence -- which would make it Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei or Indonesia. But there is no formal JCP in Indonesia, and in Singapore and Brunei the culprit is, as far as I am aware, always in a bending-over posture with feet together, whereas we know from other pictures that in Malaysia the recipient stands upright, feet apart, as here. Also, in Singapore, ethnic Malays are a 20% minority and the prison officials would surely include (if they did not consist entirely of) Chinese, who do not look at all like this. It certainly isn't Thailand because there has been no formal judicial or prison CP there for some decades, and from the caner's sneakers and tracksuit bottoms, I'd say this picture is no older than, say, 1980. Anyway, Thais do not mostly look quite like this.

The other, more difficult, question is whether what we see here is "the real thing" in progress, or just yet another reconstruction for a film. Note the many similarities with this filmed reconstruction and this one. If this picture is also only a reconstruction, I wonder why anyone would bother to mask the face of the "culprit". On the other hand, the shadow cast by the cane on the back wall looks quite wrong unless the scene is being artificially lit at camera level for filming purposes. (That shadow bothers me in any case, and I would like a photographic expert's view on it.) Then again, perhaps special lighting was arranged just for this still picture, even while an actual punishment was being administered. Note also that the caning hasn't started yet -- the prisoner's buttocks remain unmarked at this point. This might indicate that we are seeing only a reconstruction. It would be more convincingly "the real thing" if the picture had been taken after some strokes had already been administered. But one could well imagine that the operatives, while prepared to pose for a photo before starting, might want the photographer and his equipment out of the way before getting down to the business in hand. On balance, I think this could well be the real thing.

The other picture, of the pre-caning interview, looks very real, with a convincing muddle of bureaucratic paperwork on the desk, and the doctor -- with stethoscope -- looking authentically weary and bored and, incidentally, contriving to avoid being identified in the picture, which is quite intriguing in itself. Meanwhile, the arrangements for fixing the prisoner to the frame are not quite the same as in the other pictures, and the one-piece buttock-framing torso shield had evidently not yet evolved when this was taken. But the caning technique itself, and the holding of the prisoner's head by another officer, appear identical, as do the rubber gloves worn by some of the operatives.

There is also a third picture which looks as if it goes with these two, though we cannot be certain about that. If it does, any doubt as to the authenticity of the other two of course instantly vanishes. I have hesitated to upload this because it is so gruesome. It is of a man's raw, mangled buttocks receiving medical attention after a large number of strokes of the cane. After further reflection, I don't want to be accused of withholding the truth, assuming the photo is genuine. And in any event it has now appeared in several other places on the Web. WARNING: Squeamish readers should not look at this picture. It is quite disturbing. It may make you throw up. You have been warned!

Go to extremely gruesome picture of heavily caned buttocks (27KB)

A reader questions the authenticity of the buttocks photo, citing the implausibly neat and tidy shape of the overall area of the bruising. One possible explanation for this could be that this picture doesn't after all belong with the other two, but is nevertheless a real Malaysian prison picture, and that this caning was done with the more modern one-piece buttock-framing torso shield illustrated here. At all events, other people that I have discussed the picture with lean towards the view that it is probably genuine.

This nasty picture, assuming it is indeed authentic, certainly illustrates the inhumane brutality of canings of a large number of strokes -- at a guess, 24 in this case. But I feel one ought to stress that the majority of canings are of rather fewer strokes than that, and do not do this sort of damage to the recipient. See for example this picture printed in Asiaweek captioned "The effects of caning in Malaysia", showing weals and relatively superficial bleeding after perhaps three or four strokes. This seems to tally with Michael Fay's own description of the state of his behind at the end of his 4-stroke tanning in Singapore in 1994: "The skin did rip open, there was some blood ..... Let's not exaggerate, and let's not say a few drops or that the blood was gushing out. It was in between the two. It's like a bloody nose" ("Fay describes caning, seeing resulting scars", Los Angeles Times, 26 June 1994).

See also the video clip of (part of) a genuine Malaysian 10-stroke caning, at the end of which the recipient's buttocks don't look anything like as battered as in this picture.

