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    Hans - Karl Weiß
    May 22, 2021
    Edited: Oct 22, 2021

    To flog, or not to flog: Crime and Punishment in the British Army

    in The Napoleonicist

    here the link to listen



    podcasts.apple.com
    ‎The Napoleonicist: To flog, or not to flog: Crime and Punishment in the British Army on Apple Podcasts
    ‎Show The Napoleonicist, Ep To flog, or not to flog: Crime and Punishment in the British Army - May 18, 2021

    Again very worthwhile to listen. I wonder how soldiers could survive such harsh treatment of punishment - like 1500 lashes, even when split into several series and why the officers in general found it quite convenient to do so, to keep it as tool for keeping up the discipline in the Army.

    In case I understood correctly sadistic inclined officers could initiate flogging within his company. Did the regimental commander stood aloof?

    There must be quite some unjustified floggings as well, which would brake the morale of the affected soldiers.

    While beating a soldier - was not uncommon in other armies as well, I cannot find such excessive numbers.


    18 comments
    18 Comments

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    Brendan Morrissey
    Aug 22, 2021

    You're really suggesting that Picton was worse than Napoleon? Oh, for heavens' sake.


    If he was a flawed human being, he was also a brave and extremely competent soldier - and one of the few men to have probably suffered a mortal wound in two separate battles a couple of days apart (I forget who it was now, but a prominent modern surgeon has examined all the records of his Quatre Bras wound and suggested that internal bleeding and other injuries would have killed him within the week, anyway).


    Sorry, but as a former lawyer I'm not a fan of condemning people for living by the standards of their own time, rather than ours - whether Picton or Napoleon, There is a reason that no CIVILISED legal system allows retrospective conviction for acts that were not crimes at the time they were performed.


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    Brendan Morrissey
    Aug 19, 2021

    Interesting that nobody has mentioned that flogging was common in civilian society throughout Great Britain and Ireland - I suspect quite a few of the "bad apples" who were flogged in the Army were no strangers to the cat from their civilian life. Convicted civilians - women included - would be marched through the nearest conurbation stripped to the waist to receive their punishment in a town square or market place. Given that most people could not afford a fine, and putting them in prison was expensive, I suspect that civilian society quite possibly flogged offenders rather more than the Army did (in much the same way that the WW1 Army spared the lives of men convicted of capital crimes more than civilian society of the time did).


    Incidentally, during his time as Governor of Trinidad, Picton hanged a Royal Artillery sergeant for raping a black woman; when four men were later found to have assisted the rapist, they were all sentenced to 1,500 lashes each.

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    Z
    Zack White
    Aug 19, 2021
    Replying to

    A little earlier, that was certainly true, but by the start of the nineteenth century there was a shift across Europe towards incarceration, rather than corporal punishment. That particularly took off in the 1830s with prison reforms, but a growing conversation was taking place about the acceptability of flogging in society. In most court records for the period you will find far more use of fines, and imprisonment than floggings. The army was behind the curve in terms of that wider social trend, but by 1817, there was a marked increase in solitary confinement.

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    tomholmberg
    Aug 19, 2021
    Replying to

    Picton was quite the sweetheart: https://www.naomiclifford.com/thomas-picton-louisa-calderon-torture/


    And Napoleon is supposed to be the one with mental issues.

    Like

    J
    john fortune
    May 24, 2021

    Right to the heart of a complicated and emotive theme, then as now.

    Like

    J
    john fortune
    May 24, 2021

    Following the notorious death in 1846 of Frederick White, 7th Hussars, after receiving 150 lashes, the Duke of Wellington the C-in-C ordered that punishments should be restricted to 50 lashes and medically supervised. Flogging had been a source of controversy since the end of the Napoleonic war, the cause given impetus by the publication of John Shipp's memoirs in 1829 and his public letter Flogging and its Substitute: a Voice from the Ranks. 1841 Lord Cardigan CO of the 11th Hussars made his own contribution to the issue by having a soldier flogged on a Sunday immediately after regimental church parade. In 1846 the Prime Minister, Lord Russell, observing that military corporal punishment was in marked decline, stated that he looked forward to its abolition but that he and the C-in-C believed it remained necessary until other measures in place to promote discipline took effect. White's death lead to the founding of the Flogging Abolition Society. In 1859, corporal punishment was restricted in peacetime to men considered of "bad character." It remained available in wartime. In 1868 it was restricted further to mutiny or "aggravated insubordination and disgraceful conduct" in peacetime, and available in times of war for desertion, drunkenness and neglect of duty. It was finally abolished in 1881

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    Z
    Zack White
    May 24, 2021
    Replying to

    I believe it remained legal in military prisons until the early 1900s though. Technically someone had to stand in in a medical capacity before that point - if it wasn't a medical professional, an officer had to the do it. As you say, Wellington wasn't keen on abolition - he considered it necessary to hold the worst behaved in the army in check. The review into the practice in the 1830s revealed a very candid attitude from him (and others in the army) on that front. The rank and file accepted the need for the practice for the same reasoning. There was a recognition that, by and large, they were only flogged in circumstances where an example was necessary, and they had overstepped the line.

