Description

University of Pennsylvania, 1947. Hard cover, 144 pp. First Edition. Good/ NO dust jacket. Grey cloth covered boards with red lettering on front and spine. Light bumping and scuffing to edges of covers. Binding tight. Pages lightly aged but otherwise clean and unmarked. NOT Ex-library. NO remainder marks. Some black and white illustrations. A detailed history of the use of the whipping post as a form of punishment in Delaware which was still being used as a form of punishment in Delaware when this book was published in 1947. The book examines the origins and social implications of corporal punishment, focusing on the practice in Delaware, where the whipping post became a notorious symbol of justice. The nickname "Red Hannah" refers to the post itself, which was used for public floggings. Caldwell explores its role in the criminal justice system and its cultural significance over the years. The use of the whipping post in Delaware officially ended in 1972 when the state abolished it as a form of punishment. The last public whipping took place in 1952. Contents include: Foreword by Thorsten Sellin; Lashes well Laid on; The Whipping Post in Colonial Delaware, 1638 - 1776; The Whipping Post and the Penitentiary Movement, 1776 - 1829; The Whipping Post Emerges as a Separate Issue, 1829 - 1900; The Movement Against the Whipping Post, 1900 - 1945; The Post - Retrospect and Prospect; Forty-Three years of Whippings in Delaware; The Post in the Forum; Notes; Appendices; Bibliography; Index. [From Foreword] The lash is probably the oldest of all punishments in the world. Its use rests on the belief that wrongdoing should be paid for by physical pain, "taken out of the culprit's hide"; that physical suffering is a correction that even the simplest mind can understand and try to avoid in the future; or that it is a kind of solvent cleansing the spirit and rendering an evil mind good.. . . Modern psychology has punctured the belief that physical violence practised on a person can render him a better man; indeed, it has proved that it usually makes him worse. And if man is not made better by a punishment, his future actions will hardly be governed by it. The deterrent power of the lash is therefore absent . . . If the whipping post neither deters nor reforms - and the author of this book has proved his case on these points - nor scares the prospective offender, its only purpose is to exact vengeance, a sordid motive for punishment which has no place in a democratic penal code. As if conscious of this, the legislator usually hides the whipping post inside the walls of the prison, safe from public gaze, like the family skeleton in the closet. . . Professor Caldwell has produced in this book the first real study of Delaware's most antiquated instrument of punishment. In so doing he has served all those interested in the history of punishment. We hope that he has also earned the gratitude of his fellow Delawareans for having taken the skeleton out of the family closet and proved that it is in need of speedy burial.