Death of Frederick John White

While serving at the Cavalry Barracks, Hounslow, in 1846, White touched a sergeant with a metal bar during an argument while drunk.

Within days the commander-in-chief of the British Army, the Duke of Wellington, ordered that flogging sentences were not to exceed fifty lashes.

The prime minister Lord John Russell noted in the House of Commons that he supported the eventual abolition of the punishment.

Flagellation, referred to as flogging in the British military, was a form of corporal punishment inflicted by means of whipping the back of the prisoner.

[5] When he was with the regiment at the Cavalry Barracks, Hounslow, in 1846 White had, whilst drunk, argued with his sergeant and touched him on his chest with a metal bar.

One private, with experience in other regiments, recounted that the 7th Hussars flogged more harshly than other units where trumpeters, who were often boys, administered the punishment.

[5][8] After being read the decision of the court-martial White was stripped to the waist and tied by his arms and legs with cord to a ladder which was nailed to the wall at the open side of the square.

[5] Critton made the first strokes with the cat, alternating with Farrier Evans after each 25 or 50 lashes (the sources vary) to rest their arms.

[8][7] By the end of the punishment White had suffered significant blood loss, which soaked his trousers; this occurred despite regulations stating that flogging was not intended to break the skin.

[7] White's back was washed with lukewarm water and treated with a cetaceous ointment and basic lead acetate.

[3][10] First Class Staff Surgeon John Hall was called to attend White on the order of Sir James McGrigor, Director-General of the army's Medical Department.

[15][14] Hall sent a separate report on the death to the Army Medical Department, noting that White's back was well healed.

However the vicar became suspicious when he heard that White had been flogged and reported the death to the Middlesex coroner Thomas Wakley.

[1] Wakley reviewed White's case, considered that the army's autopsy had been too cursory and ordered an inquest be held.

[1] Wilson also reported White had suffered "shock" to his nervous system, inflammation of the left lung and boils on his back.

[17] Wakley discovered that the army had made no effort to contact White's next of kin and adjourned the inquest at 10 pm to allow time for family members to be found, for Day's autopsy to be carried out and for Reid and Hall to be called to testify.

[14] The jury reported back on the fourth and final day of the inquest, 4 August, that they considered White's death to have been caused by the flogging.

[14] An unsigned article in the London Medical Gazette disputed the jury's findings and claimed that White had died because he was an alcoholic, though the author also thought that fifty lashes would have been a sufficient punishment.

Wilson wrote a series of papers in the Lancet in which he claimed that much of the medical profession did not appreciate that the skin was an important organ capable of affecting the rest of the body.

[19] Its last lines were:[20] Tied up hands and feet to a ladder, While the sound of the cat reached afar, Oh, Britain thy deeds make me shudder, Remember poor White, the Hussar Shortly after the inquest reported the commander-in-chief of the British Army, the Duke of Wellington, ordered that the maximum number of lashes be reduced to fifty.

He stated that Wellington had ordered that all soldiers sentenced to be flogged be examined by medical professionals to check they were fit to be so punished and that the weather conditions at the time be taken account of.

He stated that his government had constructed numerous prisons for use by the army as an alternative to corporal punishment and that the proportion of men flogged each year had fallen from 1:108 in 1838 to 1:189 in 1845.