    Like

    tomholmberg
    May 24, 2021
    Replying to

    @Zack White >The rank and file accepted the need for the practice for the same reasoning.<


    Where is the evidence for this?

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    Z
    Zack White
    May 24, 2021
    Replying to

    @tomholmberg The following comes from my PhD thesis on crime and punishment in the British army between 1808 and 1818 (forthcoming - but I ask that people respect the copyright):


    This attitude that the lash had to be used in certain circumstances was is a noticeable theme in soldiers’ memoirs. Rifleman Harris remarked that ‘the moment the severity of the discipline of our army is relaxed, in my opinion, farewell to its efficiency; but for our men to be tormented about trifles (as I have seen at times) is often very injurious to a whole corps’.[1] In essence Harris was suggesting that flogging in certain circumstances was necessary and even justified, but that it should not be used to excess, a sentiment which echoed by privates, NCOs and officers.

    Possibly the most surprising acceptance of the necessity of flogging came from an anonymous officer of the 1/23rd, who recalled that when his colonel died:

    'Among several of the soldiers of his regiment, who were at the same farmhouse with him, mortally wounded, and inquiring anxiously after their colonel, there was one who supported a very bad character and he had been frequently punished. To this man I said, to learn his attachment, ‘He is just dead; but why should you care? You cannot forget how of the cause your back to be bared?’ ‘Sir’, replied he, his eyes assuming a momentary flash and his cheek a passing glow, ‘I deserved the punishment, else he would never have punished me’. With these words, he turned his head a little from me, and burst into tears.'[2]

    This points to a remarkable degree of trust between officers and men that they would exercise their judgement (ie their discretion) when it came to punishment, and only punish in situations when it was appropriate. When considered alongside Harris’s comments, there is a clear recognition that officers were not inclined to punish excessively in order to preserve a unit’s morale, with the result that any floggings which were inflicted carried a greater significance and sent a stronger message about the unacceptability of the guilty man’s actions.

    A particularly telling example of the extent to which this attitude to flogging was widely held within the remarks can be found in the remainder of Costello’s comments of how Major Cameron punished the deserter Stratton at RCM rather than GCM, discussed at the start of the chapter. Cameron ordered the prisoner to prepare for his flogging, but then appealed to the honour of the rank and file, saying: ‘if the men of the battalion will be answerable for your future good conduct, I shall pardon you.’ When nobody vouched for the deserter, he ordered the flogging to be given, and after 25 lashes asked if Stratton’s company would vouch for him. When there was no reply, another 25 lashes were inflicted before Cameron asked if one man in the unit would vouch for him. Another 16 lashes were inflicted before someone stepped forward and vouched for Stratton. Cameron was deeply impressed by the unit’s refusal to vouch for the deserter, remarking ‘Your conduct in the field is well known by the British army; but […] your moral worth I have not known before; not a man would speak in that fellows behalf, except the man who did, whom you know as well as I do’. Cameron was alluding to the fact that the person vouching for Stratton had a poor character. As Costello himself put it, ‘This may serve to show that however soldiers dislike this mode of punishment they still like to see a rascal punished; and nothing tends to destroy all feeling of pity for his sufferings more than his having been guilty of an act of cowardice, or robbing his comrade’.[3] The rank and file may not have liked flogging, but they were willing to recognise that there were circumstances when, in their view, it was necessary.

    In light of this, it is less surprising that Anton offered an eloquent, yet scathing rebuke to the philanthropists who favoured the abolition of flogging, arguing that the lash was a necessary evil to protect the more honourable NCOs and privates from the depredations of their more troublesome colleagues:

    'Philanthropists, who decry the lash, ought to consider in what manner the good men, - the deserving, exemplary soldiers, - are to be protected; if no coercive measures are to be resorted to on purpose to prevent ruthless ruffians from insulting with impunity the temperate, the well-inclined, and the orderly-disposed, the good must be left to the mercy of the worthless; and I am glad to say there are many good men in the ranks of the army. […] The good soldier thanks you not for such philanthropy; the incorrigible laughs at your humanity, despises your clemency, and meditates only how to gratify his naturally vicious propensities.'[4]

    For Anton, the concern wasn’t so much keeping the incorrigible in check, as preserving the virtue of the respectable NCOs and privates.

    [1] J. Harris, Recollections of Rifleman Harris, ed. by H. Curling (London: Peter Davies Ltd, 1929) pp. 101-102. [2] Gareth Glover, Waterloo Archive Volume IV, p. 175. [3] Edward Costello, The Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns, ed. by Anthony Brett-James (London: Longmans, 1967), pp. 118-119. [4] James Anton, Retrospect of A Military Life during the most eventful periods of the last war (Cambridge: Ken Trotman Ltd, 1991), p. 11.

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    tomholmberg
    May 22, 2021

    Q – Why is a soldier like a mouse?


