Sins of Alexander III

1895

In his zeal to stamp out disaffection Alexander III reintroduced the knout, discontinued in a previous reign, and practically abolished trial by jury. In 1888 he sanctioned an order, signed by Galkin Vrasskoi, head of the central prison department, declaring that henceforth "no difference shall be admitted in favor of political prisoners in respect of punishment," and that "flogging with the rod and with the whip shall be admitted." This annihilated the distinction up to then maintained between political offenders and ordinary criminals, since it gave to the executive officer of prisons the right to flog "politicals" in his charge, and it was under this order, sanctioned by the czar, that Mme. Sigida received the brutal beating that ended in her death.

Another reactionary feature of prison administration for which the government of Alexander III was responsible is the introduction of imprisonment by administrative order. Previous to 1886 the administrative exile of political suspects to various places of residence in the provinces and to Siberia was common enough, but in that year was begun the practice of committing these suspects to jail and holding them there without trial as "a preventive measure," at the will and caprice of the executive. A new prison in St. Petersburg, known as "The Cross," has been designated to meet the case of this kind of offenders — that is, of people who have not committed any crime, but are simply suspected of being about to become "politically untrustworthy." — Edmund Noble in Donahoe's Magazine.

Saved by a Cat

1900

Sir Edward Osborne, Lord Mayor of London in his time, bought an ancient house in Yorkshire, and sent his wife and children thither. There were two boys among them. The Pall Mall Gazette tells of a tragedy which occurred at the house soon after.

One of the boys, the elder, dutifully obeyed when summoned to his lessons one morning in a turret, but the younger, loitering, "happened to light upon a cat which he delighted to play with, and crept after her to catch her under a table in the room which was covered over with a carpet hanging down to the floor."

Thus he disappeared, and the next instant a terrible rush of wind overthrew the turret, in which his brother and the tutor sat at work, crushing them to death.

Supposing that both her sons were there, the mother fell into convulsions. One of the maids, running in a distracted manner from room to room, caught sight of the small boy peeping from under the table, with the cat in his arms, snatched him up and bore him in ecstasy to his mother, he only crying:

"I pray thee, I pray thee, do not whip me!" — Youth's Companion.

Advantages of the Spanking Machine

1905

"I see," said the mother of five, "that out in Peoria, Ill., they've invented a machine for spanking children. She cast a meaning glance at her son Willie, who shifted uneasily in his chair, but said nothing.

"I was thinking," she went on, speaking to no one in particular, "that I would send on to the inventor and get one of the machines. It would come in handy for me, and I could rent it out among some neighbors I know and make money on it. That is, of course, if I didn't use it all the time, which I might." Willie squirmed again, and thanked his stars the machine wasn't there yet. His mother went on.

"I s'pose they have various sized hands for the machine, to be used in accordance with the gravity of the spankee's offense and the spanking area presented to the spanker. For instance, for such offenses as hanging to the tall end of ice carts, about a No. 2 hand, with spikes in it would do. For riding up in the dumbwaiter and scaring the life out of the cook so that she gives notice, a No. 9 hand, with explosive torpedoes in the palm, wouldn't be any too big or heavy. If the machine works with a crank, as I imagine it does, the rapidity of the stroke could be regulated, too, and the severity of the punishment thus graded according to what the young man ought to have coming to him. "Of course, I'm merely talking from hearsay, now, but I think one of those machines on every street corner would be a good thing. They could build a little booth around it and charge admission. Then when a small boy, out with his mother, insisted on running across a crowded street ahead of her, and giving her heart disease by nearly getting run over by cars and automobiles, she could just lead him into the corner spankorium and attend to him good and plentiful. I think the city ought to know about this and provide such places.

"It would be a great machine to act as a deterrent. If a boy was bad you could say to him: 'Be good, now, or I will put papa's hand with the cast-iron fingers on it into the spanker and turn it loose on you.' That would do some good, and I don't think the small boy would think it a bluff either."

—Oakland Tribune, Oakland, CA, Dec. 2, 1905, p. 7.

Pilloried and Flogged, Some of the Gruesome Details

1878

Pilloried and Flogged

A recent dispatch from Wilmington, Delaware, says: This morning, at a few minutes past ten o'clock, in a cold, drizzling easterly rain storm, the first of the culprits to be flogged as a punishment for felony in this county at Newcastle was marched into the jail yard, attended by the warden and sheriff.

Mounting a rickety old ladder, two prisoners were promptly pilloried. For an hour they stood there in the face of the few spectators who ensconced themselves in corners of the jail yard to be sheltered from the rain which pelted pitilessly upon the victims of the pillory. At the expiration of an hour they were released. One retired.

The other, William Barry, a hardened criminal, by the way, who boasted that he had been in thirty-six different jails in the country, was strapped to the whipping post, stripped bare to the waist, and received quite a severe flogging. He felt the punishment severely, and looked imploringly at the sheriff as the lash descended twenty times on his bare back.

A lad named McGuire, evidently of delicate organization, was next stripped and tied to the post. He was very anxious and frightened. The sheriff dealt mercifully with him, and the twenty lashes did not much more than well redden his back.

The next was Monk Austin, who was convicted of a petty larceny, and although he shivered and was much affected by the cold rain on his naked skin, he bore his punishment with nonchalance.

A young fellow named Kiefly, the companion of Austin, stepped up to the post, threw his coat off jauntily and received his twenty lashes with indifference.

The next three were colored men; one convicted for larceny, the other two for felonious assault. They each received the usual twenty lashes and wriggled and roared under the infliction.

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The name of the potato bug, in Germany, is Pffischtendiriwechtenlawbedenachtoschooptenschafflichtheit. This is what makes it so hard to kill them.