On
this date, 29 May 1971, one of my beloved and favorite judges, the Lord Chief Justice Rayner Goddard passed away. I will post birching as the Weapon of the
Fortnight, as he was in favour of judicial corporal punishment. I got the
information about birching from Wikipedia.
Birching
is a corporal punishment with a birch rod, typically
applied to the recipient's bare buttocks, although occasionally to the back
and/or shoulders.
Implement
A
birch rod (often shortened to "birch") is a bundle of leafless
twigs bound together to form an implement for administering corporal
punishment.
Contrary
to what the name suggests, a birch rod is not a single rod and is not
necessarily made from birch twigs, but can also be made from various other
strong and smooth branches of trees or shrubs, such as willow. A hazel rod
is particularly painful; a bundle of four or five hazel twigs was used in the
1960s and 1970s on the Isle of Man, the last jurisdiction in Europe to use
birching as a judicial penalty.
Another
factor in the severity of a birch rod is its size - i.e. its length, weight and
number of branches. In some penal institutions, several versions were in use,
which were often given names. For example, in Dartmoor Prison the device used
to punish male offenders above the age of 16 - weighing some 16 ounces
(450 g), and 48 inches (1.2 m) long - was known as the senior
birch.
There
have been differing opinions as to the utility of soaking the birch in liquid
before use, but as it takes in water the weight is certainly increased without
compensatory air resistance, so the impact must be greater if the applicant can
use sufficient force. Traditionally, birches were soaked in brine before use,
which greatly increased the weight, flexibility and strength of the twigs,
making the punishment more severe both in terms of pain, and in terms of damage
to the victim's flesh in the form of cuts and weals. Because of its antiseptic
properties, the brine also helped prevent infection developing in the wounds
following the punishment.
In
the 1860s the Royal Navy abandoned the use of the cat o' nine tails on boy
seamen. The cat had acquired a nasty reputation because of its use in prisons,
and was replaced by the birch, with which the wealthy classes were more
familiar, having been chastised with it during their schooling. Around the same
time, the civilian courts system followed the Navy's example and switched to
birches for the judicial
corporal punishment of boys and young men, where previously a whip
or cat had been used. In an attempt to standardise the Navy's birches, the
Admiralty had specimens called patterned birch (as well as a patterned
cane), kept in every major dockyard, for birches had to be procured on land
in quantities, suggesting some were worn out on the bottoms of miscreant boys.
The
term judicial birch generally refers to the severe type in use for court-ordered
birchings, especially the Manx hazel birch. A 1951 memorandum
(possibly confirming earlier practice) ordered all UK male prisons to use only
birches (and cats-o'-nine-tails) from a national stock at south London's
Wandsworth prison, where they were to be 'thoroughly' tested before being
supplied in triplicate to a prison whenever required for use as prison
discipline.
By
contrast, terms like "Eton birch" are used for a school birch
made from smaller birch tree twigs.
 |
Medieval schoolboy birched on the bare
buttocks.
|
Position
Only
if the recipient was a small child could he or she practicably be punished over
the knee of the applicant. Otherwise the child would be bent over an object
such as a chair. For judicial punishments the recipient could even be tied down
if likely to move about too much or attempt to escape.
In
some prisons and reformatories a wooden apparatus known as birching donkey or birching pony was specially
constructed for birchings. As there were no detailed rules, prisons and police
stations devised, adapted and used many different contraptions under various
names that juvenile and adult offenders were bent over for punishment; some
models also allowed a standing or leaning position for other implements.
A
simple alternative position known from school discipline is horsing, where the person to be
punished is held by the arms over the back of another person (e.g. a
classmate), or on the shoulders of two or more colleagues. However, at Eton
College and schools of similar standing, the recipient was made to kneel on a
special wooden block.
Another
device used to immobilise offenders was a birching table, used in Scotland, with two holes in it through
which the offender's arms were inserted but otherwise left free and untied. The
offender's feet were tied into position and a strap fastened immediately above
the waist.
Whatever
position is adopted, care must be taken (e.g. by having the recipient's legs
kept together) not to strike the back of the genitals.
History
It
was the most common school and judicial punishment in Europe up to the mid-19th
century, when caning gained increasing popularity. According to some accounts,
even the legendary sting of the cat o' nine tails was less feared than the
birch in certain prisons. The birch was always applied to the bare buttocks (as
also on the continent), a humiliation usually befalling boys (like the boy's
cat, likewise on the naked posterior), the 'adult' cat to the back or shoulders
of adults—although in the 20th century judges increasingly ordered the birch
rather than the cat, even for robbery with violence (the only offence for which
adult judicial corporal punishment was ordered in the latter decades of its use
in mainland Britain).
Birching
featured in the French Revolution. One leader of the revolution, Anne-Josèphe
Théroigne de Méricourt, went mad, ending her days in an asylum after a public
birching. On 31 May 1793 the Jacobin women seized her, stripped her naked, and
flogged her on the bare bottom in the public garden of the Tuileries.
Judicial
birching in 20th-century Britain was used much more often as a fairly minor
punishment for male juveniles, typically for petty larceny, than as a serious
penalty for adult men. This was applied to boys aged up to 14 in England and
Wales, and up to 16 in Scotland. In this juvenile version, the birch was much
lighter and smaller, and the birch was administered privately by a policeman,
usually immediately after the magistrate's court hearing, either in a room in
the court building or at the nearest police station.
Today
birching is rarely used for judicial punishment, and has also almost completely
died out as a punishment for children. In Britain birching as a judicial
penalty, in both its juvenile and adult versions, was abolished in 1948,
although it was retained until 1962 as a punishment for violent breaches of prison
discipline. The Isle of Man (a small island between Britain and Ireland with
its own legal system as a British Crown dependency) caused a good deal of
controversy by continuing to birch young offenders until 1976. The birch was
also used on offending teenage boys until the mid-1960s on the Channel Islands
of Guernsey and Jersey. In the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago, the
Corporal Punishment Act 1953 allows the High Court to order males, in addition
to another punishment (often concurrent with a prison term), to undergo
corporal punishment in the form of either a 'flogging' with a knotted cat o'
nine tails (made of cords, as in the Royal Navy tradition) or a 'whipping' with
a 'rod' [i.e. switch] of tamarind, birch or other switches, and allows the
President to approve other instruments; in 2000, the minimum age was raised from
16 to 18, the legal threshold of adulthood. Trinidad may now be the only
country in the world still officially using the birch.
Non-punitive uses
In
Scandinavia, Baltics and Russia but mostly in Finland there is a tradition to
strike one's own body with soaked birch twigs in the sauna as a form of massage
and to increase blood circulation and open the pores. The twigs are chosen
carefully and do not have their leaves removed, and are often softened by
keeping them in water prior to use. Being struck by the twigs induces a
pleasant stinging sensation but very little actual pain.
