“A good sound whipping” these are the words of Aberdeen Baillie William Pyper as he addressed the eleven year old offender William Macdonald. In late 19th century Aberdeen the city’s magistrates were frustrated in their frantic search for someone willing to ceremonially beat young boys. Not an example men looking for sexual gratification. Perhaps some of the local magistrates did get a frisson of excitement at the thought of witnessing children being whipped across their bare backsides this, however, would only have been a bonus. The object of the proposed exercise was to punish and deter what was to become known as juvenile delinquency.
Corporal punishment is surely as old as humankind although the infliction of pain in a highly formal, ritualistic fashion must be a later introduction, an indication of the increasing sophistication and complexity of human association. Jumping the many thousands of years of the history of our species and arriving at Aberdeen in the late medieval and early modern period we find a city and populous well-versed in controlling, directing and chastising those who would break established norms. A brief survey, excluding capital punishment such as hanging, beheading and burning, gives a picture of a people familiar with seeing miscreants hit, beaten and humiliated in public it was said, for the greater good of civic society and no doubt at times a way of bringing to the victim a clearer understanding of the wrath of God and the dangers of a sinful path.
In 1539, for example one Ellen Ranaldsone and her mother were taken before Aberdeen’s magistrates accused of theft. Found guilty the verdict was to banish the two women from the town with the threat that should they return they were to be seized and one hait irn to be laid on their cheyk, in other words to be branded, at one and the same time inflict pain and also physically mark them for life as criminals. In a similar fashion, some seventy years later Gilbert Kempt a butcher, member of the flesher trade, stood before the magistrates facing a charge of frequent drunkeness and of associating with “harlats”. The men of the Law decided that something needed to be done not only to change the ways of the sinful butcher but to stand as an example to the rest of the public. So it was the magistrates ruled that the man be taken to the Mercat Cross and the birne irne het presentit to him thair, to terrifie him and uthers who dare to break a banishment order, all such wrongdoers were to be burnt on the cheek and scurgit throw the town that is whipped, branded exiled from Aberdeen. Twelve years prior to this judgement, and a sign that violent control of crime and criminals was not welcomed by all the town’s inhabitants, Aberdeen’s Council faced the problem finding a man willing to accept the job of the town’s executioner who was also expected to inflict corporal punishments on offender such as scurging, burning and tormenting. Councillors were told that the then current holder of the office resigned the post as he found his neighbours inhabitants of this burgh were guilty of casting stones at him and generally making the executioners life miserable.
But needs must, control of the populous was required and executioners were found and presumably given some degree of protection although through to the 18th century magistrates’ verdicts were not always given the reverence legal authorities expected as, for example happened in 1766 when three men were found guilty of theft: Alexander Robb, Walter Annesly and John Blair were judged to have illegally taken meal from a ship berthed at Banff, north of Aberdeen. This theft was at a time of harvest shortage and rising prices of basic foodstuffs, especially meal, which seems to put this act of theft in the category of a “moral act” according to the form of argument of historian E. P Thomson’s that seizures of grain were part of a class struggle with men and women struggling for and demanding the right to buy meal at prices they could afford. In other words, when supply and demand contradicted this right then so much the worse for the “law” of economics.
The three miscreants were sentenced to be sent to the American plantations for life where they along with others, including chattel and indentured slaves, were to make their contribution towards colonisation and the growth of British capital (two of the guilty men were in fact soldiers). Prior to being shipped overseas the three men had to look forward to being taken from Aberdeen prison and then whipped through the town. However, friends and supporters of the men decided this grand spectacle of Justice in action would not happen and so it was that when the “thieves” were taken from prison on the 13 June 1766 a so-called mob had gathered: as reported, the Executioner began to whip them an audacious mob convocated upon the streets in vast numbers, some of whom were armed with Stones, Clubs etc. [and they] attacked, beat and bruised several of the Military who guarded the prisoners. The men were spirited away and it seems despite rewards being offered for their apprehension the men were never recaptured.
In addition to the city’s magistrates and High Court judges all looking to control the populous and ensure established laws defending divisions of property and moral norms were obeyed across civil society; apart from the coercive civil judiciary agents there was the post-Reformation Kirk with its spiritual and moral agency deeply embedded in daily life. Much of the Church’s control was via moral exhortation, appealing to a Scottish population with a real belief in the Christian religion. Not that the rituals of the Kirk were universally admired and held in awe. James Riauch was one man who faced the wrath of the Kirk Session of Aberdeen in 1655 for mocking the Church by putting in of sneishen in his eyes to make them tear. In other words the man had previously offended the Kirk and been sentenced to public repentance in sight of the congregation. But he sought to fool the minister and elders by inducing tears to stream down his cheeks not through genuine contrition rather by the use of snuff to irritate his eyes. Having boasted of his deed Riauch was brought back before religious authority who imposed a sentence of year’s public penance for the offence. Undoubtedly a humiliating experience but one which did not entail physical punishment. Not everybody brought before the Session was so fortunate.
