Wednesday, 23 February 2011
Martha and the Whipping Cart
I'm often asked what the tradition of the whipping cart was. One of the key episodes in "On Angel Mountain" is that in which Martha is dragged behind the whipping cart and scourged by the henchmen of the evil magistrates. This sort of public (and extremely painful) humiliation was normally reserved for women of low status who were found guilty of relatively minor misdemeanours -- it would have been virtually unheard of for a female member of the gentry to be subjected to such a whipping. That is why Martha feels so soiled by the experience, quite apart from the fact that her back is striped and bleeding -- and why, in the end, the crowd gives Martha its sympathy and turns against the magistrates. I found this old illustration:
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6 comments:
Very interesting... But do you think that a male of low status might have the same punishment, even it was very rare?
Hello Finley! Yes, men were sometimes whipped through the streets like this -- but it was especially humiliation for women. And they could be sentenced to a whipping like this just for gossiping, nagging their husbands, or saying unpleasant things about their neighbours. And of course they could be executed or deported to Australia just for stealing a shirt from a washing-line or taking a cabbage from somebody's garden.
I meant "especially humiliating"...
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Thanks Anon -- hope you are enjoying the books (and not just for the social history content)........ novel number 8 coming soon. Watch this space.........
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