Judicial Corporal Punishment Fiction

Judicial Corporal Punishment Fiction
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These pictures mostly either didn't come with an article or news item or caption attached, or the details are only sketchy; in one or two cases, there is room for doubt as to whether they are what they seem or claim to be. If you have reliable information please let me know.
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Corpun file 26212
Australiana Pioneer Village

Re-enactment of a whipping with the "cat" at the Australiana Pioneer Village in Wilberforce, just outside Sydney.
Corpun file 25797a
Dunsterforce flogging

Dunsterforce was a company of Australian and other Allied irregulars in 1917-1919 deployed across Greater Persia (now Iran, Iraq and the Caucasus), named after its commander, Gen. Lionel Dunsterville. This picture from c.1918 is captioned "Men gathered around to witness a battalion flogging of Dunsterforce irregulars for an assault on an NCO".
Corpun file 25797b
Another Dunsterforce flogging

"Persia, c.1918. A Dunsterforce company irregular being held over four boxes by his arms and legs in readiness for a flogging for stealing forage." He is stripped to the waist, presumably to be whipped on the bare back.
Corpun file 23780a
Flogging triangle

Here is a flogging triangle from Old Sydney Town, Somersby, on display at Gosford, New South Wales. My informant writes: "The wood is old but not the ropes, which might not be authentic in their arrangement. A pulley seems more likely. The top rope appears to be handcuff-like, with slip knots, with the middle hooked over the third leg of the tripod. This arrangement does not provide well for prisoners of differing heights."
Corpun file 23780b
The above triangle "in use"

Actor Anthony George plays convict Wilbur Ramsay in this modern re-enactment (April 2010) of a flogging using the equipment at Gosford illustrated above.
Corpun file 24804
Punishment bench, Museum Janko Kral

The military in the former Austria-Hungary empire used a flat bench for flogging. This example is at Liptovsky Mikulas in present-day Slovakia. Note iron bands for waist, ankles and wrists.
Corpun file 24803
Punishment bench, Sumeg Castle

A similar piece of equipment at this tourist site in Hungary.
This is part of a frieze on the front of a building of c.1900 in Prague depicting scenes of the period (up to 1918) when the Austro-Hungarian Empire included what is now the Czech Republic. My informant says the design (technically "sgraffito" or etching) represents an Austrian officer caning a young Czech soldier, who is lying flat on a bench with his wrists tied, receiving punishment across the seat of his pants.
Corpun file 19464
Whipping bench, Zwettl

Zwettl is a town in Lower Austria. This machine is in its local museum. It looks at first glance like a guillotine for beheading people, but evidently the device at the head end is just for holding the culprit's head firm during the flogging. Note straps/chains for securing lower body to bench.
Corpun file 21446
Prügelbank (whipping bench)

This appears to be essentially the same as the previous item, possibly suggesting that standard equipment was provided centrally. This one is at the Niederösterreich (Lower Austria) regional museum at St Pölten.
Corpun file 23871
"Dahomey - Préparation à la bastonnade" (Preparations for whipping)

Benin, in West Africa, was known as Dahomey until 1975. This postcard has a look of the early 20th century about it. Since the caption is given in French, we can probably date it to later than 1894, when France established itself as the colonial power.
The offender is held in position lying flat on the ground. We see that his buttocks are being bared for punishment. The implement to be used would appear to be the whip lying on the ground to the left.
One might speculate that this typically African procedure predates the arrival of the French, for whom formal judicial CP would have been an alien concept, and that the new colonial regime just left the local rulers to carry on as before in this regard.
Corpun file 8190
Demonstration on a dummy of judicial caning in 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 of pupils passing round a picture, evidently of the wealed and bruised buttocks resulting from such a caning, though we cannot 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 cannot be sentenced to caning anyway.
Corpun file 22955
Another dummy demonstration in Brunei, and the canes used

This dummy demonstration, at a student visit to Jerudong Prison in Nov 2008, uses a rather less elaborate kind of trestle. In the second picture are shown the two types of canes, the smaller one being for offenders under 17.
Corpun file 25746
Yet another dummy demonstration in Brunei

