At Durham, in the year 1690, a married woman named Eleanor Wilson, was publicly whipped in the market-place, between the hours of eleven and twelve o'clock, for being drunk on Sunday, April 20th.
Insane persons did not escape the lash. In the constable's accounts of Great Staughtan, Huntingdonshire, is an item:
| 1690-1. | Pd. in charges taking up a distracted woman, watching her, and whipping her next day | 0 | 8 | 6 |
A still more remarkable charge is the following in the same accounts:
| 1710-1. | Pd. Thomas Hawkins for whipping 2 people yt had small-pox | 0 | 0 | 8 |
In 1764, we gather from the Public Ledger that a woman, who is described as "an old offender," was conveyed in a cart from Clerkenwell Bridewell to Enfield, and publicly whipped at the cart's tail by the common hangman, for cutting down and destroying wood in Enfield Chase. She had to undergo the punishment three times.
Persons obtaining goods under false pretences were frequently flogged. In 1769, at Nottingham, a young woman, aged nineteen, was found[220] guilty of this crime, and was, by order of the Court of Quarter Sessions, stripped to the waist and publicly whipped on market-day in the market-place. In the following year, a female found guilty of stealing a handkerchief from a draper's shop, was tied to the tail of a cart and whipped from Weekday-Cross to the Malt-Cross. It was at Nottingham, a few years prior to this time, that a soldier was severely punished for drinking the Pretender's health. The particulars are briefly told as follows in Adams's Weekly Courant for Wednesday, July 20th, to Wednesday, July 27th, 1737: "Friday last, a dragoon, belonging to Lord Cadogan's Regiment, at Nottingham, received 300 lashes, and was to receive 300 more at Derby, and to be drum'd out of the Regiment with halter about his neck, for drinking the Pretender's health."
Whipping at Wakefield appears to have been a common punishment. Payments like the following frequently occur in the constable's accounts:
| 1787, | May | 15, | Assistance | at | Whiping | 3 | men | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| July | 6, | " | " | 3 | " | 0 | 3 | 0 | ||
| Aug. | 17, | " | " | 2 | " | 0 | 2 | 0 | ||
| Sept. | 7, | " | " | 3 | " | 0 | 3 | 0 |
A fire occurred at Olney in 1783, and during[221] the confusion a man stole some ironwork. The crime was detected, and the man was tried and sentenced to be whipped at the cart's tail. Cowper, the poet, was an eye-witness to the carrying out of the sentence, and in a letter to the Rev. John Newton gives an amusing account of it. "The fellow," wrote Cowper, "seemed to show great fortitude; but it was all an imposition. The beadle who whipped him had his left hand filled with red ochre, through which, after every stroke, he drew the lash of the whip, leaving the appearance of a wound upon the skin, but in reality not hurting him at all. This being perceived by the constable, who followed the beadle to see that he did his duty, he (the constable) applied the cane, without any such management or precaution, to the shoulders of the beadle. The scene now became interesting and exciting. The beadle could by no means be induced to strike the thief hard, which provoked the constable to strike harder; and so the double flogging continued, until a lass of Silver End, pitying the pityful beadle, thus suffering under the hands of the pityless constable, joined the procession, and placing herself immediately behind the constable, seized him by his capillary club,[222] and pulling him backward by the same, slapped his face with Amazonian fury. This concentration of events has taken up more of my paper than I intended, but I could not forbear to inform you how the beadle thrashed the thief, the constable the beadle, and the lady the constable, and how the thief was the only person who suffered nothing." It will be gathered from the foregoing letter that the severity of the whipping depended greatly on the caprice of the man who administered it.