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

Worth remembering that the Prussian army (certainly post 1808) was conscript and so could not be handled in the same way. The British army was, theoretically at least, all volunteer, but some of those "volunteers" were sent to the army by the courts (often against the army's wishes) and thus were criminals to start with. As I said in a previous response, flogging was a common (and actually much more frequent) punishment in civilian society at the time, so hardly unusual - according to the mores of the day (as opposed to being judged by ours). The Prussian, Russian - and other - armies all had other forms of corporal punishment, and the Russians allowed officers to strike other ranks, which was specifically banned in the British service.

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.

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.

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.

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

Where is the evidence for this?

@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.

"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)

@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.

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

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.