Editing Flagellation (section)

==== United Kingdom ====
Flagellation was so common in England as punishment that [[caning]] (and [[spanking]] and whipping) are called "the English vice".<ref name="MurrayMurrell1989">{{cite book|author1=Thomas Edward Murray|author2=Thomas R. Murrell|title=The Language of Sadomasochism: A Glossary and Linguistic Analysis|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tL81ZduPn_UC&pg=PA23|year=1989|publisher=ABC-CLIO|isbn=978-0-313-26481-8|pages=23–|access-date=30 December 2019|archive-date=25 January 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240125105529/https://books.google.com/books?id=tL81ZduPn_UC&pg=PA23|url-status=live}}</ref>

Flogging was a common disciplinary measure in the [[Royal Navy]] that became associated with a seaman's manly disregard for pain.<ref>"[http://www.rmg.co.uk/explore/sea-and-ships/facts/ships-and-seafarers/life-at-sea-in-the-age-of-sail Life at sea in the age of sail] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230227093114/https://www.rmg.co.uk/explore/sea-and-ships/facts/ships-and-seafarers/life-at-sea-in-the-age-of-sail |date=27 February 2023 }}". National Maritime Museum.</ref> Generally, officers were not flogged. However, in 1745, a [[cashiering|cashiered]] British officer's sword could be broken over his head, among other indignities inflicted on him.<ref>Tomasson, p. 127.</ref> Aboard ships, [[knittles]] or the [[cat o' nine tails]] was used for severe formal punishment, while a "rope's end" or "starter" was used to administer informal, on-the-spot discipline. During the period 1790–1820, flogging in the British Navy on average consisted of 19.5 lashes per man.<ref>Underwood, Patrick, et al. "Threat, Deterrence, and Penal Severity: An Analysis of Flogging in the Royal Navy, 1740–1820." Social Science History, vol. 42, no. 3, 2018, pp. 411–439, {{JSTOR|90024188}}, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231227223052/https://www.jstor.org/stable/90024188 |date=27 December 2023 }} Accessed 27 December 2023</ref> Some captains such as [[Thomas Masterman Hardy]] imposed even more severe penalties.<ref>Knight, Rodger, ''The Pursuit of Victory The Life and Achievements of Horatio Nelson''(Basic Books,  New York, 2005), pp. 475–476</ref> Hardy while commanding {{HMS|Victory}}, 1803–1805, raised punishments from the prior twelve lashes and twenty-four for more serious offenses to a new standard of thirty-six lashes with sixty lashes reserved for more serious infractions, such as theft or second offenses.<ref>Sharp, John G.M., ''Americans on HMS Victory during the Battle of Trafalgar 21 October 1805'', http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/portsmouth/shipyard/sharptoc/trafalgar.html {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231221211019/http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/portsmouth/shipyard/sharptoc/trafalgar.html |date=21 December 2023 }}</ref>

In severe cases a person could be "flogged around the fleet": a significant number of lashes (up to 600) was divided among the ships on a station and the person was taken to all ships to be flogged on each, or—when in harbour—bound in a ship's boat which was then rowed among the ships, with the ships' companies called to attention to observe the punishment.<ref>Keith Grint, The Arts of Leadership, 2000, {{ISBN|0191589330}} [https://books.google.com/books?id=rJ6yjNy___AC&pg=PA238, pp. 237–238]</ref>[[File:HMS VICTORY LOG, OCT 19, 1805,36 lashes each.jpg|thumb|HMS ''VICTORY'' LOG, 19 October 1805, 36 lashes each]]

In June 1879 a motion to abolish flogging in the Royal Navy was debated in the House of Commons. [[John O'Connor Power]], the member for Mayo, asked the [[First Lord of the Admiralty]] to bring the navy cat o' nine tails to the [[House of Commons Library|Commons Library]] so that the members might see what they were voting about. It was the Great "Cat" Contention, "Mr Speaker, since the Government has let the cat out of the bag, there is nothing to be done but to take the bull by the horns." [[Poet Laureate]] [[Ted Hughes]] celebrates the occasion in his poem, "Wilfred Owen's Photographs": "A witty profound Irishman calls/For a 'cat' into the House, and sits to watch/The gentry fingering its stained tails./Whereupon ...Quietly, unopposed,/The motion was passed."<ref>Hughes, Ted, "Wilfred Owen's Photographs", ''Lupercal'', 1960. See also Stanford, Jane, ''That Irishman: the Life and Times of John O'Connor Power'', 2011, pp. 79–80.</ref>

