Editing Flagellation (section)

===From Middle Ages to modern times===
[[File:Supplice du Grand Knout.jpg|thumb|Punishment with a [[knout]] (Russia, 18th century)]]
The Whipping Act was passed in [[England]] in 1530. Under this legislation, [[vagrancy (people)|vagrant]]s were to be taken to a nearby populated area "and there tied to the end of a cart naked and beaten with whips throughout such market town till the body shall be bloody".<ref>{{EB1911|inline=y|wstitle=Whipping|volume=28|pages=590–591}}</ref>

In England, offenders (mostly those convicted of theft) were usually sentenced to be flogged "at a cart's tail" along a length of public street, usually near the scene of the crime, "until his [or her] back be bloody". In the late seventeenth century, however, the courts occasionally ordered that the flogging should be carried out in prison or a [[house of correction]] rather than on the streets. From the 1720s courts began explicitly to differentiate between private whipping and public whipping. Over the course of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the proportion of whippings carried out in public declined, but the number of private whippings increased. The public whipping of women was abolished in 1817 (after having been in decline since the 1770s) and that of men ended in the early 1830s, though not formally abolished until 1862.

Private whipping of men in prison continued and was not abolished until 1948.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Punishment.jsp |title=Crime and Justice – Punishment Sentences at the Old Bailey – Central Criminal Court|website=www.oldbaileyonline.org |accessdate=3 September 2023|archive-date=12 December 2018|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20181212065840/https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Punishment.jsp |url-status=live}}</ref> The 1948 abolition did not affect the ability of a prison's visiting{{clarify|date=March 2023|reason=who comes to visit?}} justices (in England and Wales, but not in Scotland, except at Peterhead) to order the birch or cat for prisoners committing serious assaults on prison staff. This power was not abolished until 1967, having been last used in 1962.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.corpun.com/counukj.htm |title=Judicial and Prison Flogging and Whipping in Britain |website=www.corpun.com|access-date=5 January 2018|archive-date=10 April 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180410145312/http://corpun.com/counukj.htm |url-status=live}}</ref> [[School corporal punishment#United Kingdom|School whipping]] was outlawed in publicly funded schools in 1986, and in privately funded schools in 1998 to 2003.<ref name=CountryUK>{{cite web |url= http://www.endcorporalpunishment.org/progress/country-reports/uk.html |title=Country report for UK |date=June 2015 |publisher=Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children}}</ref>

Whipping occurred during the French Revolution, though not as official punishment. On 31 May 1793, the Jacobin women seized a revolutionary leader, [[Anne Josephe Theroigne de Mericourt]], stripped her naked, and flogged her on the bare bottom in the public garden of the [[Tuileries]]. After this humiliation, she refused to wear any clothes, in memory of the outrage she had suffered.<ref>Roudinesco, Elisabeth (1992). ''Madness and Revolution: The Lives and Legends of Theroigne de Mericourt'', Verso. {{ISBN|0-86091-597-2}}. p. 198</ref> She went mad and ended her days in an asylum after the public whipping.

In the [[Russian Empire]], [[knout]]s were used to flog criminals and political offenders. Sentences of a hundred lashes would usually result in death. Whipping was used as a punishment for [[Serfdom in Russia|Russian serfs]].<ref>Chapman, Tim (2001). ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=EJCOl7S0UYgC&pg=PA83 Imperial Russia, 1801–1905] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230321214007/https://books.google.com/books?id=EJCOl7S0UYgC&pg=PA83 |date=21 March 2023 }}''. Routledge. p. 83. {{ISBN|0-415-23110-8}}</ref>

[[Ashraf Fayadh]] (born 1980), a Saudi Arabian poet, was imprisoned for eight years and lashed 800 times, rather than receiving a death penalty,<!--reduction from death penalty--> for [[apostasy]] in 2016. In April 2020, [[Saudi Arabia]] said it would replace flogging with prison sentences or fines, according to a government document.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-rights-flogging/saudi-arabia-to-end-flogging-as-form-of-punishment-document-idUSKCN2262VT?il=0 |title=Saudi Arabia to end flogging as form of punishment: document|website=Reuters|date=24 April 2020|access-date=25 April 2020|archive-date=25 April 2020|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20200425015144/https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-rights-flogging/saudi-arabia-to-end-flogging-as-form-of-punishment-document-idUSKCN2262VT?il=0 |url-status=live}}</ref>