What follows is a verbatim, [save for a few illegible words, at which a shrewd guess has been hazarded] transcript of a handwriten document, which appears to be a draft or a copy of a letter sent, during the 19th Century, by a certain Major Wyckham-Parkes to the Governor of the Cape Colony. It was found in a 'secret' drawer of an old bureau and is submitted in the interests of contrasting the 'modern' corporal punishment of juveniles, which has been generally abolished as being 'cruel and unusual' with an instance of judicial chastisement which, in those days, was apparently regarded as being quite suitable for infliction on the bare buttocks of offenders as young as 12 years of age and was, in fact, so inflicted, despite the presence of circumstances which could, by today's standards, certainly be regarded as both 'cruel' and 'unusual'. The document reads as follows:
MY LORD GOVERNOR, May I introduce myself as one of Her Majesty's humble subjects, who has spent many years in Her service in this and certain of the more remote Domains and Colonies which constitute Her Empire.
I now importune Your Excellency, however, not in that capacity, but in a matter of dual concern, relating to both the administration of Justice and the employment of public monies.
Some weeks ago three very youthful criminals were arraigned in the Court of the Resident Landdrost for the District of Worcester, on charges relating to several incidents of housebreaking and robbery, which appear to have been both planned and executed with a skill far beyond the tender years of the boys concerned, but who, nevertheless insisted that they had acted on their own initiative and for their own benefit, a statement which was vindicated by their giving up some, but by no means all, of the stolen property.
For the details of the earlier history of the incident, I am indebted to one of the Constables involved, who happens to be a tenant of mine, but I was present, fortuituously, when the matter reached its ultimate conclusion and Your Excellency may be asured that that part of the sorry narrative is recounted without embellishment or exaggeration.
It appeared that the three young criminals, aged 12 and 13 years, were the products of very dubious milieus and that the principal concern of their parents, both prior to and during the trial, was that they, the parents, should not be held responsible or even accountable, for the actions of their offspring.
So intense was this desire, prompted, some hold, by the fear of a scrutiny which might reveal a more than casual interest in the balance of the stolen goods, that the three fathers and one of the mothers came forward, mero motu, to testify, not in mitigation or on their sons' behalf, but as to their indocility, habitual truancy and incorrigible disobedience.
All parents insisted that they had done everything in their power to reform their sons and the self-righteous and exculpatory burden of their plea to the Court was that the lads should not be incarcerated (which would doubtless have deprived their elders of their "earning" capacity), but that they should be whipped as severely as the Law allowed in a final attempt at saving them from a lifetime of penal servitude, if not an early demise by the Hangman's noose.
The boys, themselves, clearly overawed by their surroundings and their parents' perfidy, offered neither explanation nor denial in their own defence and His Worship, having found them guilty as charged, had no difficulty in acceding to the representations which had been made to him and sentencing each of them to a thorough flogging, specifying in a detail which appears to have been intended more in terrorem than for the guidance of the officials concerned, that the whippings, which were each to consist of two dozen strokes of the birch rod, were to be administered to their naked posteriors with all the vigour at the disposal of a certain Sergeant Travers.
The Court then adjourned, leaving the lads to contemplate their fate while the Constabulary made the necessary preparations. These were completed, albeit, as will appear. defectively, by early afternoon and, shortly after the luncheon recess, the very apprehensive trio were taken from their cell to a quadrangle in the Court precincts to undergo their punishment.
On arrival, all three boys were divested of their trousers and one of them, selected by an undisclosed ritual, had actually been mounted on the back of a Constable with his shirt tucked up to his armpits, leaving his entire lower body quite bare and his naked buttocks traditionally positioned for chastisement, when it emerged that there were no serviceable birch rods available.
The "horsed" lad was returned to terra firma and when it became obvious that the difficulty extended beyond the precincts of the Court itself, decorum was restored by the half-naked boys' being permitted to resume their lower garments, whereafter their temporary and perhaps unwelcome, reprieve took them back to their cell for the night.
Next morning, an embarrassed Head Constable reported that, not only was there a total dearth of existing birch rods in the district, but that, as the species betula was not indigenous to the area, no raw materials for their manufacture were available.