This was a demonstration given at a local school in 2012.
Corpun file 25390
Flogging with the cat-o-nine-tails

Drawing of a flogging in Montreal Gaol on 25 October 1875. Captioned "The cat-o-nine-tails revived", it was published in the Canadian Illustrated News on 6 November that year.
Display in the museum at Kingston Penitentiary, Ontario. At left is the federal penitentiary strap, said to date from c.1903. Next to it is the slightly longer Ontario Provincial Jail strap. At right are two cats-o'-nine-tails, one British and the other Canadian. See this feature article .
Another picture of the Ontario strap. This one, or at least the picture of it, is at Windsor Jail. It seems to be longer and wider than the ones illustrated in this article .
Corpun file 15761
Whipping post, Newfoundland

This is supposed to represent a punishment carried out in Newfoundland in the early 1700s by the "fishing admiral". It shows a cat-o'-four-tails, and appears in J.A. Cochrane, The Story of Newfoundland , Montreal, 1938. We should bear in mind that the drawing was probably made in 1938 and not in the 1700s, so may or may not be reliable.
Corpun file 23431
Whipping frame, Nova Scotia

This dates from the mid-19th century and was originally at the courthouse in Sydney, Nova Scotia. It is now part of a display of Cape Breton culture at the Joan Harriss Cruise Pavilion. My informant says that it is about 7 feet high.
Corpun file 24364
Whipping frame, Dorchester Penitentiary

These frames, less elaborate than those above, are on display at Keillor House Museum in Dorchester, New Brunswick.
Corpun file 25387
Strapping bench with straps, Dorchester Penitentiary

Also at Keillor House Museum, a bench over which prisoners were tied to be strapped on the bare buttocks. Compare with these examples from other prisons.
Corpun file 21100
19th-century Chinese punishment

Picture of a criminal being punished with some sort of big paddle. This comes from a Korean site, but is said to represent China in the 19th century. The offender has kept his trousers on, but it looks as if the assistant is pulling them taut across the posterior.
Corpun file 21789
"Bambooing his breeches"

Rather similar to the previous item, except that this undated gouache on rice paper (held in the New York Public Library) shows that the culprit's trousers have been lowered to uncover his buttocks.
Corpun file 26014
More old drawings of punishment

Two representations of ancient imperial China, date unknown. Again, the culprit is shown lying face down on the ground. These appear to be from a fictional comic book, but might perhaps be broadly realistic. The implement is a big long paddle and the setting is possibly a court.
Corpun file 15892
Gyatse Dzong fortress, ancient punishment

This tableau or model is said to be a representation of a flogging in ancient Tibet. As far as I can make out, one official is sitting on the offender's back while the other beats the back of his thighs with a big stick.
Corpun file 16553
Criminal being punished

Found in a picture agency's library, this is a contemporary photograph of the real thing, dated "circa 1900", and its caption reads: "Chinese punishment: Whipping a lawbreaker. Even the theft of a few pennies brought about this severe reprisal." Note that the modus operandi is identical to that in "Wei Hai Wei flogging" (see below).
Corpun file 24120
"Stocks for punishment beatings", c.1895

It is not clear how this piece of equipment would have functioned, but note the long paddles as seen in the previous picture.
Corpun file 22424
Another judicial paddling

Another real-life photograph, described as "Qing Dynasty", which dates it to before 1912. In this case, the offender is simply lying flat on the ground, as in many of the earlier etchings and paintings. It is a bit unclear, but the buttocks appear to have been uncovered for punishment.
Corpun file 22426
More of the same kind of thing

And another one. This is clearly a punishment on the backside.
Corpun file 14695
Punishment of the Bastinado

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. For a glimpse of the long history of this kind of punishment in China, and a much older illustration, see this 2003 news item .
Corpun file 3930
Wei Hai Wei flogging

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.
Corpun file 19432
The Punishments of China