[[File:A youthful man-o'-warsman, from the diary of an English lad who served in the British frigate Macedonian during her memorable action with the American frigate United States; who afterward deserted and (14594689439).jpg|thumb|British sailor, tied to the grating, being flogged with [[cat o' nine tails]]]]
In the [[Napoleonic Wars]], the maximum number of lashes that could be inflicted on soldiers in the British Army reached 1,200. This many lashes could permanently disable or kill a man. [[Charles Oman]], historian of the [[Peninsular War]], noted that the maximum sentence was inflicted "nine or ten times by general court-martial during the whole six years of the war" and that 1,000 lashes were administered about 50 times.<ref>Oman, p. 239.</ref> Other sentences were for 900, 700, 500 and 300 lashes. One soldier was sentenced to 700 lashes for stealing a beehive.<ref>Oman, p. 246.</ref> Another man was let off after only 175 of 400 lashes, but spent three weeks in the hospital.<ref>Oman, p. 254.</ref> Later in the war, the more draconian punishments were abandoned and the offenders shipped to New South Wales instead, where more whippings often awaited them. (See [[#Australian penal colonies|Australian penal colonies]] section.) Oman later wrote: {{blockquote|If anything was calculated to brutalize an army it was the wicked cruelty of the British military punishment code, which [[Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington|Wellington]] to the end of his life supported. There is plenty of authority for the fact that the man who had once received his 500 lashes for a fault which was small, or which involved no moral guilt, was often turned thereby from a good soldier into a bad soldier, by losing his self-respect and having his sense of justice seared out. Good officers knew this well enough, and did their best to avoid the cat o' nine tails, and to try more rational means{{mdash}}more often than not with success.<ref>Oman, p. 43.</ref>}}

The 3rd battalion's [[Royal Anglian Regiment]] nickname of "The Steelbacks" is taken from one of its former regiments, the [[48th (Northamptonshire) Regiment of Foot]] who earned the nickname for their stoicism when being flogged with the cat o' nine tails ("Not a whimper under the lash"), a routine method of administering punishment in the Army in the 18th and early 19th centuries.

Shortly after the establishment of [[Northern Ireland]] the [[Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act (Northern Ireland) 1922|Special Powers Act of 1922]] (known as the "Flogging Act") was enacted by the [[Parliament of Northern Ireland]]. The Act enabled the government to 'take all such steps and issue all such orders as may be necessary for preserving the peace and maintaining order'.<ref>McCluskey, Fergal, (2013), ''The Irish Revolution 1912–23: Tyrone'', Four Courts Press, Dublin, p. 127, ISBN 9781846822995</ref> The long serving [[Minister of Home Affairs (Northern Ireland)|Home Affairs Minister]] [[Dawson Bates]] (1921–1943) was empowered to make any regulation felt necessary to preserve law and order. Breaking those regulations could bring a sentenced of up to a year in prison with hard labour, and in the case of some crimes, whipping.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/hmso/spa1922.htm |title=Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act (Northern Ireland), 1922 |last=McKenna |first=Fionnuala |date= |website=CAIN |publisher= |access-date=31 July 2022 |quote= |archive-date=31 July 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220731124220/https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/hmso/spa1922.htm |url-status=live }} Paragraphs 4 and 5 of the Act.</ref> This act was in place until 1973, when it was replaced with the [[Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1973]]. An imprisoned member of the [[Irish Republican Army (1922–1969)]], Frank Morris remembered his 15 "strokes of the cat" in 1942: "The pain was dreadful; you couldn't imagine it. The tail-ends cut my flesh to the bone, but I was determined not to scream and I didn't."<ref>{{cite book |last=Thorne |first=Kathleen |author-link= |date=2019 |title=Echoes of Their Footsteps Volume Three |url= |location=Oregon |publisher=Generation Organization |page=584 |isbn=978-0-692-04283-0}}</ref>  

The [[King's German Legion]] (KGL), which were German units in British pay, did not flog. In one case, a British soldier on detached duty with the KGL was sentenced to be flogged, but the German commander refused to carry out the punishment. When the British 73rd Foot flogged a man in occupied France in 1814, disgusted French citizens protested against it.<ref name="Rothenberg, p.179">Rothenberg, p. 179.</ref>