The problem was exacerbated by Sgt. Travers's opining that to inflict three floggings of such magnitude, he would require at least six and possibly even eight rods, as the forcible application of the slender twigs to firm young flesh was prone to fraying the instrument to a stump within from eight to twelve strokes, whereafter the punishing effect became negligible and the rod required replacement. However, he further opined that if substitute rods were to be fashioned from willow wands or light hazel switches, the recipients would neither know, nor care, that they were not actually being birched and that the resultant laceration of the six bare buttocks would also be quite indistinguishable from that of a true birch flogging.
In the result and perhaps ill advisedly, an application was made to the Additional Landdrost, in the absence of his superior, who had left for his farm in the Koue Bokkeveld, for the modification of the sentences to permit of the use of rods fashioned from twigs other than birch and it was the rejection of this at once reasonable and humane request which, in my humble opinion, has led to a highly expensive and inconvenient travesty of justice.
Yet another day passed in a fruitless search for a solution to the impasse, by which time the unfortunate boys were becoming decidedly anxious about their impending fate and it was not until that evening that a chance word in a local public house indicated that the Cadets at the Castle in Cape Town were regularly birched for their misdemeanours, the cane being reserved for the buttocks of errant enlisted boys and the 'cat' for the backs of more mature soldiers whose conduct had incurred official displeasure.
A decision, which met with judicial approval on this occasion, was accordingly taken, to send the three miscreants to Cape Town under escort, with a request to the Governor of the Castle that he should cause the necessary punishment to be inflicted on their persons and should then return them to the local jurisdiction for formal discharge.
I find it highly repugnant that these children, reprobates though they may be, having already endured over two days' anticipation of a severe and painful flogging, should then have been obliged to undertake a lengthy journey under trying and foreign conditions, for the express purpose of submitting their young bodies to fustigation at the hands of total strangers who are well versed in the punitive application of the rod and worse, to the presumably hardier hides of much older victims.
Be that as it may, the morning of the third day saw the departure of a motley detachment consisting of three mounted Constables and the three young convicts who were far from confident horsemen and had been mounted on the most docile nags available, not that that would have protected their rumps from a degree of chafing and irritation which, in view of what awaited them in Cape Town, they certainly did not deserve.
The boys were originally tied to their saddles, but this very dangerous arrangement was soon superceded by their being put on their honour, dubious though it might be, not to abscond if allowed to ride untethered.
The first day's progress was minimal as none of the lads could control his almost moribund mount at more than a walk, trotting being intensely painful and cantering leading to a headlong gallop and, inevitably, the jettisoning of the rider from the saddle.
An interesting development, though, was that the combination of the adventurous spirit of youth and the challenge of a new experience produced a marked improvement in horsemanship by nightfall, albeit at the cost of very chafed knees, stiff thighs and, presumably, saddle-sore seats.
The night's camp also produced a problem for which the adult members of the party were totally unprepared. The day's promise not to escape had been extended, obviating the necessity for shackling the trio together and each constructed his own grass bed and attempted to sleep under a light horse blanket. However, the combination of fear, lonliness, cold and the unfamiliar surroundings took its toll and in the small hours the men were distressed to hear the unmistakable sounds of wretched sobbing from their young charges. Being basically kindly men and not altogether enamoured of their current duties, each summoned a shivering, terrified youngster into the relative comfort of his own bedroll, where sleep came, fitfully, in the proximity of a large, if not entirely friendly, body.
I am assured that no impropriety occurred between men and boys and accept that assurance in good faith, but confidences were offered and details of the impending ordeal sought, which indicated that, hardened criminals though they might be, the lads remained essentially three very scared and apprehensive children on an errand which, they knew, was destined to have a most unpleasant conclusion.
Based on what he was told, my informant believes that (and this forms the crux of my principal complaint to Your Excellency), had they been flogged that first afternoon, the boys would have accepted their whippings, if not cheerfully, then with equanimity, as having been a deserved and properly inflicted punishment for known misdeeds. However, the passage of time and the spectre of an "army flogging", which had been hanging over their heads for so long, had blurred their perceptions and distorted their realisation that they were STILL merely about to be thrashed, as ordered, so that their immature and ill-informed young minds had fallen prey to anxieties out of all proportion to their crimes, to the point that my informant's boy confidently expected to be flogged like any soldier, with the 'cat' and, probably, to die during his whipping.
Out of sheer humanity they were reassured (if that is an appropriate word, under the circumstances), that no violence at all would be addressed to their backs, that their haunches, only, would be the targets of standard birch rods and that no more than the ordered number of strokes would be administered (for whatever consolation THAT might bring.)
