aylour, the "Water-Poet," wrote in 1630:

"In London, and within a mile, I ween
There are jails or prisons full fifteen
And sixty whipping-posts and stocks and cages."

Church and city records throughout England show how constantly these
whipping-posts were made to perform their share of legal and restrictive
duties. In the reign of Henry VIII a famous Whipping Act had been passed
by which all vagrants were to be whipped severely at the cart-tail "till
the body became bloody by reason of such whipping." This enactment
remained in force nearly through the reign of Elizabeth, when the
whipping-post became the usual substitute for the cart, but the force of
the blows was not lightened.

The poet Cowper has left in one of his letters an amusing account of
a sanguinary whipping which he witnessed. The thief had stolen some
ironwork at a fire at Olney in 1783, and had been tried, and sentenced
to be whipped at the cart-tail.

[Illustration: Whipping at the Cart's Tayle.]

"The fellow 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
pigtail, and pulling him backwards by the same, slapped his face with
Amazonian fury. This concentration of events has taken 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."

As a good, sound British institution, and to have familiar home-like
surroundings in the new strange land, the whipping-post was promptly set
up, and the whip set at work in all the American colonies. In the