ABSTRACT
Having considered Flagellation in Russia and France, we now turn to other parts of Europe, as Holland, Germany, Prussia, Austria, and Poland had also their flogging customs. In all these countries the whipping-post or the House of Correction had a place, and the Rod was very extensively used in the domestic circle, whilst scholastic and judicial whipping was not forgotten. In various towns of Germany the whipping-post stood in the market place, and the culprit being led out, was stripped to the waist, and whipped by an appointed officer with rods composed of long birch. As many as seventy stripes were sometimes inflicted. The crowd of spectators usually included many ladies, old and young, who took extreme delight in witnessing the performance—they were so familiar with the Rod at home that they had no scruples about being present at public whippings. Indeed, parents in Austria, Germany, and Holland neither hesitated to whip their grown-up children at home, nor to send them to the whipping-houses to be corrected when necessary, and, as we have read, young ladies belonging to most respectable families were subject to this discipline, and in the case of either male or female the Rod was held to be a capital remedy for the vagaries of a first love, especially when it was not palatable to the parents.
