The Cat o´nine tails (2)

The army and judicial cats

There is no actual cat o'nine tails outside the Navies. As the naval instrument became famous, the old scourge, the multi-tailed whip in use for centuries, inherited the name. We will deal in this article with the modern (since 1500) corporal punishment instrument used both by the Armies and the judiciary system.

 

The normal punishment cat consisted of a wooden handle about 2 feet long, with six to twelve two feet long tails that could be made of cord, rawhide or braided leather and even of thin leather strips. The tails were usually knotted at the ends. Some sources mention metal pieces at the point of the tails, but those cats, if existed, were an exception.

 

 

In the army the drummers had the responsibility of having cats available and delivered the lashes. Sometimes the handles of the whips were drumsticks.

 

As a drummer is not a especially strong man and as this version of the cat was lighter than the naval one, (a naval officer of the time estimated that four lashes with such a cat were equivalent to one with the navy’s rope ones) more lashes were given, anywhere from 25 to 1200, that count being equivalent to a death sentence. Counts of 50 to 100 were common.  Sometimes the sentence was suspended when the punished fainted or was considered medically unfit, only to be continued after a couple of days when he had somewhat recovered.

 

 

The culprit was tied with his hands up to a triangle, to a post or between two posts, in front of the troop, and lashed in the bare back. The rhythm of the lashes was marked by one of the drums, the slower the more severe punishment.

 

Supposedly a makeshift triangle made with lances was used for punishments in the field.

The expression “be taken to the halberds (or halberts)” comes from this device.

 

 

The lance’s triangles in the picture looks neither strong nor stable enough to hold a struggling man, but we assume that one could be made.

 

The British army was famous for the whipping zest of his officers, the cat being used there long after the other European countries had outlawed it. So often were British soldiers flogged that they became known throughout Europe as the ‘bloodybacks’. The French, whom Wellington’s army often faced in battle, claimed they could distinguish the British dead by the scars on their backs inflicted by floggings.

 

Whipping with the cat was also a common judicial punishment in many countries. At the beginning of the period it was used publicly, but afterwards, when public punishments came out of fashion, the whippings were delivered inside the prisons, where specially designed devices to retain the punished were used, as this one used at Wormwood Scrubs Prison, in West London, photographed in 1895.

 

 

Besides the device, there are four cats hanging at the wall, and three birch rods standing at the floor . The cat was used on the bare back. The rods, on the bare buttocks

 

Probably nowhere was the cat used and abused as in the Australian Penal colonies.
As most of the inhabitants were already “imprisoned”, as they were sent to the colonies as a punishment, the normal sentence for most faults was the cat.
It was used on the prisoners for any reason, and terrible sentences of 300 lashes were not uncommon for what could be considered minor offenses (once, for stealing a spoon). Many of the female convicts were prostitutes and the cat was a common punishment also for them.
 

But the cat is not forever gone. It was reinstated in Antigua and Barbuda in the 1990s, and Bahamas, Barbados, Trinidad Tobago and Jamaica (where it was banned again soon after) followed suit. There is usually a wave of protests every time somebody is condemned to a flogging but the law authorize it anyway, and they are still used on men and could be used even on women.
 

Published: 02/13/03

Rev: 01/17/07