ABSTRACT
While soldiers were notorious womanisers, the army did not always turn a blind eye toward rapes. This case was considered serious enough to merit a General Court Martial, which involved two days of testimony heard by thirteen officers, whose verdict was subject to royal review. During the Quebec campaign sixteen years before this trial, General James Wolfe had vowed to use the death penalty against any of his men caught mistreating women. Attitudes to rape were complex, however, both within and outside the army. Rape was a capital offence in the civilian courts, but remarkably few men were convicted. This trial is similar to its civilian counterparts in having defence testimony that was primarily aimed at questioning the chastity of the alleged victim in order to imply that she had consented to sex with the accused. The guilty verdict and 600-lash sentence shows that the army found rape victim Mary Griffin’s story more credible, but it is important to note that the penalty was not exceptionally severe. It was common for both regimental and general courts martial to award sentences of several hundred lashes for a wide variety of offences from theft to insolence. These penalties would be carried out in separate intervals, all under a surgeon’s eye, in order to ensure that the convict suffered no permanent damage that would affect his ability to do his duty.
