Running the gauntlet

[13] Runs of the gauntlet could also be preceded by a dozen lashes from the boatswain's cat o' nine tails, so that any subsequent blows from the crew would aggravate the lacerations on his back.

In 1760, Francis Lanyon, a seaman aboard the guardship HMS Royal George, was sentenced to three runs of the gauntlet, for failing to return from leave.

[14] In the early records of the Dutch colonial settlement of New Amsterdam appears a detailed description of running the "Gantlope/Gantloppe" as a punishment for the "Court Martial of Melchior Claes" (a soldier).

The Court Marshall doe adjudge that hee shall run the Gantlope once the length of the fort, where according to the Custome of that punishment the souldyers shall have switches delivered to them with which they shall strike him as he passes through them stript to the wast, and at the fort gate the Marshall is to receive him and there to kick him out of the Garrison as a cashiered person where hee is no more to returne ..."[15] Several Native American tribes of the Eastern Woodlands cultural area forced prisoners to run the gauntlet (see Captives in American Indian Wars).

He described the ordeal in a letter that appears in the book The Jesuit Martyrs of North America: "Before arriving (at the Iroquois Village) we met the young men of the country, in a line armed with sticks...", and he and his fellow Frenchmen were made to walk slowly past them "for the sake of giving time to anyone who struck us.

"[16] In 1755, Charles Stuart was taken prisoner by Lenape warriors during the Great Cove massacre, and upon arriving at the village of Kittanning, was forced to run the gauntlet.

[18] During the days of the Polish People’s Republic, the communist authorities forced political dissidents, criminals, protestors, and prisoners through a gauntlet-like process, which they called the ścieżka zdrowia (literally 'health path', but idiomatically used to mean early fitness trails).

In KOR, A History of the Worker's Defense Committee in Poland, 1976–1981, Jan Józef Lipski documents the experience of one such criminal during the June 1976 protests: On the first day I walked the "path of health" on the way from a truck to the police van, about 50 metres.