Therefore, I think it would be an error to oppose JCP in Malaysia or Singapore on the strength of this photo. What I would question is what purpose is served by handing down sentences of 20 or 24 strokes rather than, say, a norm of four to six strokes, with a maximum of 8 or 10 for especially serious cases, which would not involve such egregious brutality and physical damage, but would probably work just as well as a punishment. Robert Symes and Aaron Cohen each received six strokes in Malaysia, and it's clear from their accounts that both found it a profoundly salutary experience, almost indescribably intense, traumatic and agonising, with lasting effects on their hearts and minds as well as their backsides. If that can be achieved with six strokes, why attract unnecessary opprobrium by inflicting 15 or 20 or 24?

Picture from the website of the State of Johor Anti-Drug Agency of the Johor Ministry of Internal Security. The caption in Malay says "Demontrasi hukuman sebat bagi kesalahan pengedaran dan memiliki dadah" (Demonstration of caning punishment for the offences of trafficking in and possessing drugs). What's quite interesting is that, unlike the other dummy caning pictures we have seen, the audience here are not the general public but uniformed staff of some kind. Could this be a sort of preliminary training session for prison officers thinking of volunteering to become whipping operatives?

Clearly the same dummy as above, this time put on show in a shopping mall in Johore Baru, capital of Johor state, as shown on the website of one Seattle Steve, who was visiting JB as a tourist and found it all a bit much. The trestle shown looks a bit too flimsy to be a real one. Also on display were these punishment canes, the smallest one being for punishing white-collar crimes. Steve says he was told the smaller ones hurt just as much as the big one, which seems rather unlikely to me. Were that so, what would be the point of having a smaller one?

PAKISTAN

In colour for the first time, and a better-quality picture than we have had before, this is clearly a judicial caning in Pakistan before a crowd at a stadium. I think it is probably Karachi - the A-frame is identical to that seen in this sequence of pictures. This would be during the regime of General Zia al Huq, around 1980. One difference with the other pictures is that the administering officer appears not to be taking a run-up. Note another prison officer in the background holding a bundle of canes. For yet more Pakistan JCP photos, see also this page.

This Associated Press picture is credited to "AP Photo/Naeem-ul-Haq" and the caption reads: "A 40-year-old drug dealer is publicly given 10 lashes at a playground on Sunday morning, July 23, 1995 in Karachi. Zameen Khan alias Sheenu was arrested in 1990 with 1.5 kg of heroin. He was sentenced to five years' imprisonment and 10 lashes by the court. It was the first time since 1988 that an accused was publicly flogged." This makes it much more recent than the other Pakistan caning pictures we have, all of which are thought to date from around 1980. The offender has been made to bend over and hold on to an ordinary domestic chair, rather after the manner of a naughty schoolboy being dealt with in the headmaster's study, as also seen in the top and bottom pictures on this page. Perhaps this was what the authorities did when there was no A-frame conveniently to hand. At all events it has the consequence that the culprit assumes a bending posture, which many people regard as more "correct" for the receipt of corporal punishment than the standing-up-straight position adopted when the more "official" equipment is used. Note too that the chap has dropped his baggy pants, only to reveal a pair of denim cutoffs underneath -- which apparently he was allowed to keep on! It seems this was notionally a public flogging, but there is visibly nobody around to watch it.

Rather like the previous one, in that it's another "schoolboy-style" caning, in a rather public-looking place but with hardly any of the public present. (I think the spectator in white may be another culprit waiting his turn to bend over the chair; it's hard to be certain, but he looks as if he may be being held on a chain by the wrist.) This picture allegedly comes from Newsweek in 1987. I hope to check that out later and, if I do find it, to reproduce whatever text went with it.

This Associated Press photo is captioned: "Nadeem Butt, a notorious local drug seller, is publicly beaten by police in Lahore Saturday, Jan. 10, 1998. During the Islamic holy fasting month of Ramadan, police are on special alert for vice crimes such as drug pushing and gambling." Which rather gives the impression that this isn't a caning by order of a court, but an ad hoc, not to say ultra vires, informal punishment carried out on the spot at the police's whim. However, it can't have been as ad hoc as all that, (a) because a press photographer was present and (b) because the culprit is being held by a chain to his wrists, so some element of preparation has gone into the event. Had this been in one of the tribal areas that are beyond the reach of the central government, it would be less surprising -- see for instance this public whipping by so-called religious scholars in 1992 -- but that's obviously not the case in Lahore, and these uniformed chaps are clearly proper policemen or at least some kind of government officials. I slightly wonder if AP has been misinformed about, or has misunderstood, what the picture really shows. Could it be that what's going on here is simply the man being arrested and "subdued" and that any beating going on is incidental? The implement in the hand of the officer to the left looks more like a swagger-stick or riot baton than a punishment cane. And can anyone make out what the semi-kneeling officer to the right of the prisoner is doing, exactly?

PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Rabaul is the main town on the island of New Britain, part of what is now Papua New Guinea. The part of New Guinea taken by Britain in the 19th century passed to Australian control in 1906. Other bits of it, including Rabaul, had been in German hands since 1884. When the First World War broke out, Australian forces occupied the German areas, taking Rabaul on 13 September 1914. This photograph, captioned "Germans are flogged at Rabaul for beating a priest they thought was a spy", appeared without further explanation in an unidentified Australian reference work.

Much more recently, three glass slides came up for sale on eBay showing what is obviously either the same event or a very similar one in exactly the same place. (They are possibly back to front, unless all three chaps doing the whacking happened to be left-handed, which seems slightly unlikely.) The seller could say only that the slides had come in a job lot from New Guinea. These three shots, shown here in a composite picture (83KB), are taken from closer up than the first picture and clearly show three different men being publicly flogged over a trunk by Australian army personnel.

All is now explained in this November 1965 article in an Australian newspaper (for which I am indebted, as also for much other Australian historical material with which he has most kindly supplied me over the years, to the indefatigable Glen Ralph of the wonderfully eclectic Wilmar Library). The article is an interview with an eyewitness to the 1914 events, at the time a young serviceman and by 1965 an elderly retiree. He explains the whole background to the floggings and says that four German civilians were flogged altogether, each in turn held over a trunk and given 30, 25, 25 and 10 strokes of the cane, respectively. The ceremony took place in the main square in Rabaul on, he says, 30 November 1914. He also reveals how the pictures were taken surreptitiously in defiance of official instructions. It looks as if he might have been mistaken in thinking that his friend was the only person taking pictures, since the picture printed in the Australian reference book is taken from a different angle and from further away. But I don't think there can be much doubt that the events he describes are those shown in these pictures: we see the trunk that he mentions, the flagpole, the troops lined up around the square.

The newspaper article also mentioned that a "postcard snap" of the event went on sale around the islands. Perhaps this was the first of these pictures, possibly taken officially; it shows the top brass, standing back from the ceremony, who are out of view in the three closer-up pictures. It seems reasonable to assume that the three glass slides that have now come to light are some of the pictures that were taken secretly.

RUSSIA

Small picture used to illustrate a November 1999 article in the Moscow newspaper Rossiskaya Gazeta. At the time, the Russian government was in the process of regaining control over the breakaway Chechen republic, which had started imposing Islamic law, including public floggings. The article introduces an interview with a Russian official newly responsible for law and order, who described flogging as barbaric and implied that Islamic law was to be, or possibly already had been, swept away and normal Russian penal procedures restored. As we know, there is still big trouble in the region and I currently have no detail as to what has happened about the criminal code since 1999. Compare this picture of a Chechen caning three years earlier in 1996. The new picture might of course date from the same time -- it has no caption in the 1999 article. I think it's rather funny that the man administering the caning is so lazy or clapped-out that he has to sit down to do it -- you wouldn't think he'd get enough of a purchase from that position. For anyone who can read Russian, the short introductory article is here and the interview (only a small part of which is about punishments) is here.

This came with the caption "Chechen man caned in Grozny, Sept 15, 1996". The source is unknown, but the picture looks genuine enough.

SOUTH KOREA

This flogging bench is provided for the enlightenment (and use!) of visitors at the Folk Village Museum in Seoul. Compare with these pictures of the real thing about 100 years ago, which all appear to involve an implement more like a cane or switch than the big "paddle" shown here.

Another picture of the bench, this time without anyone on it, giving a clearer view of the details of the contraption.

