The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1899-01-17

rian jail director at Irkutsk abolished
whipping altogether, The result was that
prison discipline improved astonishingly,
while crimes and attempts TO escape ceas-
ed.
Still Used in Delaware.
The United States was the leader in do
ing away with all forms of corporal pun
ishmeut in its army and navy and in all
departments under federal control, mat
ter in which it has been followed in all the
states but one. That single exception is
Delaware, the smallest of all the states
save Rhode Island. Delaware has the
whipping post and it uses it. The system
was revived by legislative enactment some
years ago. and whipping posts were es-
tablished at all the principal points in the
state. The people there seem to be salts
fed with it, much as the sister states have
cried out against what they call a return
to barbarism. F'logging is inflicted for a
variety of offenses. Formerly the penalty
was inflicted publicly until sentiment
drove whipping post under cover. Cruel
as it is, the whipping post is a simple
contrivance, just a heavy post of timber,
perhaps eight feet high firmly planted in
the ground. About a foot from the Top
holes are bored into the post or rings are
fastened thereto The man sentenced to
the post is led to it menacled and barred to
the waist. Straps or chains are attached
to the manacles and the man is drawn up
until only his toes touch the ground The
sheriff or other officer stands by with the
cat or rod or LASH as the case may be
He is supposed to deliver the blows but
he generally does it by proxy, frequently
confding the grewsome task to some fell
low prisoner of the victim. But he super
vises the work to see that the blows are
we'll applied. The number of blows varies
in different cases, but the result never
differs. Screams of agony until uncon-
seriousness comes, the unfortunate is car
ried away, bare and bleeding, but general
ly with a heart more disposed to evil than
it was before the humiliation and the tor
ture of the whipping post were dealt out
to him.
1t is a creditable fact too, that long ago
corporalepunishmcnt and all humiliating
penalties We're banished from the public
schools of the United states. The rod is
still used in some private institutions.
The average man of middle age remem-
bers the ferule, the rawhide and even tho
cat of his schoolboy days. He remembers
too, the fools cap that broke his spirit
and how he was compelled TO stand
abashed in a corner, to sit on the edge
of the stove or perform some other equally
buniliating act for some trivial breach of
school discipline. And he would not have
such experiences come to his own children
for the world. Indeed, the old adage,
Spare the rod and spoil the child, has
been losing in force in America during the
last few decades.
should Be in Public.
Writers on criminals and penalties all
agree that any form of corporal punish
ment. to have force, should be done in
public. The sting of the lash administer
ed to the hardened evil doer in privacy
only renders him the more stubborn. For
the infection of such penalties ofhclals
generally assign to the work some other
culprit, and a public exhibition Oh one
brute being punished by another under the
warrant of the law is TOO full of incon-
eistencv to have very edifying effect on
the public
An attempt to revive the whipping post
ar other obsolete punishments naturally
brings ones thoughts back to the Gays
Of ,,ore--the colonial days of America. The
earliest settlers of the country hrnly De-
lieyed that no weapon of punishment was
more dreadful than ridicule, satire ana
rnoclerv. Neither to these did they hesl-
tate to ada awful cruelties of kind that
makes a person of the present age shuu-
der in contemplation of them Alice
NTorsa Earle tells of the Curious Pun
ELEMENTS of Bygone Days" in an inter-
esting volume published three years ago
In il all The strange and sometimes par
barous engines of punishment are tuliy
described and illustrated by quaint ola
cnts II is only fair to the colonlsts TO
cav that these tools were not a result OF
orv cruel turn in their inventive minds
They brought them from England geher-
alIvYif not the machines, at least the
ideas
probably the earliest instrument USED IN
finishing culprits, and the early settler
sid NOT have to sin greatly TO tall INTO
,aertting a penalty and the public shame
n+tanbed to it, was the bilboes. The IN
strnroant like many tools of torture touho
80 origin in Spain. taking its name from
pIhoa Tradition has it that bilpoes hrst
ZANE known when the armada saileo
- take all England captive They car
Led hilhoes with which to shackle theF
awe The bilboes consisted OF an IRON
80 n which sliding shackles We're Ias-
ga into these the legs Of offenders
80 thrust and locked. The victim was
..o,,,oriass of locomotion, and was genef-
pIv, nlaced in front of places OF pubic
go Sometimes the punishment was
Iloda more disgraceful, the culprit oelng
-. ba hilh61G