Birched by the court
Posted by Haron on 13 Jul 2008 at 09:03 am | Tagged as: Historical Punishments
In a rather fat volume “English Juvenile Courts” by Winifred A. Elkin (pub. 1938) I found a great passage that compares corporal punishment at home or school with court-ordered birchings.
Over the previous pages I’d got the impression that Ms Elkin didn’t like judicial corporal punishment very much, but with these few paragraphs she mad me wonder.
The conditions under which birching is administered in the courts are so different that no comparison with the results of birching by parents or in schools has any value.
If a boy is birched by his father, the punishment is carried out by someone for whom he may be presumed to have affection and respect… If he is birched at school, he may accept it as part of the discipline of an institution to which he feels he belongs and to which he recognises his responsibility. If neither his affections nor loyalties are involved, birching may perhaps cow him or make him more careful… It will not in any case effect any real moral improvement.
When it does good, it is not because the pain involved acts as a restraint against future misbehaviour, but rather that the punishment is taken as a sign that he has offended against the code of an organisation or of an individual whose standards he accepts and admires.
But it is a different matter when a boy is birched by a police officer by order of a court. Here it is certain neither his affections nor loyalties are involved… At the best, he will take it as an entirely impersonal business. If it restrains him in the future, it can only be because he fears its repetition.
Hang on, I thought as I read this. What she’s saying is, the only effective judicial birching is a really hard one, so flog ‘em till they scream. She can’t be saying that. She’s a nice lady, Ms Elkin, right? Well…
It is actually not unknown to find boys who express a preference for a birching rather than other methods. Clarke Hall said that he had known on several occasions boys who asked to be birched rather than to be sent away, but that he had never known the converse…
If the pain of it is reduced to vanishing point, it is hard to see what good can be expected of it from a punitive standpoint.
Yep, flog ‘em till they scream.
Actually, what the writer is doing is arguing ad absurdum: a moderate birching is no good, but no decent person would want to give a youngster a really hard birching, therefore we may as well get rid of judicial CP altogether.
However, I can just hear Abel pontificating along the lines of that last quoted paragraph. “If the punishment doesn’t hurt, young lady, it isn’t doing any good from the punitive standpoint.”
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Abel, pontificating? Oh, Haron, surely he would never do that!
OK, well maybe he would, but if he can use that last line with a straight face, I’d be most impressed.
But it’s okay, because that rule only applies to boys being birched by the courts. Which you’re not. So you can just tell Abel to shut up and get his facts straight. (Not that I’m saying you should, of course. Just that, if you wanted to, it would be totally justified.)
While reading this I couldn’t help but wonder about it in terms of class. Public schools boys would have been inculcated with a sense of affection and responsibility to not only the school birching/caning them, but also to the State. Whereas lower class students didn’t seem to have the same thing inculcated into them with the birch/cane. Just a healthy respect for the pain of the birch and/or cane — as was the case with judicial birching. So basically, those lower class brats aren’t worth the trouble.
Or maybe A. and I have just had too many discussions on class structure lately…
When the Revolution comes, there will be birchings for all (who want them, that is).
LOL Natty. Birching the plebs isn’t worth the harm to the environment, I guess!
Well, I didn’t say they had to be *genuine* birches. I mean, ya know, Adams and Gillian’s has some fine synthetic ones.
And it’s only for plebs who want them. I mean, the Revolution is all about bringing safe, sane, and consensual to the masses since the bourgeois already have it.