Editing Corporal punishment (section)

===Modernity===
From the 16th century onwards, new trends were seen in corporal punishment. Judicial punishments were increasingly turned into public spectacles, with public beatings of criminals intended as a deterrent to other would-be offenders. Meanwhile, early writers on education, such as [[Roger Ascham]], complained of the arbitrary manner in which children were punished.<ref>Ascham, Roger. ''The scholemaster'', John Daye, London, 1571, p. 1. Republished by Constable, London, 1927. {{OCLC|10463182}}</ref>

Peter Newell writes that perhaps the most influential writer on the subject was the English philosopher [[John Locke]], whose ''[[Some Thoughts Concerning Education]]'' explicitly criticised the central role of corporal punishment in education. Locke's work was highly influential, and may have helped influence Polish legislators to ban corporal punishment from Poland's schools in 1783, the first country in the world to do so.<ref>Newell, Peter (ed.). ''A Last Resort? Corporal Punishment in Schools'', Penguin, London, 1972, p. 9 {{ISBN|0140806989}}</ref>
[[File:Women&#039;s prison punishment (early modern era).jpg|thumb|Corporal punishment in a women's prison in the United States (ca. 1890)]]
[[File:Jean-Baptiste Le Prince, Supplice des batogues (c. 1765–1766).png|thumb|right|210px|[[Batog]], corporal punishment in the Russian Empire]]
[[File:Husaga (teckning av Fritz von Dardel).jpg|thumb|right|200px|Husaga (the right of the master of the household to corporally punish his servants) was outlawed in [[Sweden]] for adults in 1858.]]
A consequence of this mode of thinking was a reduction in the use of corporal punishment in the 19th century in Europe and North America. In some countries this was encouraged by scandals involving individuals seriously hurt during acts of corporal punishment. For instance, in Britain, popular opposition to punishment was encouraged by two significant cases, the death of [[Death of Frederick John White|Private Frederick John White]], who died after a military [[flogging]] in 1846,<ref>Barretts, C.R.B. [http://www.thequeensownhussars.co.uk/fjwhite.htm ''The History of The 7th Queen's Own Hussars Vol. II''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111003161113/http://www.thequeensownhussars.co.uk/fjwhite.htm |date=3 October 2011 }}.</ref> and the [[Eastbourne manslaughter|death of Reginald Cancellor]], killed by his schoolmaster in 1860.<ref>Middleton, Jacob (2005). "Thomas Hopley and mid-Victorian attitudes to corporal punishment". ''History of Education''.</ref> Events such as these mobilised public opinion and, by the late nineteenth century, the extent of corporal punishment's use in state schools was unpopular with many parents in England.<ref name="historytoday">Middleton, Jacob (November 2012). [http://www.historytoday.com/jacob-middleton/spare-rod "Spare the Rod"]. ''History Today'' (London).</ref> Authorities in Britain and some other countries introduced more detailed rules for the infliction of corporal punishment in government institutions such as schools, prisons and reformatories. By the First World War, parents' complaints about disciplinary excesses in England had died down, and corporal punishment was established as an expected form of school discipline.<ref name="historytoday"/>

In the 1870s, courts in the United States overruled the common-law principle that a husband had the right to "physically chastise an errant wife".<ref>Calvert, R. "Criminal and civil liability in husband-wife assaults", in ''Violence in the family'' (Suzanne K. Steinmetz and Murray A. Straus, eds.), Harper & Row, New York, 1974. {{ISBN|0-396-06864-2}}</ref> In the UK, the traditional right of a husband to inflict moderate corporal punishment on his wife in order to keep her "within the bounds of duty" was similarly removed in 1891.<ref>[http://www.lawteacher.net/family-law-resources/domestic-violence.php ''R. v Jackson''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140907012332/http://www.lawteacher.net/family-law-resources/domestic-violence.php |date=7 September 2014 }}, [1891] 1 QB 671, abstracted at LawTeacher.net.</ref><ref>{{cite EB1911 |wstitle=Corporal Punishment |volume=7 |pages=189–190}}</ref> See [[Domestic violence]] for more information.

In the United Kingdom, the use of judicial corporal punishment declined during the first half of the twentieth century and it was abolished altogether in the [[Criminal Justice Act 1948|Criminal Justice Act, 1948 (zi & z2 GEo. 6. CH. 58.)]], whereby whipping and flogging were outlawed except for use in very serious internal prison discipline cases,<ref>[http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1948/58%20/pdfs/ukpga_19480058_en.pdf Criminal Justice Act, 1948] zi & z2 GEo. 6. CH. 58., pp. 54–55.</ref> while most other European countries had abolished it earlier. Meanwhile, in many schools, the use of the cane, paddle or [[tawse]] remained commonplace in the UK and the United States until the 1980s. In rural areas of the Southern United States, and in several other countries, it still is: see [[School corporal punishment]].