Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1880-10-09
WHIPPING CRIMINALS.
NOW English Justice Il Melted out to Ruffiana
y,Y. Journal of Commerce.

NOW English Justice IL Melted out to HUMANS.
NY. Journal OF Commerce.
On the 18th ult. one of the most brazcn-
faced rufians who ever stood up in Brit
ish court suddenly wilted and uttered a
scream on hearing the terms of the judges
sentence, and was taken away in q fainting
condition. He had no defense. Tho evil
dence was conclusive. He was sure of con-
yiction and of severe sentence, and he knew
it. But he was not prepared for one part
ofthe punishment prescribed by Mr.. Justice
Stephen. He screamed and almost faint
ed, not in view Of the twenty years of
penal servitude, but because the judge
ordered, as q fitting prelude, thirty lashes
from a cato -nine-tails. This man had
robbed and attempted TO murder by drug
ging, and then throwing from a railway
carriage, travelling companion in whose
confidence he had artfully ingratiated
himself. 1t was premeditated crime of
the most heinous kind. 1t would have
ended in murder but for the inability of
the assassin to eject his victim from the car
before the train stopped. The rufian then
escapcd with his booty, but was followed
by the half-stupefied. badly injured man,
who staggered upon the platform and gave
an alarm which led to the capture of his as
sailant. This strange affair took place in a
car London underground line), of which
the two men were the only occupants. Mr..
Justice Stephen, in passing sentence, said
it was "the most cowardly and brutal
outrage that had ever been brought under
his notice" He marked his sense of hor-
ror, rs we'll as made the sentence a whole
some caution to all other like minded dcs-
peradoes, by prefixing the thirty lashes to
the twenty years imprisonment. The
prisoner would not have flinched from the
Incarceration, but he WINGED terribly under
the Judgment Of the cat, as if he had
already felt her nine tales raising wales on
his bare back.
1t is the uniform experience of British
judges that corporal punishment is the
most certain known deterrent of COW.
ardly and brutal offeuses. When any
peculiarly shocking crimes against the
person begin to become common in Eng
land, the judges always check it by order
ing a dose of the cat we'll laid on in
addition to long term of imprisonment
with hard labor. This is the best know
preventive Of outrages on women and
children. II is the cnly thing that has put
T. stop to garroting. Its success is SO
marked in the declining frequency of cruel
and malicious assaults upon the person in
England that the British public almost
unanimously approve it. Only little
minority of those philanthropists whose
spmpathies for criminals rise in ex'
act proportion to the diabolism OF
their proteses continue to protest
against the iasl, as a remedial agent
of society. While that agent does
SO manifestly good work in England, it
will be judiciously conserved there. The
theoretical opposition to it in the United
States is widespread and intense, as any
man finds ont to his cost who proposes to
introduce it into our judicial system. But
now and then thinking Americans will
brave the consequences and ask themselves
and their neighbors if corporal cha stise.
ment, so common among our ancestors rs
penalty for minor violations of law,
might not be revived, with signal advan.
tage to society, for the punishment of Ger
tain specially atrOciOus crimes.