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Judicial Corporal Punishment Of Women: Illustrations

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Charles Heber Clark, though almost forgotten today, was a very successful humourist of the last half of the 19th-Century. Out of the Hurly-Burly was his most successful work, selling upwards of a million copies, and is entirely typical of the funny papers of the period.
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Okayyy...

hurly222.jpg
P.S. No, the man with the scissors is not a hairdresser...:eek:
 
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A few 19th century images of judicial corporal punishments of women. The first one is from Harper's Weekly of 14 September 1867, a news item with accompanying image (also attached separately in slightly better quality from a different source) about a pseudo-judicial flogging of a young black woman in North Carolina receiving 136 lashes with wooden rods. The second is a garish 19th century engraving showing a "Moorish" punishment of a naked woman tied to the back of a horse driven through the streets (note the bemused British tourists watching the scene), and the third a Chinese woman about to be flogged.

harpersweeklyv11bonn_0569.jpgHW1867P577214_0.jpgWoman on horse Moorish punishment.pngChinese flogging.png
 
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This engraving is a bit of a mystery to me. I have found it in two separate places online (here -- accompanying a nice but fictionalised judicial flogging story -- and here), both times captioned "A public whipping of a woman", and there certainly appear to be fairly prominent breasts. However, she has short hair (unheard of, and indeed illegal, for a woman in those days) and plainly wears boots and trousers. I wonder what the background for this image is. Maybe she is being punished for transvestism, like one of the many broadside ballads where girls join the army as drummer boys or similar to be with their sweethearts? For an example see the second image, "The Little Foot Page" by Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, showing one of those love-struck girls in mid-transition.

Corporal whipping 3.jpgThe little foot page.jpg
 
nsur1 said:
This engraving is a bit of a mystery to me. I have found it in two separate places online (here -- accompanying a nice but fictionalised judicial flogging story -- and here), both times captioned "A public whipping of a woman", and there certainly appear to be fairly prominent breasts. However, she has short hair (unheard of, and indeed illegal, for a woman in those days) and plainly wears boots and trousers. I wonder what the background for this image is. Maybe she is being punished for transvestism, like one of the many broadside ballads where girls join the army as drummer boys or similar to be with their sweethearts? For an example see the second image, "The Little Foot Page" by Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, showing one of those love-struck girls in mid-transition.

View attachment 953493View attachment 953504
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Yep, transvestism. He or she was mentioned in this thread some years ago. :)
 
nsur1 said:
This engraving is a bit of a mystery to me. I have found it in two separate places online (here -- accompanying a nice but fictionalised judicial flogging story -- and here), both times captioned "A public whipping of a woman", and there certainly appear to be fairly prominent breasts. However, she has short hair (unheard of, and indeed illegal, for a woman in those days) and plainly wears boots and trousers. I wonder what the background for this image is. Maybe she is being punished for transvestism, like one of the many broadside ballads where girls join the army as drummer boys or similar to be with their sweethearts? For an example see the second image, "The Little Foot Page" by Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, showing one of those love-struck girls in mid-transition.

View attachment 953493View attachment 953504
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It depicts Mary Hamilton a.k.a. Charles Hamilton (and, perhaps, other names) Whipped for fraud and transvestism in December 1746.
en.wikipedia.org

Mary Hamilton (transvestite) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
She married at least one woman and maybe as many as fourteen. The last believed "Charles" was a man for the 3 or 4 months they were married.
"She swore that she was lawfully married to the prisoner, and that they bedded, and lived together as man and wife, for more than a quarter of a year; during all which time, so well did the imposter assume the character of man, that she still actually believed she had married a fellow-creature of the right and proper sex."
A young woman from a "respectable" family in those days might have been quite ignorant about sex.
Mary's sentence:
"That the he or she prisoner at the bar is an uncommon, notorious cheat, and we, the Court, do sentence her, or him, whichever he or she may be, to be imprisoned six months, and during that time to be whipped in the towns of Taunton, Glastonbury, Wells and Shepton Mallet, and to find security for good behaviour as long as they, the learned justices aforesaid, shall or may, in their wisdom and judgment, require."
This seems to have happened a lot in olden days:

Lesbian Marriages in 18th-century England

Lesbian history
rictornorton.co.uk
 
Marcius said:
Yep, transvestism. He or she was mentioned in this thread some years ago. :)
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Naraku said:
It depicts Mary Hamilton a.k.a. Charles Hamilton (and, perhaps, other names) Whipped for fraud and transvestism in December 1746.
en.wikipedia.org

Mary Hamilton (transvestite) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
She married at least one woman and maybe as many as fourteen. The last believed "Charles" was a man for the 3 or 4 months they were married.
"She swore that she was lawfully married to the prisoner, and that they bedded, and lived together as man and wife, for more than a quarter of a year; during all which time, so well did the imposter assume the character of man, that she still actually believed she had married a fellow-creature of the right and proper sex."
A young woman from a "respectable" family in those days might have been quite ignorant about sex.
Mary's sentence:
"That the he or she prisoner at the bar is an uncommon, notorious cheat, and we, the Court, do sentence her, or him, whichever he or she may be, to be imprisoned six months, and during that time to be whipped in the towns of Taunton, Glastonbury, Wells and Shepton Mallet, and to find security for good behaviour as long as they, the learned justices aforesaid, shall or may, in their wisdom and judgment, require."
This seems to have happened a lot in olden days:

Lesbian Marriages in 18th-century England

Lesbian history
rictornorton.co.uk
Click to expand...
Thanks to both of you -- I did look through all the back pages of this thread some time ago, but had completely forgotten that Mary Hamilton had already been discussed!

The coloured illustration by Wikipedia and the monochrome one posted here by me and previously by Marcius are obviously based on each other, but Mary is considerably more fetching in ours than on Wikipedia, where she looks like a lumberjack with stuck-on breasts! No idea which was the original and which the copy.
 
And a few more, again from different eras and places:-

Being flogged through the streets at the tail of a cart was a common enough punishment in the past. It was the distance, or even the time taken, which was sentenced, not the number of strokes.

carted.png


Later, such public punishment being seen as unseemly, proceedings moved indoors, and specially constructed frames would be used to secure the convicted criminal for her lashing.
Victorian lashing.png
 
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