UGANDA

This appeared on 21 April 2004 in a Lira-based Atesot-language paper, Rupiny, with the following text:

Further to the above, another local paper, Bukedde, has now (4 January 2005) published this similar picture. The text, in the Luganda language, says:

Again, any translation would be welcome. Note once more the reference to "LC". We know that "kibooko" means cane, so perhaps "kukubwa kibooko 10 era" means 10 strokes of the cane. This time the picture leaves no doubt that the punishment is being applied across the seat of the offender's shorts, and on this occasion with some vigour. The cane is of a rather more effective length than the one in the earlier photo.

UNITED KINGDOM

This is believed to be the only official picture ever published of a (possibly posed) flogging with the cat-o'-nine-tails in a British prison. This might be either as a judicial sentence by a court (in addition to a prison term) or as a punishment for a very serious breach of internal prison discipline; the procedure in the two cases was identical. I believe the picture was authorised by Winston Churchill as Home Secretary of the day, which fixes the date at 1910 or 1911.

The cat was applied to the prisoner's upper back. An alternative means of JCP or prison CP was the birch, applied to the bare buttocks with the recipient held in a bending-over position; this was thought by some, though not always by prisoners themselves, to be less severe than the cat in terms of pain, albeit more shameful. Whether for this reason, or simply as a result of arbitrarily fluctuating judicial fashion, the birch was to become somewhat more commonly used in the 20th century than the cat. See for instance this probably fairly typical 1930 court case, in which the judge sentenced men aged 20 and 22 to birching, stating that he "hesitated to order the cat for such young men", implying perhaps that he thought the cat was more brutalising. Similarly, the judge in a 1943 case ordered a 19-year-old to be birched, saying that "if he had been a little older he would have ordered the cat". A counter-example is provided, less typically I think, by this case of a 23-year-old gunman being ordered to receive the cat as recently as 1947, surely one of its very last uses in the UK as a judicial penalty. All these cases were for robbery with violence, in practice almost the only offence for which JCP was ordered for adults in relatively modern times. However, adult JCP of any sort was a fairly rare event throughout the 20th century, and was abolished altogether in 1948. There is no known picture of an adult birching.

It is not known why someone has written "Fetter Lane, London EC4" on this photograph; that was the address of one or more newspapers of the day. I hope some time to do (or, better, that someone else will do!) some research on just why this photograph was taken and published. It seems to have been a rare moment of transparency for the Home Office, a normally very secretive department. The picture gives a reasonable view of the mechanics of this particular version of the flogging frame. The prisoner's wrists are hoisted up with a cable over a pulley at the top of the frame. The crossbar at the front is adjustable to the height of the prisoner's midriff. A strap at waist level protects his kidneys from being hit accidentally. For a quite different design of frame in use only 16 years earlier, see this page.

Hollywood movies are not renowned for getting historical details right, to put it mildly. But here is an exception. I'm told the picture is a still from a 1948 film noir called "Kiss the Blood off my Hands" (which I haven't seen), starring Burt Lancaster as an American seaman falling into crime in London. Compare with the real thing, above. The frame appears to have been reproduced very precisely. This view gives a clearer impression of the hoist-and-pulley system keeping the prisoner's arms stretched up. However, the handle of the cat looks to be too long and its separate strands don't appear to hang down properly -- the implement is too big altogether and looks more like an ordinary whip. Perhaps the makers of the film didn't think the real thing looked scary enough: it was a surprisingly small and lightweight implement, according to this article by a retired police chief in a tabloid paper of 1954, by which time CP could no longer be ordered by the courts but was still occasionally used for prison disciplinary offences involving serious violence.

This is in the Popperfoto picture archive (ref. no. CPL30038234). Popperfoto's caption says "A flogging taking place with the prisoner strapped up and a doctor in attendance to monitor events, 1958". No country is specified, but Popperfoto is UK-based, and the prison officers' uniforms look British. The frame, too, is broadly similar to those used in UK prisons (see above). But prison floggings were extremely unusual by 1958 (the last ever was in 1962), and anyway this picture doesn't look real to me. The men have a look of being actors. The scene has been lit from the side (note shadows) as in a "film noir" or one of those cheapo 1950s police thriller movies. On balance I think this looks more like a stage set at Ealing or Pinewood than a real room in a prison (and this would not be the first time a picture agency has mistaken a scene from a fictional film for the real thing). Can anyone identify a 1950s British film from which this might be taken? Also, I wonder if a prison officer carrying out a flogging in real life would have been all that likely to keep his uniform jacket and hat on while doing it. However, the kidney-protecting belt seems right, and I have also read that a canvas sheet was sometimes used, possibly as shown here, to hide the identity of the flogging officer from the prisoner.

