on whipping is drawn from the church register of Burnham,
Bucks, and is one of several similar entries: "Benjamin Smat, and his
wife and three children, vagrant beggars; he of middle stature, but one
eye, was this 28th day of September, 1699, with his wife and children,
openly whipped at Boveney, in the parish of Burnham, in the county of
Bucks, according to ye laws. And they are assigned to pass forthwith
from parish to parish by ye officers thereof the next direct way to the
parish of St. [Se]pulchers, Lond., where they say they last inhabited
three years. And they are limited to be at St. [Se]pulch within ten days
next ensuing. Given under our hands and seals, Will. Glover, Vicar of
Burnham, and John Hunt, Constable of Boveney." In some instances we
gather from the entries in the parish registers, after punishing the
vagrants in their own parish, the authorities recommended them to the
tender mercy of other persons in whose hands they might fall.

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 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 se