History of Corporal Punishment

First published in 2005. This is a wide-ranging study of flagellation in all its aspects - disciplinary, religious, educational and erotic. It presents a mass of detailed information on the various forms of flogging administered through the ages to thieves, prostitutes, soldiers, sailors, heretics, penitents, slaves, servants, schoolboys and schoolgirls. Scott's aim was to present the complete story of flagellation and its attendant mixture of cruelty, eroticism, superstition, voluptuousness and persecution. All the historical, sociological, psychological and anthropological aspects of the practice are examined, in order to understand the full significance of flagellation as a social phenomenon. The physical, psychological and pathological effects of corporal punishment, including the effects of flagellation on sexual health, are also analysed. The book is divided into four parts - the psychology of flagellation, penal flagellation, religious flagellation and the case for and against corporal punishment - with illustrations and a useful bibliography. Written in 1938, this remains an authoritative work on the subject.