Criminal codes on the Delmarva Peninsula permitted judges to sentence perpetrators of crimes such as larceny, breaking and entering, wife beating, and more to lashes on the bare back well into the 20th. Under the original colonial statutes, wrongdoers received this ancient punishment for a broader range of crimes, including forgery, counterfeiting, Sabbath breaking, blasphemy, witchcraft, and dozens of other offenses. As enlightened corrections emerged in the nation, largely based on imprisonment, this punishment was dropped from the codes in most states, but it persisted on the Peninsula far longer.
Maryland, perhaps the next to last state to use flogging, moved more quickly than Delaware to eradicate whippings. In 1882 Maryland changed its code so that only one offense, wife-beating, called for whipping and/or imprisonment. The last time a corporal punishment sentence was handed down in Cecil County was December 1940 when the Circuit Court ordered that a 42-year carpenter convicted of wife-beating serve 60-days in the jail and receive ten lashes at the whipping post. A local newspaper, the Cecil Democrat, remarked that this was the first time in 46-years that a person was sentenced to t
he whipping post in Cecil. The cat-o-nine-tails were wielded by Sheriff David Randolph, who carried out the punishment in public. The whip was apparently last used on the Western Shore in Prince Georges County in 1945 when Judge Marbury ordered lashes for a prisoner. A Frederick County magistrate in 1952 ordered ten lashes for a defendant but Governor McKeldin pardoned the “barbarous and inhumane” punishment.
Delaware’s criminal code permitted floggings to occur until 1972. That year Governor Russell W. Peterson signed into law a revised criminal code in Delaware, which abolished the outdated punishment. With the passing of that act, Delaware became the last state in the nation to hold onto the pre-Revolutionary punishment. Flogging was last used in 1952 in the first-state, when a wife beater was flogged.
(The photo shows the Delaware whipping post.)
Really interesting post. I never would have imagined flogging would have been in practice during the 20th C.
Thanks HDGHistory
I have something on this on my website http://www.corpun.com but would like to include the additional facts you give. Can you quote me any of your sources? Thanks
C. Farrell
That man was my great grandfather. I only recently discovered this information through other relatives, so it’s interesting that I should stumble into this only a few days afterwards.
Glad you found the post.