Decapitation is also a punishment known in the law of England, and as a more dignified and impressive death, is reserved for the execution of nobles, or distinguished commoners, in cases of high treason, the rest of the barbarous sentence (now abolished by act of parliament), and the previous sentence of hanging, being dispensed with by the king’s authority.
The barbarous punishment of burning, formerly part of the law, is no longer in use; Catharine Hayes, to whose case we have alluded (vol. ii, p. 73), was the last who suffered in this manner.
On the subject of imprisonment we have already commented, (vol. ii, p. 112), and from the very general attention now excited, as well by the discovery of abuses, as by an encreasing spirit of humanity, we may expect the best results.
Of punishment, not capital, there are two which require medical consideration; the one is military flogging, the other the novel invention of the tread-mill. On the first of these, we might have had more cause to complain, had the old system of the army been continued; it is however due to the character of the present Commander in Chief to notice, that under his direction the punishment of flogging has been much diminished; regimental courts martial, composed of five officers (possibly _infants_), are now restricted in their sentences to the infliction of three hundred lashes; formerly double the number was deemed a moderate punishment; and there is good reason to believe, that the discipline of a regiment, and the capacity of a commanding officer, is no longer considered in the direct, but on the contrary, in the inverse ratio of the number of lashes inflicted:[106] we need not say that the general state and conduct of troops has proved the policy of the alteration, we have only to hope that the improvement will be extended, and that the English army will not long be subjected to a degrading and barbarous torture, from which less moral men, and much worse soldiers, are exempted in every other service in Europe. It is necessary, however, that till this very desirable reform is effected, some observation should be made on the mode of inflicting this punishment.
It is generally supposed that the surgeon who is present at a military execution, is responsible for its consequences; this is not legally true, and it is physiologically impossible; the punishment is too uncertain in its operation to allow of any medical assistant’s ascertaining the boundaries of danger; moral feeling, age, strength, nervous irritability, climate, previous disease, organic defects, and other circumstances, many of which it would be impossible for the most skilful to detect, and least of all by mere view of the culprit tied up to the halberts, may render a punishment fatal, which had been intended to be lenient. No surgeon therefore can answer, either for the ultimate, or immediate consequences of this species of corporal punishment; he may indeed err on the safe side, by interposing as early as possible,[107] but there is no criterion by which he can be guided in forming an absolute opinion on the danger or safety of the punishment.