I have heard men beg for a drop of water to cool their parched mouths and burning tongues, which has been denied them. It must be recollected that the army was not a mere machine, and hastily to attempt great changes in it, was to run the risk of completely disorganizing it. I one day attended the hospital as orderly officer, and when I asked, as was my duty, if there were any complaints, a man with a dejected and maniac visage, bellowed out, "Yes, I have a complaint to make, that neither you nor the King of England can remedy." What people are saying - Write a review. 888 Upper level people in the British Army apparently never got this. Have they ever poised the cat in their hands when clotted with a soldiers blood after punishment had been inflicted? 13 The death of Robert Sim in Limerick and the jury’s determination to condemn flogging had a direct effect on the disciplinary system of the British army. said, it was difficult to say, precisely, what should be the limits to which any Gentleman might proceed in reading extracts from a printed document, as a portion of his speech. But to proceed: 'When at Jersey, in the year 1808, it was my painful duty to witness the in fliction of corporal punishment almost every week. The entire debate can be found here and with excerpts reproduced below: MUTINY BILL—FLOGGING OF SOLDIERS. PDF Download Corporal Punishment - 8 Lashes: The Complete Corporal Punishment Collection Download. Since his first flogging his name had been constantly in the guard reports, and he had scarcely ever done a day's duty. correct judgment upon this very important point, it surely should have relation to what was now going on, and not to what was formerly the practice. There was institutional savagery with floggings and public execution occurring so frequently they were normalised. British Empire forces used Field Punishment: the most severe version including tying a malefactor to a fixed object for a period of time. He (Mr. Hunt) was prepared to bring Lieutenant Shipp Brutalisation extended across the entire army. friend opposite on the subject, because he knew, that his right hon. He had, on two former occasions, very slightly touched upon it; but he had been met by resistance on the part of his Majesty's Government. He must, however, observe, that since he had had the honour of sitting in the Chair, he never had heard so long a time occupied in reading as the hon. and gallant Officer opposite said, that if it were not However some where in the past I have read 'Somewhere' that it was not a frequent Punishment in either service. 894 There were, however, difficulties in the way which might not in the first instance strike hon. It is, I believe, but of late years that the practice to which I allude has crept into the service; but I am informed that it has actually become, in some regiments, an established rule. When a British Army was on active service in a foreign land for a protracted period of time, such as Wellington ’s Army in Spain and Portugal, the more the role of the provost marshal expanded. He declared, that if he were to see a regiment just returned from abroad, he would venture to pick out every man as he stept on shore, who had suffered the disgrace and torture of military flogging. This was the treatment of the poor, and wretched, and tortured private soldier. ( Log Out /  He had paid a willing tribute to the temper in which this matter had been brought forward, because it was due to the hon. On the first lash the blood spirted out some yards, and, after he had received fifty, his back, from the neck to the waist, was one continued stream of blood. although flogging in the army did not cease altogether until i 8 8 i, the reforms effected in the pre-Victorian period went much of the way towards this goal. After a Prisoners in prison were invisible. One solution to this challenge was the creation of special battalions- ‘condemned corps’- who went there in lieu of a known punishment. "Come, come," said I (and it was as much as I dared to say), keep up your spirits; your extreme youth, and the fact that this is the first time you have been brought to a court-martial, may, probably, obtain your pardon." This pamphlet he had had the advantage of reading. Those who were punished, those who inflicted punishment and the mass ranks who gathered as observers, (willingly or not) were all made callous to the pain and suffering of othersvii. The House had listened with a great deal of forbearance to the hon. In 1867 Parliament abolished flogging in the armed services. The severity of corporal punishments was one of the reasons which deterred persons from entering the army. The Colonel then said, "I cannot bear to see your brother soldiers so much affected for you without remov- John White was not the only person who had died after a flogging but this was the occasion on which the explanation for a dynamic relationship between superficial marks and injuries left on the body and internal organs of the punished was used as a political argument against corporal punishment. member for Preston made no such distinction, because he had been upbraided with invidiously distinguishing between different portions of the army; and he had, therefore, included both in his present Motion. Sentences were usually carried out in the presence of the troops of the Garrison, and after the commencement of the War of 1812-14 sentences of Death for desertion were not uncommon. to give all the merit of the act to his Majesty's Ministers, to whom his gratitude would be due if they acceded to the proposition of so humble an individual as himself—and begging to express his thanks for the patient attention with which the House had indulged him for the past hour, he would proceed to read the terms of his Motion, to which he hoped his Majesty's Ministers would agree, in order that he might be saved the trouble of bringing before this House, from time to time, every case that occurred throughout the country; which step, however, if his proposition were rejected, he should certainly feel it his duty to take. regard to corporal punishments, from that which was the practice formerly; and he was bold to say that, since the time that pamphlet referred to, there had grown up, on the part of the officers of the army, a disposition to mitigate the infliction of corporal punishments; which had, in a considerable degree, diminished both the application of that punishment and the necessity for awarding it. p15 Peter Alfred Taylor, The ‘cat’ speech in the House of Commons against the governments flogging bill, June 14 1875 Cowen Tracts (London 1875), xi Thomas R H Thomas, ‘On the value of quinine in African Remittent Fever’ The Lancet 1 (1846) pp244-245 See also Tim Moreman’s review of ‘Philip D Curtin, Disease and Empire: the health of European troops in the conquest of Africa’ Africa 71 (2001) pp526-527. 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