Women, for example, could be at the wrong end of rumours, malicious gossip and deep superstition most vividly witnessed in the terrible treatment of those found to be witches. At a much less extreme end of the spectrum was the treatment of women found guilty of prostitution (women being the source of “original” sin in the Biblical myth instantly makes the female responsible for the ills which befell mankind after eviction from Eden, an approach which seems to be replicated in the treatment of women in some expressions of Islam). One women who fell foul of the moral police was Janet Strathanchyn. She, in 1603, found herself before the all-male and no doubt righteous jury of the Church. Her crime was prostitution, she was in words of the time a harlott lymmer. For this she was strapped to a cart and drawn through the town and scurgitt thereafter banished from the burgh of Aberdeen. Just how effective this was is not recorded. Curiously a women of the same name came before the Session in 1612 and was accused of blasphemy and striking her husband, compounded by this being acted out in front of a minister of the Church. Whether this is the same Janet is uncertain what we do know is that Janet was to be locked into the joggis, a metal collar, and held for public humiliation for two hours on a market day after which wearing a crown of paper she was once again carted through the streets, And it’s worth noting that the period from the guilty verdict to the punishment she was imprisoned in the kirk vault. Another example of the physical punishment meted out to women was the case of Janet Scherar, censured for being a prostitute. For this she was to be taken to the quayside, strapped into a chair hung from a crane and then dropped successively in and our of the water; an early form of waterboarding, It was ruled that Janet could avoid the “doocking” by paying a fine of ten merks.
Education was yet another institution where corporal punishment was commonly used control unruly children. Education brought learning and whipping to young people. Over many centuries recalcitrant children were taken from behind their desks and at times savagely beaten; like the Church’s approach, school masters and mistresses believed moral uplift could result to those who were being hit and at same time be a lesson to fellow students who might be tempted to copy “bad behaviour”. In Scotland the weapon of choice was the Tawse (sometimes known in Aberdeen as the skud) a leather belt often with two tongues at the striking end. This weapon of moral improvement was only banished from Scottish schools in 1987.
One victim of strict discipline was Thomas Edward, an Aberdeen boy from a poor background who insisted on studying nature when it suited him which meant being frequently late for school and often eventually arriving carrying creepy-crawlies into the classroom much to the consternation of his teachers. Sometime circa 1820, aged about six, having been expelled from a Dame School, he was sent to an establishment at the Denburn in Aberdeen. To the frustration of his mother young Thomas insisted on going his own way which brought him into violent confrontation with the master who accused him of smuggling a bottle of “horse leeches” into the classroom. For this he was beaten across the back so badly according to his biographer that Tom thought his back was broken; having been beaten to the satisfaction of the master he was then expelled. Next his parents sent him to a school in Harriet Street where it was a centipede that was his downfall: seized by the teacher he was belted across the hands (known locally as “pandies”), belted across the back and when he denied having brought the creature to the school was told that the flogging would continue until he confessed. Another expulsion followed. Repeated floggings and expulsions failed to bring the boy to heel. Thomas went on to become a self-taught naturalist with an international reputation.
Violent beatings were not confined to Aberdeen’s lesser schools. A more vicious and what must have been deeply demeaning form of punishment was practised at Aberdeen’s Grammar School. Known as “portering” and applied for what was deemed to be a serious offence this ritual had the victim strapped naked to the back of a school porter, conveyed to a large room where the terrified child was carried from end to end followed by a master who continually flogged the unfortunate victim. With this done to the satisfaction of the master the boy (and perhaps to the horror of his fellow pupils) was then taken to the school entrance where he was allowed to get dressed and the brutal ceremony concluded with the scholar being literally booted from the premises. This was an exceptional event more typical was daily use of the tawse. One master had a reputation for beating children for errors made in composition. It was said that the teacher had scorched his belt all the better to harden the leather and make it more efficient at inflicting pain. And, with a sufficient number of scholars making errors in composition the master it was said could spend the best part of an afternoon beating boys. One pupil at the school did, however, claim the discipline did me good.