It apparently brought a good deal and the shared sleeping arrangements continued for the rest of both journeys, obviating any further outbursts of grief although the youngest boy did have an acute nightmare during the night before arriving in Cape Town, imagining himself already being stripped and whipped.
The three constables all confessed to having developed a genuine and somewhat embarrassing fondness for and bond with, their far from unprepossessing charges and having been impressed by their boyish courage and stamina.
By the end of the third day, the party was moving along at a steady pace and the boys were riding competently, if untidily, with elbows flapping and bare feet dangling, their stirrups having long since been stowed away. My informant tells me that he, for one, had considered appealing for a reprieve for "his" boy, but gave up the idea because of the delays which it might have caused.
The weary little party arrived at the main gate of The Castle just before noon on the fourth day, a full week after the boys had been sentenced and made its business known, to the initial incredulous amusement, but subsequent consternation, of the duty officers and, eventually, the Governor of the fortress, himself. He flatly refused, at first, to have anything to do with the correction, corporal or otherwise, of civilian boys, but, once it had been earnestly represented to him by the Constables that the unfortunate youngsters had already suffered severely by the delay in executing their sentences, he relented. However, he was not prepared to have them flogged privately or on a special occasion, but directed that they should join in the following day's regular punishment parade, and that it was to be made absolutely clear that they were not in any way connected with the Military Establishment, but were being dealt with there for reasons of convenience, only.
This further deferment implied that, although they could not witness the proceedings, the three boys had to suffer the further ordeal of hearing the unmistakable sounds of two enlisted boys' being soundly caned that afternoon, the snap of wood on naked flesh and the howls of the recipients being enough to disturb even the Constables, who had nothing to fear.
Tension built up to a crescendo during the next morning, with the victims-to-be alternately progressing through stages of extreme bravado and abject terror. At length, in the vicinity of 1.30pm, a bugle call summoned the entire Garrison and also those of the Governor's guests, of whom I happened (on my honour, by chance!) to be one, to the parade ground within the Walls, to witness punishment. Many of the guests of the fairer _s_e_x_ declined the invitation, but several, intrigued, no doubt, by the prospect of seeing some fresh young flesh, joined the officers on the balcony, which directly overlooked the slightly raised dias on which the necessary acoutrements were arrayed.
That day, the parade encompassed three cadets, who were all to be birched for slovenliness and lying, a further two enlisted boys, who were to be caned for fighting in a public place and a Rifleman who was to be flogged with the 'cat' for theft. Finally and as an afterthought, came the execution of the sentences of birch floggings, imposed by a District Court on three civilian boys, it being made to sound as though these were so trivial as to be hardly worthy of mention.
The arrangements were both remarkable and disturbing in that the Governor's decree of visible separation of the two groups of lads was implemented not only by assembling them in separate columns, but also by parading the military delinquents in full uniform and not requiring each to be stripped [and then to the necessary extent, only,] until his own moment critique arrived. The young civilians, however, were brought on to the parade ground quite bare, to the evident amusement, nay, delight, of the (particularly female) spectators, whose behaviour resembled that of a Roman mob at the Circus Maximus, baying for the blood of the Gladiators.
In addition, once the flogging of the soldier and the caning of the two common boys had been completed, I obtained my first sight of the birch rods, which were then to be applied to the naked haunches of the Cadets and, presumably, thereafter be visited on those of the smaller lads. I was most distressed to observe that these were not of the bushy, relatively mild, Etonian pattern, of which I had some experience, but of the slender, cutting, "Manx" or "Borstal" type, each consisting of of some 6 or 8 long, supple, trimmed and wellpickled birchen twigs, all in full bud and, I opined, capable of inflicting appaling damage to their unclothed targets.
I could not envisage the learned Landdrost's having sentenced these very young convicts to floggings of such magnitude, had he anticipated their being administered with instruments of such a formid able nature and I seriously feared for the well-being, if not the actual survival, of the three children, under these unforeseen circumstances.
In this, however, I discovered that I had not made due allowance for either the competence or the compassion of the worthy Sergeant-at-Arms and his staff of well-trained Drummers.
It was never my desire or intention to take this opportunity to champion the cause of the proponents, or the opponents, of flogging as a punishment form. I accept, as. I assume, does Your Excellency, that the corporal correction of boys and men is intrinsic to the modern civil, military and naval regimens and is likely to remain so.
