FLOGGING

a beating administered with a whip or rod, usually on the person's back. Flogging was once a common method of punishing criminals and of preserving discipline in the home, school, armed forces, and prisons. In the Mosaic code flogging was a punishment for crime. Slaves in the ancient world were frequently flogged to death when they were sufficiently numerous to be of little value. Black slaves in the American South before the Civil War were frequently flogged, but rarely to the point of death because they were too valuable. During the 19th century, imprisonment gradually replaced corporal penalties as a punishment for crime. But the courts retained the power to sentence a prisoner to be whipped when convicted of violent crimes. In England, Scotland, and Wales the Criminal Justice Act of 1948 deprived the courts of the power to sentence a person to a whipping in most cases. Except in Scotland, however, the power to inflict corporal punishment was retained until 1967 for mutiny, incitement to mutiny, and gross personal violence to an officer of a prison when committed by a male person. In the second half of the 20th century, the flogging of certain criminals was still prescribed by law in Canada, some European and Asiatic countries, and until 1972 in the state of Delaware in the United States, where public whippings were administered at the discretion of the court for 25 different crimes. The instruments and methods of flogging have varied. In maintaining discipline in the home and school, sticks, rods, straps, whips, and other objects are used. Elsewhere the lash has been widely used, usually elaborated, as in the cat-o'-nine-tails. This is constructed of nine knotted cords or thongs of rawhide attached to a handle. The Russian knout, consisting of a number of dried and hardened thongs of rawhide interwoven with wire, the wires often being hooked and sharpened so that they tear the flesh, is even more painful and deadly. A particularly painful, though not so deadly, type of flogging is the Oriental bastinado, or blows delivered on the soles of the feet with a light rod or knotted cord or lash. Flogging was formerly executed with great brutality. The backs of the condemned were frequently lacerated, and salt was poured into the wounds to increase the pain.