Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-01-06
Again the Whipping-post.

Representative Adams of Pennsylvania
has introduced bill to establish the whip
ping-post for wife-beaters in the District of
Columbia. He introduced similar meas
ure in the Pennsylvania legislature in 1886,
but Pennsylvania begged to be excused.
What his own state rejected is to be i'm
posed by Mr.. Adams upon the helpless Dis
trict of Columbia. The national capital is
to be used again by Congress as apothe-
cary's cat for the states, to be dosed ex-
perimentally with dubious legislative COM
pounds.
But has not the whipping post already
had its trial in the states themselves and
been convicted? Virginia years ago repeal
ed its whipping post statute, finding that it's
application could not be confined to ne
groes. Maryland's whipping-post law is
still on the statute books, but the growth
of enlightened public opinion has made it
obsolete Christianity and civilization have
killed and buried il. Delaware is the only
state of the Union where a whipping post
law is still alive and enforced. and Mr.. A.
S Meserve. the warden of the workhouse at
Wilmington, in a statement before the con-
ference of charities and corrections, held in
Washington in 1903, referred to it as "a
relic of barbarity," Of which he would be
glad to have the state rid itself. He de-
clared: I'VE have never whipped wife
beater. The wife generally repents and the
man gets off with reproof"
1t appears that nowhere in the republic
is the wife-beater now in fact punished by
the state with the lash, and that the whip
ping-post Is not an untried penalty or
doubtful utility, but one which has been
tested and repudiated by the civilized
Christian world.
Mr.. Adams lash is to be applied in pri-
vate-that is, within the prison Enclosure.
Its brutality Is to be hid from the public
gaze, in order that the community by COW
ering its eyes ostrich-like, may be spared
disagreeable shock. The element OF
shame, based upon public exposure, which
has been urged as so important and effec-
tive factor in Anticipated punshments like
the whipping-p post the stocks and the pill
lOryr-ts to be eliminated. There remains of
the old penalty nothing but the personal.
physical torture, the inf1iction of pain. The
punishment of shame which appeals to the
man Is dropped. and the punishment of pain
which appeals to the brute is retained. The
check upon the brutal infection of the pun
ishment, which public inspection Of the
spectacle would in this twentieth century
assure, is removed. The stipulated pres
ciCc VI d ICeHSeu pilS StSidH OF surgeon may
perhaps be intended to prevent the killing
of the lashed man, though the surgeon is
given no authority to interfere, and must
apparently confine himself to restoring to
consciousness, binding up the bleeding
wounds or treating other injuries of the
mutilated and tortured prisoner after he
has been dashed
Mr. Adams whipping post. which is thus
less adapted for the effective correction of
men than the whipping-post of the Middle
Ages, which the world has discarded, was
promptly pronounced not good enough for
pennsylvania. Congress may, however, be
Induced to believe that it is good enough
for the national capital, if it can once be
convinced that this model city is peopled
by community of brutal wife-beaters, de-
Serving special and peculiarly humiliating
punishment.