Editing Flagellation (section)

=== Australian penal colonies ===
[[File:FremantletPrisonWhippingPost 2005 SeanMcClean.jpg|thumb|[[Fremantle Prison]] whipping post]]
{{See also|History of Australia}}

Once common in the [[British Army]] and British [[Royal Navy]] as a means of discipline, flagellation also featured prominently in the British [[penal colony|penal colonies]] in [[early colonial Australia]]. Given that convicts in Australia were already "imprisoned", punishments for offenses committed there could not usually result in imprisonment and thus usually consisted of corporal punishment such as [[hard labour]] or flagellation. Unlike Roman times, British law explicitly forbade the combination of corporal and [[capital punishment]]; thus, a convict was either flogged or hanged but never both.

Flagellation took place either with a single whip or, more notoriously, with the [[cat o' nine tails]]. Typically, the offender's upper half was bared and he was suspended by the wrists beneath a tripod of wooden beams (known as 'the triangle'). In many cases, the offender's feet barely touched ground, which helped to stretch the skin taut and increase the damage inflicted by the whip. It also centered the offender's weight in his shoulders, further ensuring a painful experience.

With the prisoner thus stripped and bound, either one or two floggers administered the prescribed number of strokes, or "lashes," to the victim's back. During the flogging, a doctor or other medical worker was consulted at regular intervals as to the condition of the prisoner. In many cases, however, the physician merely observed the offender to determine whether he was conscious. If the prisoner passed out, the physician would order a halt until the prisoner was revived, and then the whipping would continue.

Female convicts were also subject to flogging as punishment, both on the convict ships and in the penal colonies. Although they were generally given fewer lashes than males (usually limited to 40 in each flogging), there was no other difference between the manner in which males and females were flogged.

Floggings of both male and female convicts were public, administered before the whole colony's company, assembled especially for the purpose. In addition to the infliction of pain, one of the principal purposes of the flogging was to humiliate the offender in front of his mates and to demonstrate, in a forceful way, that he had been required to submit to authority.

At the conclusion of the whipping, the prisoner's lacerated back was normally rinsed with [[brine]], which served as a crude and painful disinfectant.

Flogging still continued for years after independence. The last person flogged in Australia was [[William John O'Meally]] in 1958 in [[Melbourne]]'s [[HM Prison Pentridge|Pentridge Prison]].