It is thus unnecessary for me to dwell on the castigations of any of the military personnel, save to mention that they were inflicted with great efficiency by obviously skilled and practised Drummers and resulted in the Rifleman's being cut down with heavily scored and somewhat mangled shoulders, upper back and ribs (whose appearance actually caused one of the lady (?) spectators to swoon quite away, but whether from shock or excitement, I cannot tell), two very well-striped, bruised and swollen, but not, as far as I could see, unduly bloody, rumps and six uniformly, if superficially, flayed buttocks, which, if Public School experience still holds good, will sting and smart for a while, itch intolerably for a week at most and then heal without a trace.
More germane to the burden of this complaint is the undoubted effect of the young civilians' being privy to the preceding chastisements and, of course, the fate which subsequently overtook the boys themselves.
One can merely speculate over the near mortal terror which these children must have suffered as adult flesh was torn by the lash and five far older and larger and, therefore, presumably, more resiliantposteriors, were reddened, ridged and skinned to the accompaniment of writhing and roaring which testified to the agony which the sturdy victims were enduring.
To my mind, by the time the third Cadet had received his twelfth lusty cut and had been released to seek such comfort as he could obtain for his raw bottom, the three younger lads had been punished enough, but that was, of course, not the official view and the three naked boys, all of whom were, to their blushing chagrin, experienceing unmistakable, if small and immature, resurrections of the flesh, were brought to the roughly constructed dias which accommodated the necessary equipment, together, while the operational staff was augmented by the addition of three more Drummers and a further two soldiers, all in their shirtsleeves. These ominous preparations reduced the already terrified boys to floods of tears, but proved to operate to their advantage, as none of them was obliged, in consequence, to witness the flogging of any of his fellows in advance of receiving his own whipping.
Whereas the Cadets had each assumed the required position, 'horsed' on the back of a soldier, in a single athletic bound, this was clearly beyond the prowess of the smaller lads, who were, again, simultaneously lifted bodily, by their armpits and deposited on the waiting backs of the, now three, soldiers, while a Drummer, armed with one of the truly formidable birch rods, similar to those which had wreaked such havoc on the tails of the Cadets, took up his position on each side of the visibly flinching bottom of a naked, dangling, boy. It seemed that the three additional Drummers were all left-handed exponents of their trade, as there was certainly no awkwardness in their handling of their long, flexible instruments of correction. The advantage (?) to the victims, of these arrangements was not only that their floggings would be completed with maximum alacrity, but also that the cutting effect of the finely budded tips of the rods would be spread over both buttocks and flanks, instead of damaging one, only, as had been the lot of the Cadets.
However, the most significant departure from what had gone before, lay in the modus operandi adopted by the six Drummers, who proceeded to display a truly impressive level of expertise in carrying out what must have been a somewhat distasteful task.
Bearing in mind that each young rogue received not one, but two, dozen strokes of the birch, there is no doubt but that they were all soundly and painfully flogged, but and herein lay the element of mercy, although the strokes were inflicted as noisily as before, they seemed to have considerably less force on impact and the slashing, drawing, effect which had so lacerated the older boys' bottoms was totally absent.
In the result, the imposition of the full quota of lashes to each small, round tail and upper thighs produced a deep red, corrugated surface and, it is safe to assume, considerable heat and sting, but nothing which could not just as well have been administered with a bundle of willow or hazel switches, in Worcester.
While far from 'mild', thse floggings were so manageable, from the obviously relieved lads' point of view, that the party commenced its return journey on the next day but one, the boys' recently-whipped hindquarters seemingly in no way incommoded by the hard leather of their saddles.
It will now remain to be seen whether the punishment, taken as a comprehensive experience, produces any lasting deterrent effect on youngsters who clearly have a criminal bent and background; be that as it may, I question and submit that Your Excellency might do so too, whether these mere children should ever have been subjected to this protracted ordeal AND whether there can be any justification for the expenditure of public funds totalling, at a conservative estimate Ten Guineas on what smacks (if Your Excellency will forgive the unintentional pun) of an exercise in futility.
Having unburdened myself, at such length, of much righteous indignation, not altogether untinged by sympathy for my young, if unworthy, townsfolk,
I have the honour to remain Your Excellency's humble and obedient servant, Chas. F. Wyckham-Parkes, Maj. (Ret.) R. K.M. R.