    Oman reckoned that the sentence to 1,200 lashes was delivered ‘9 or 10 times’ during the Peninsular War and 1,000 lashes were administered about 50 times. Peter Burroughs (‘Crime and Punishment in the British Army, 1815-70’ English Historical Review) says flogging in the range of 300 to 700 lashes was usual. Wellington later said, ‘British soldiers are taken entirely from the lowest order of society, … I do not see how you can have an Army at all unless you preserve it in a state of discipline, nor how you can have a state of discipline, unless you have some punishment … There is no punishment which makes an impression upon anybody except corporal punishment. … I have no idea of any great effect being produced by anything but the fear of immediate corporal punishment …’ As late as 1846 Frederick John White died after receiving 150 lashes. In 1828, two NCOs in Ireland were sentenced to 1,000 lashes apiece for “writing deceitful letters.”


    Alexander Alexander, a recruit in the Royal Artillery at Woolrich in 1801-2, reported in his memoir “there was scarce a day in which we did not see one or more of the soldiers get from three to seven hundred lashes.” John Shipp an infantry drummer during the same period estimated he inflicted flogging three times a week. (The Early Nineteenth-Century Campaign against Flogging in the ArmyJ. R. Dinwiddy The English Historical Review Vol. 97, No. 383 (Apr., 1982), pp. 308-331)


    The British Army not only flogged soldiers, but branded them as well-with a “D” for deserter, or “BC” for bad character. Branding wasn’t abolished until 1871. Flogging was banned in 1881.


    A – Because he lives in constant terror of the cat!

    Like
    tomholmberg
    May 25, 2021
    Replying to


    "Women were punished for crimes committed in the course of the war and their punish included hanging and flogging, but outside the recollections of memoirists and Wellington's letters to Lady Salisbury little formal record remains of these events." P.108


    "Most of the culprits were men, but Cooper records a woman flogged for theft and Schaumann a soldier's wife hanged for stealing flour." P. 110


    Following the drum : British women in the Peninsular War

    Sheila Simonson

    Portland State University, 1981

    Following the drum : British women in the Peninsular War (core.ac.uk)


    Like

    H
    Hans - Karl Weiß
    May 27, 2021
    Replying to

    @tomholmberg


    I quite agree, but I ask myself why was the British officer so fond of flogging and why such a system did work for such a long time, seemingly not to the disadvantage in the British Army.


    It looks like for me that army and society were worlds apart and society did not care how soldiers were treated. This may have been different in conscript armies were the connection between society and army was closer and unjust or brutal punishment not be tolerated any longer.


    Corporal punishment did last quite long in Britsh schools as well while it was forbidden in other nations the Brits went on doing it.



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    tomholmberg
    May 27, 2021
    Replying to

    The French have a term for it: "le vice anglais".

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    Z
    Zack White
    May 22, 2021

    Thanks Hans-Karl. A couple of things: Firstly 1500 lashes was never actually inflicted in the period I looked at. There was also actually a change in the law which meant that in practice, by this point, if a soldier could not take the full punishment in one go, then the remainder was remitted.


    Regarding sadistic officers - no, that's really what I'm suggesting - regimental courts martial had to be convened (and their sentences had to be approved by) the regiment's commanding officer. The Company Courts Martial dealt with minor offences (burning food, dirtiness, refusal to wash, etc), and handed out physical punishments short of flogging.


    There would, of course, have been miscarriages of justice, as in any legal system, I know of a couple of instances where people ended up taking the blame, but there was a process of appeal - regimental court martial decisions could be appealed to General Courts Martial, and GCM decision were reviewed by the regional commander, or the Judge Advocate General back home, so there were some safeguards in place to deal with it as best they could.


    With regards to beating soldiers, I think its worth bearing in mind that we are dealing with something distinct from a casual beating - this is punishment for breaking the law, not casualised violence. While informal punishments did exist, striking a soldier was generally frowned upon as 'ungentlemanly'. Interestingly, the tendency that was more commonplace in the German states of striking a soldier across the backside with the flat of the sword was discouraged by Wellington. The use of flogging varied, of course, but the issue we have is knowing how representative our surviving sources are. The available information for the French army is fragmentary (Michael Hughes mentions this in Forging Napoleon's Grande Armee), so we can't build a complete picture. The French attitude to living off the land was also more lax than in the British army, where it was not tolerated. The Prussian system is often regarded as having been particularly brutal, but Ilya Berkovich (Motivation in Warfare) has questioned this. The issue we have is that no-one has ever done an equivalent for the other armies so its hard to achieve a definite comparison. The impact that a conscription system had on this is open to interpretation.

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    H
    Hans - Karl Weiß
    May 22, 2021
    Replying to

    Thanks for taking your time to explain more and correct some of my misunderstandings.


    In case you compare the Prussian system in the Napoleonic time compared to the Brits seems to me human indeed, the alleged brutality stems maybe of the Prussian Army of Frederick the Great or his father, but indeed this has to be questioned.


    Though systematic plunder was part of the French warfare under Nabulieone, the British soldier couldn't survive when just relying on this rations when on campaign.


    Informal beating and semi formal beating existed I suppose in all armies, the French used the savatte - officers the stick, or the sword or even the fist, I must check on Morvan to see if there is a chapter on this.



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    18 comments
    Stephen Prentice
    May 26

    KGL Organisation during the Waterloo campaign