Prehistory Author
Jared Diamond writes that
hunter-gatherer societies have tended to use little corporal punishment, whereas agricultural and industrial societies tend to use progressively more of it. Diamond suggests this may be because hunter-gatherers tend to have few valuable physical possessions, and misbehavior of the child would not cause harm to others' property. Researchers who have lived among the
Parakanã and
Ju/'hoansi people, as well as some
Aboriginal Australians, have written about the absence of the physical punishment of children in those cultures. Wilson writes:
Antiquity has his hand cut off'', England, 1579 In the
Western world, the corporal punishment of children has traditionally been used by adults in authority roles. Beating one's son as a form of punishment is even recommended in the
book of Proverbs: Robert McCole Wilson argues that, "Probably this attitude comes, at least in part, from the desire in the patriarchal society for the elder to maintain his authority, where that authority was the main agent for social stability. But these are the words that not only justified the use of physical punishment on children for over a thousand years in Christian communities, but also ordered it to be used. The words were accepted with but few exceptions; it is only in the last two hundred years that there has been a growing body of opinion that differed. Curiously, the gentleness of Christ towards children (Mark, X) was usually ignored". an offender, Persia, 1910s Corporal punishment was practised in
Egypt,
China,
Greece, and
Rome to maintain judicial and educational discipline.
Disfigured Egyptian criminals were exiled to
Tjaru and
Rhinocorura on the
Sinai border, a region whose name meant "
cut-off noses." Corporal punishment was prescribed in ancient Israel, but it was limited to 40 lashes. In China, some criminals were also disfigured, but other criminals were tattooed. Some states gained a reputation for their cruel use of such punishments;
Sparta, in particular, used them as part of a disciplinary regime which was designed to increase willpower and physical strength. Although the Spartan example was extreme, corporal punishment was possibly the most frequent type of punishment. In the Roman Empire, the maximum penalty which a Roman citizen could receive under the law was 40 "lashes" or 40 "strokes" with a whip which was applied to the back and shoulders, or 40 lashes or strokes with the "
fasces" (similar to a birch rod, but consisting of 8–10 lengths of willow rather than birch) which were applied to the buttocks. Such punishments could draw blood, and they were frequently inflicted in public.
Quintilian ( – ) voiced some opposition to the use of corporal punishment. According to Wilson, "probably no more lucid indictment of it has been made in the succeeding two thousand years".
Plutarch, also in the first century, writes:
Middle Ages In
Medieval Europe, the
Byzantine Empire blinded and
removed the noses of some criminals and rival emperors. Their belief that the emperor should be physically ideal meant that such disfigurement notionally disqualified the recipient from office. (The second reign of
Justinian the Slit-nosed was the notable exception.) Elsewhere, corporal punishment was encouraged by the attitudes of the
Catholic church towards the human body,
flagellation being a common means of self-discipline. This influenced the use of corporal punishment in schools, as educational establishments were closely attached to the church during this period. Nevertheless, corporal punishment was not used uncritically; as early as the 11th century
Saint Anselm,
Archbishop of Canterbury was speaking out against what he saw as the excessive use of corporal punishment in the treatment of children.
Modernity From the 16th century onwards, new trends were seen in corporal punishment. Judicial punishments were increasingly turned into public spectacles, with public beatings of criminals intended as a deterrent to other would-be offenders. Meanwhile, early writers on education, such as
Roger Ascham, complained of the arbitrary manner in which children were punished. Peter Newell writes that perhaps the most influential writer on the subject was the English philosopher
John Locke, whose
Some Thoughts Concerning Education explicitly criticised the central role of corporal punishment in education. Locke's work was highly influential and may have helped influence Polish legislators to ban corporal punishment from Poland's schools in 1783, the first country in the world to do so. , corporal punishment in the Russian Empire for adults in 1858. A consequence of this mode of thinking was a reduction in the use of corporal punishment in the 19th century in Europe and North America. In some countries, this was encouraged by scandals involving individuals seriously hurt during acts of corporal punishment. For instance, in Britain, popular opposition to punishment was encouraged by two significant cases, the death of
Private Frederick John White, who died after a military
flogging in 1846, and the
death of Reginald Cancellor, killed by his schoolmaster in 1860. Events such as these mobilised public opinion and, by the late nineteenth century, the extent of corporal punishment's use in state schools was unpopular with many parents in England. Authorities in Britain and some other countries introduced more detailed rules for the infliction of corporal punishment in government institutions such as schools, prisons, and reformatories. By the First World War, parents' complaints about disciplinary excesses in England had died down, and corporal punishment was established as an expected form of school discipline. In the UK, the traditional right of a husband to inflict moderate corporal punishment on his wife to keep her "within the bounds of duty" was similarly removed in 1891. See
Domestic violence for more information. In the United Kingdom, the use of judicial corporal punishment declined during the first half of the twentieth century and it was abolished altogether in the
Criminal Justice Act, 1948 (zi & z2 GEo. 6. CH. 58.), whereby whipping and flogging were outlawed except for use in very serious internal prison discipline cases, while most other European countries had abolished it earlier. Meanwhile, in many schools, the use of the cane, paddle or
tawse remained commonplace in the UK and the United States until the 1980s. In rural areas of the Southern United States, and in several other countries, it still is: see
School corporal punishment. == International treaties ==