In the same period that the young naturalist Thomas Edward was being belted the wider social world continued to inflict public punishment upon offenders although in 1820 whipping of women had been abolished this still allowed, as a report of 1938 noted, whipping to be available for a wide range of offences such as beating vagrants convicted of second and subsequent offences of begging. Despite a report of 1843 questioning the efficacy of whipping to deter and reform offenders beating remained on the statute books; tellingly any persons convicted of discharging or aiming a firearm at the sovereign was especially mentioned in the list criminal acts worthy of corporal punishment; this followed a number of encounters between Queen Victoria and a less than loyal subjects. A Scottish Act of 1851 provided for whipping male juvenile offenders as an alternative to fining or imprisonment. Boys 13-14 years old, perhaps already familiar with the leather available to schoolmasters, could be faced with up to 36 strokes of the tawse. Eleven years later an amendment to the act laid down that children under 14 were to be given no more than 12 strokes and that multiple beatings for the same offence were to be outlawed.
For decades the growth of towns and cities had presented, at least in the eyes of the ruling elites, the problem of what to do with and how to control the ever-growing pool of young people who were alienated from and gaining little from the burgeoning world of industrial capitalism. Many of the parents of this social layer of boys and girls lived precarious lives as employment and unemployment rose and fell with poverty never far from the door. Children begged on the streets, thieved and turned to prostitution, and became for the wealthier classes not only a threat to person and property but must have been an eyesore, a daily reminder of the losers in the progress of capitalism; this needed to be taken from the streets. Sheriff William Watson addressed the problem head-on in the 1840s when he proposed that one way of dealing with children loose on the streets was to change the micro-environment of offenders. Not to beat them, not to change the larger social system of capitalism but to change the immediate environment, provide opportunities for children to learn the rules of good moral conduct and have a training in some craft or activity which could make them potential wage-labourers and more able to find gainful employment. This was the birth of Industrial Schools a movement which spread beyond Aberdeen to become a national phenomenon. In Aberdeen children could be forced to attend these schools with police at times acting as child-catchers.
Sheriff Watson’s projects were significant but could not and did not change the cyclical and at times cruel ups and downs of the economy neither could it remove the harshness of working conditions. Juvenile misdemeanours and crimes continued to plague Aberdeen. Of course, what was defined as unacceptable was done by social classes who lived above and beyond those at the receiving end of sentences for offences.
Which takes us back to our start, September 1885 with Baillie William Pyper advocating a good whipping for the eleven year old William Macdonald. Sheriff Watson’s solution was overtaken by the Education Act of 1872 which widened the role of the state and extended compulsory education throughout Scotland effectively eliminating the role of Industrial Schools. Into the 1880s juveniles continued to appear before city magistrates who laboured at what was to be done with juvenile offenders. By 1885 the Birch Rod rather than the tawse had become the weapon of choice available to authorities. And being a legal instrument its size and quality was tightly defined by the state unlike schoolmasters who continued to have the say in the size and weight of belt used in the classroom: as the report of 1938 defined it the whip, the birch rod, was similar to a besom (broom) with twigs bound to a wooden handle the loose ends of the twigs form a ‘spray’, which at the centre of the birch is about 6 inches in circumference. This instrument was wielded by the officially recognised whipper.
Although the Birch was being used elsewhere in Scotland, such as Inverness, the Granite City, depending on your moral view, was either behind or enlightened in this. Magistrates did favour flogging youths. For example, when 12 year old Alex Fraser, charged with stealing money from his mother, appeared before Sheriff Comrie his decision was not to send the boy to prison as the youngster showed himself willing to reform; he was employed in domestic service. So what to do? Sheriff Comrie said that it seemed a case for the birch rod. But was not to be as Aberdeen had neither a whipper nor a birch. Consequently the boy was admonished. And so the situation continued until May 1885 when it seemed to the Editor of Aberdeen’s Evening Express that at last all was well, with the headline The Birch Rod for Aberdeen. The editor declared that the delay in adopting the birch whip was down to moral reservations of citizens. The following day the newspaperman went so far as to question the good that might flow from use of the rod, claiming that the punishment was harsh and degrading. Describing the whipping post to which a convicted youth was bound arms and legs it is hardly surprising that some Aberdonians hesitated in welcoming the whip.. However, with only one dissenting voice the magistrates decided that so great was the social disruption caused by youngsters that something must be done. Primarily not to put the fear of God into the minds of the young but rather to inflict shame and pain and be a terror to others. Of course, to have a birch rod entailed employing man to wield the stinging instrument. Aberdeen needed not only the bound bundle of twigs but urgently a whipper had to be found.
