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Waiting for Judicial Corporal Punishment

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twonines said:
This is a fine example of the ritual involved in a judicial flogging, with the offender being presented to the witnesses just stripped to the waist so that her back is bared to the lash. Her breasts are inevitably displayed, but she is allowed to keep her more intimate parts covered, which helps to give the proceedings a greater sense that it is a legal process and not a salacious entertainment.
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In 1591, England's Parliament passed the Whipping Act, mandated that prisoners sentenced to the lash be stripped to the waist. Before this law was passed, prisoners, especially "sturdy" (able-bodied) beggars were to be whipped on their "naked bodies" at the cart's tail, which usually meant that they were whipped completely naked.

After the Whipping Act passed, judges would specifically order the prisoner, regardless of his or her sex, to be stripped naked "from the waist up" or "from the girdle up." At first, the prisoner would be ordered whipped until her body was "bloody," but later, set numbers of lashes were imposed. In 1672, Alice Thomas was given 39 lashes at the cart's tail when she was whipped through the streets of Boston to prison for dealing in stolen property and in 1776, Isabella MacMahon was given 100 lashes through Boston at the cart's tail in four installments two weeks apart for a similar crime. Both of these women had to strip to the waist in the middle of a New England winter.
 
elephas said:
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Seems so cruel, positioning the gallows with its fresh noose in place just outside the window of the condemned’s cell where she can’t miss the sight of it at first morning’s light.

Terror is their game! The waiting, my enforced nakedness, the maddening stillness and loneliness of my spartan cell.

What bastards they are! All so carefully orchestrated to heighten my ‘fear before’.
 
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