Cover of a book in German, literally "The punishments of the Chinese", published in Dresden in 1898, translated from English, it says. I deduce that this was probably a translation of The Punishments of China, illustrated by twenty-two engravings , attributed to George Henry Mason (London, 1801), which I have not seen but which, according to various catalogues, includes an engraving -- very possibly the one seen here -- captioned "An offender undergoing the bastinade".
Mason was one of few Westerners to visit China in the 18th century, and it is conceivable that he was actually shown some of these events.
Note similarity of modus operandi to that shown in the pictures above.
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).
Corpun file 15342 'Civilisation in Congo'

Painting dated 1884, shown at a "Memory of Congo: The Colonial Era" exhibition in Brussels in 2005. The exhibition's caption said: "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?
Corpun file 14958
Baker flogged and Back showing resulting weals

Pictures from 1954. The man is being publicly whipped in the public square of Kena for charging too much for his bread during a famine. 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.
Corpun file 26142
Baker flogged -- clearer picture

We now have a much better-quality version of the first of the above two pictures. It also gives a wider view of the watching crowd.
This appears to represent what we might nowadays call an unofficial slippering in the French army. I think the picture may date from around c.1800. The text says "This remarkable drawing by Lieutenant Chevalier gives an impression of an imperial guardsmen's cavalry barrack-room at what is now the Ecole Militaire, then the Quartier Bonaparte, in Paris".
Corpun file 21948
Prügelbock (Whipping bench)

On display at the Naturhistorishes Museum in Schloss Bertholdsburg at Schleusingen, Thuringia, where whipping sentences were carried out publicly in the marketplace, according to the museum caption. A "Siebenstriemer" (cat-o'-seven-tails) was used, consisting of a wooden handle with leather tails. "Der Delinquent war nach vorne gebeugt und lag mit dem Oberkörper auf der mit Leder gepolsterten Fläche auf. Dadurch war sein Gesäß gespannt und zur Aufnahme der Hiebe bereit." (The offender was bent forward and had to lie with his chest on the cushioned leather surface. Thus his buttocks were tensed ready to absorb the strokes.) The museum adds that the contraption is authentic, and worn with use; it was formerly kept in the Town Hall. Public flogging was abolished here in 1848.
Corpun file 20101
Prügelbock, Quedlinburg

This flogging contraption is to be found at the Schlossmuseum (castle museum) in Quedlinburg , Saxony-Anhalt. It is said to be from the 16th century. I am not quite clear exactly how this would have been used.
This, I'm told, comes from Germany. The artist is very probably Franz Josef Tripp, who illustrated children's books in the 1960s. A youth is being caned on his bare bottom. The man on the left is presumably counting out the strokes on his fingers. The officials' uniform resembles that of the Kaiserreich (German Empire) era (1871-1918), although the kind of punishment shown could be a bit earlier than that (see pictures below).
Here is a piece of furniture found in the local museum at Ludwigsburg, near Stuttgart. It is thought to have been used in the 19th century. The person to be whipped lies face down, with head and arms lodged in the holes at the head end and the feet secured at the bottom end. The second picture shows how the ends were designed to open up to secure or release the offender. Note the similarity with the device at Zwettl (see Austria , above).
Two whipping instruments also on display at Ludwigsburg (see previous item).
Corpun file 19756
German JCP in ?18th century

Also at the museum in Ludwigsburg is this old print, showing a not dissimilar machine in use.
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 seem to be no other details. It is 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.
Corpun file 25440
World War II whip

Found in the Norway Resistance Museum at Akershus Fortress in Oslo. The whip may have been used on prisoners during the German occupation of Norway (1940-1945). This example is in very poor condition and has evidently lost most of its "tails".
Corpun file 22289
Ghanaian soldiers punished

Nothing known about this except what the caption says.
Corpun file 17726
Cat-o-nine-tails and Punishment Register

On 19 March 2006 there was an open day at Victoria Prison, and these items were put on show. It is, I think, a very long time since the cat rather than the cane was used in Hong Kong. The punishment book is unfortunately difficult to read in this picture. The pages shown appear to date from 1950.
Corpun file 14631
Caning A-frame and trestle

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). The big frame was for judicial punishment; the smaller trestle seems to have been for reformatory canings of juveniles, 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. (However, in the reformatory case the boy was allowed to keep his trousers on.) 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 -- perhaps a reference to bending over the padded bar shown here.
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