Beaumaris Gaol was on the island of Anglesey (North Wales) and is now a museum. This is a very simple A-frame. The prison closed in 1878 so this is quite an early example, possibly from before practice in these matters became at all standardised. It appears to have been designed only for standing up at, with no apparent provision for a bending-over position, and I think it would have been meant for floggings with a whip or cat on the prisoner's upper back. Note the leather straps to secure his legs and arms. The small holes on either side of the middle front would have been for a crossbar of adjustable height, as in the "Churchill" picture above, but the crossbar itself has gone. Beaumaris was a very small prison -- about 30 prisoners in the 1870s -- in a very small place, and this contraption saw little or no use in its latter years.
According to the parliamentary returns, the only corporal punishments inflicted in Beaumaris between 1858 and 1878 were four magistrates' birchings of boys aged 11 to 14 for petty larceny. I suspect this frame would not have been used for those.
The museum's wall display "The Whipping Room" shows some very familiar illustrations, none of them anything to do with Beaumaris, and a picture of what looks more like a cattle whip than the cat-o'-nine-tails that was probably used in fact. I don't have a transcript of the text, but I slightly doubt that it tells anything we don't already know.

A cigarette card, allegedly from 1902. Although published in the UK, the picture has an American look. In any event it is probably posed by actors and not "the real thing".

Wandsworth was (still is) a prison in London. This inept drawing has appeared in various books. It may originally have been done for one of the more sensational newspapers in, at a guess, the latter part of the 19th century, and I would not be at all confident about its authenticity. For what it's worth, the device -- a frame and not, as captioned, a post -- appears to be designed to hold the prisoner in an upright position, which probably means that it would be intended solely for the application of the cat to the upper back.

This picture (though possibly not the object itself) is in a museum in Glasgow. The strange "flogging stand" looks to have been adapted from some piece of domestic furniture, possibly a wardrobe. It's difficult to see otherwise why it would be made of polished wood or have such an elaborate and otiose cornice at the top. At all events, the picture is highly misleading in showing the lad stripped down TO the waist, implying that the punishment was applied to the upper back. He should be stripped FROM the waist down: juvenile police court birchings and tawsings in Scotland were, as far as I know, always administered across the offender's bare posterior. Note padding on the front of the thing to cushion the boy's abdomen. That in itself tends to suggest that the impact was expected at a level somewhat lower than his shoulders.

This is on display at Dartmoor Prison Museum. The padded bar at the front, over which the prisoner would have been bent for a birching, can be moved up or down to suit his height. The extra padding would presumably be to cushion his genitals. This wooden A-frame is obviously a completely different contraption from the metal Dartmoor triangle shown in 1894 official drawings. So if this really was used in Dartmoor, a change was evidently made at some later date. Alternatively, maybe this frame came to the museum from some other prison: it is clear from some of the other exhibits that not everything shown is originally from Dartmoor.

This is also exhibited at Dartmoor. Its weight was specified as 12 ounces and its length 48 inches "from handle to tip of splay". The museum staff have added the following remarkable text to the label after the information about the weight and dimensions:

It was left to the police in each area to devise methods of birching juveniles sentenced by local magistrates. There was no standard pattern imposed by central government. Consequently, procedures and equipment varied from one place to another. This rather elaborate, leather-upholstered contraption is said to have been used in the West Midlands. The top measures 45 inches long (114 cm). Compare it with the London and Nottingham versions. The birch shown here consists largely of the handle alone, the business end having mostly disintegrated. This is what usually happens with birches in museums, giving the general public a misleading idea of what birches really looked like and how big they were.