This was the situation when Baillie Pyper had eleven year old William Macdonald before him in September 1885. The magistrate told the young loon (boy) that he would in all probability be birched for stealing money from a nine year old quine (girl). The words hit William hard and filled him with dread, he left the dock crying bitterly. But for all the bluster of the Baillie no birching could be done as no man had been appointed to beat the child. This was now September and the editor of the Evening Express moved from doubt over the moral worth of corporal punishment to hoping that magistrate will not dilly-dally any longer with this urgent question, but apply the rod of correction with firm, yet judicious, hand. Baillie Pyper was unhappy at the inability to find a whipper who, he said, could not only earn a good days pay, but would have the satisfaction of knowing that he had rendered a public service to the community of Aberdeen; addressing the doubters Pyper continued, There is no great harm in giving the boy a good sound whipping . . . it would be a very likely thing to induce him to mend his ways.
The Prison Commissioners of Scotland were aware of the problem of no whipper in Aberdeen as there was, they said, a strong prejudice against the punishment. Up to time of the Commissioners’ report in 1885 the whipper was expected to be a volunteer prison warder but as no man had come forward the Commissioners modified the rules, no longer expecting boys to be beaten in the local prison but henceforward punishment was to be inflicted in a police cell or court room under the supervision of the police. And yet this modification brought no one forward. 1886 passed, as did ’87. Into 1888 the ever watchful Evening Express despaired: The rod may lie in a pickle till Doomsday, and the stool of repentance rot, for all that the shrewd little rogues will care, so long as these implements cannot be put to use. Two years on and the situation had not changed and we find the magistrates continuing to dilly-dally. In March of 1890 they encouraged potential men to come forward, this by raising the rate of pay for each whipping, promising a successful candidate would receive seven shillings and sixpence for each individual case plus an annual retaining fee. It seems increasing the wage did the trick. A whipper was found
The resolve of the magistrates strengthened, probably spurred on by the debate in the local press and evidence that some Aberdonians were very much in favour of corporal punishment for child offenders. Five years previously the press had carried theheadline “The Birch Rod For Aberdeen” and now in May 1890 it informed readers “The Birch Rod At Last”. Baillie Crombie said to be one of the most clement men on the bench made the courageous decision that 16 year old William Morrison was to be whipped. William’s case had been held over from 1889 pending a final decision for theft; when he re-appeared before Baillie Crombie he was also found guilty of theft on 22nd May 1890, spending the ill-gotten gains on riding the switch-back railway at the city’s Links, by the beach. Having a repeat offender before him seems to have pushed the magistrate to his decision. William was to be given six stripes of the birch rod only if a doctor certified the boy able to take the physical punishment. Failing the medical a six-day prison sentence was to be imposed.
William Morrison passed the medical test supervised by Dr Matthew Hay better known for promoting child-welfare services in Aberdeen as well as much later the Joint Hospital Scheme of the 1920s. Taken immediately from presence before the magistrate and somewhat pale William was escorted to the court’s “Strong Room” where the grizzly task whipping was to be carried out. Under the watchful eyes of Dr Hay and Superintendent Thomas Wyness of the City Police the highly formal and ritualised beating was begun:
The lad was partly undressed, and the process of tying him up appeared to be as impressive to him as the punishment itself, on a board lying on the ground he was laid face face downwards, his wrists and ankles being bound with straps to keep him from moving. The six stripes were very quickly and smartly dealt, the lad crying piteously, and declaring he would ‘never do it again’.
Unsurprisingly the whipper is not identified. He was paid his seven shillings and sixpence and with no further whipping required he presumably returned to his normal duties. However, he must have been known for within the space of six months the appointment was getting to be too much for the man. Not that, or so it seems, he thought the wage per whipping was too low or that he had moral doubts as to beating youngsters. Somewhat like his 16th century counterpart, the Aberdeen executioner of the 1520s who apart from taking the lives of offenders also inflicted whippings; like him it was the public outrage at corporal punishment that bothered the man. The late 19th century whipper announced that he was resigning the job, handing back the birch rod. This decision was brought on by threats from neighbours, what the press delicately called a certain degree of unpopularity which it would seem attaches to the office, and the worthy fellow who has hitherto wielded the birch rod has preferred to resign the emoluments attaching to the position rather bear the displeasure of his neighbours . . . last night [hogmany] a crowd collected at his door, and gave forcible expression to their feelings on the question of public whipping. Presumably New Year celebrations and alcohol had help inflame the feelings of neighbours, emboldened them to make clear their attitude to having the whipper as a neighbour. The disturbance was in the working class area of Jack’s Brae so it might well have been that locals resented not only the threat that their children might be beaten by a City official but also that this reduced the autonomy of parents and their rights to chastise children. Whatever were the reasons, after years of dilly-dally the Rod had arrived in Aberdeen.
Wee Bits of History 