This drawing, source unknown, seems broadly to accord with much of what one has read about judicial birchings of juveniles by the police. The boy's trousers have been lowered but not removed. The pony here is not altogether unlike the one in the photo (previous item) and gives an idea how it would have been used. With this kind of pony the boy's position could be described as leaning rather than bending, so his buttocks are not so well presented as in some other versions, but there is no doubt that they are none the less the sole target of the operation. A gently curving pony of this type possibly had the advantage that it would work reasonably well with boys of widely varying heights. Note doctor in frock coat monitoring the proceedings. This was by no means always the case in reality. These juvenile birchings were regarded as a very minor punishment -- in England and Wales they were available only for boys under 14, in practice nearly always awarded for petty larceny (stealing), and conceived early in the 19th century as a way of punishing a boy without sending him to prison, as would have happened in earlier times. A fairly plausible reconstruction of such a birching is shown in episode 1 of the BBC TV drama series The Monocled Mutineer (1986), set in 1908 and based on real events.

UNITED STATES

From Life Magazine (November 1955). A guard at the new Louisiana State Penitentiary poses in silhouette with a prison strap, incorrectly described as a bull whip. The caption states that the implement was no longer being used, so one wonders quite why it is shown being brandished in this manner.

The new superintendent of the Arkansas prison system in January 1968 abolished the use of the strap, which he here shows to the press. The Hollywood movie Brubaker (1980), starring Robert Redford, was loosely based on Murton and his reforms.

Poor-quality photograph from a book, Avenues Leading to Crime by M.L. Cummings (Raleigh, NC, 1922). The location is not identified, but some other pictures in the book are from Florida. The set-up here is unusual in that the prisoner is kneeling on the ground and holding on to some kind of step or frame against the wall. More often, the method in US prisons seems to have been simply to make the recipient lie flat on the ground. Here, the prisoner appears to have taken his top off and is presumably being whipped on his upper back. The instrument looks to be some sort of whip or cat with a handle.

Pictures taken at Colorado State Prison, Canon City. The padded flogging trestle there was nicknamed "the old gray mare". According to the Canon City Local History Center, the paddle was "of leather with metal brads" and was dipped in water before use, which may explain the bucket standing by the trestle. The first picture is said to date from about 1898-1900. The second picture turned up somewhere else with a date of c.1910, but that must be wrong as both pictures clearly include some of the same personnel in the same clothes. In fact, it seems virtually certain that both pictures were taken on the same occasion.

I think they were probably staged for the photographer, for two reasons. First, in the second picture the trestle has been turned through 90 degrees in relation to the tree, with the photographer apparently remaining in the same position, and the man with the strap has suddenly gone from being right-handed to left-handed. His watch-chain is on his right side in both pictures, so it's not just that one of the photos has been printed backwards. If a real flogging were under way, it seems unlikely that officers would start moving the furniture around in mid-infliction. Also, in the first picture the operator hasn't been left enough room to swing the paddle properly - the trestle is too near the wall.

On the other hand, in the second picture the prisoner's trousers do look torn, possibly showing a glimpse of his bottom, though it might equally be an undergarment. (Did prisoners have underwear in 1900?) Could this mean that he actually had been strapped, even if not on this particular occasion, and the strapping had ripped the seat of his pants? It's such a neat little slot in the fabric, dead across the centre of his bottom, that it doesn't really look like ordinary wear and tear. Then again, most accounts of US prison CP have the paddle being inflicted on bare buttocks. Perhaps this prison was an exception or perhaps in 1900 it would not have been thought proper to illustrate that.

As for the trestle itself, it looks in the second picture as if the prisoner's ankles may be fixed to it somehow. I would imagine his arms and/or wrists are secured on the other side to keep him in the bent-over position. Evidently the main purpose of the apparatus is to bring the offender's posterior up to the arm level of the man with the strap. Conceivably the standing platform is adjustable in height. At all events, this intriguing contraption was still in use 50 years later -- see this July 1951 illustrated news item.

VIETNAM (formerly INDOCHINA or COCHINCHINA)

Extremely staged-looking picture from a web page about Vietnam called "Nine Centuries of Independence". It's credited to the Library of Congress, so one assumes it must at least have been thought at some point to be an authentic reconstruction. Yet it looks almost like some local drama group's over-the-top pantomime rehearsal. Are the holders-down and the "offender" supposed to be children, or just small people? Did local officials really get dressed up in all this glittering kitsch clobber just for the purpose of walloping some boy's backside? One almost expects Widow Twankey to come on stage and burst into song. Anyway, I've never heard of JCP in Vietnam before but, if true, here is another Asian country never occupied by Britain and yet using the judicial cane. I hope those who keep repeating that caning is a purely British invention are taking note.