birching: Information and Much More from Answers.com

Birching is a corporal punishment with a birch rod, typically applied to the recipient's bare buttocks, although occasionally to the back and/or shoulders.

The implement

A birch rod (often shortened to "birch") is a bundle of leafless twigs bound together to form an implement for flagellation.

Contrary to what the name suggests, a birch rod is not a single rod and is not necessarily made from a birch tree, but can also be made from various other strong but flexible trees or shrubs, such as willow (hence the term willowing). A hazel rod is very tough, and therefore particularly painful; a bundle of four or five hazel twigs was used from 1960 until 1976 on the Isle of Man, the last place in Europe to use birching as a judicial penalty.

Another parameter for the severity of a birch rod is its size - i.e. its length, weight and number of branches. In some penal institutions, several versions were in use, which were often given names. For example, in Dartmoor Prison the device used to punish male offenders above the age of 16 - weighing some 16 ounces and a full 48 inches long - was known as the senior birch.

There have been differing opinions as to the utility of soaking the birch in liquid before use, but as it takes in water the weight is certainly increased without compensatory air resistance, so the impact must be greater if the operator can use sufficient force.

In the 1860s, the Royal Navy abandoned the use of the cat o' nine tails on boy seamen. The cat had acquired a nasty reputation because of its frequent use in prisons, and was replaced by the birch, with which the wealthy classes were more familiar, having been chastised with it at their private schools. The judicial system followed the Navy's example and switched to birches also. In an attempt to standardise the Navy's birches the Admiralty had specimens according to all prevailing prescriptions, called patterned birch (as well as a patterned cane), kept in every major dockyard, for birches had to be procured on land in quantities, suggesting some were worn out on the sore bottoms of miscreant boys.

The term judicial birch refers to the severe type in use for court-ordered birchings, especially the Manx hazel birch. A 1951 memorandum (possibly confirming earlier practice) ordered all UK male prisons to use only birches (and cats o' nine tails) from a national stock at south London's Wandsworth prison, where they were to be 'thoroughly' tested before being supplied in triplicate to a prison whenever a procedure was pending for use as prison discipline.

By contrast, terms like Eton birch (after the most prestigious private school in England) are used for a birch made from birch tree twigs.

Position

The recipient, if small enough, can go over the spanker's lap or knee but would often be bent over an object (as in the expression 'over a barrel') to raise the buttocks, and even tied down if likely otherwise to move about too much.

In some prisons a wooden apparatus known as birching donkey or birching pony, referring to the silhouette of an equine, was specially constructed for birchings. As there were no detailed rules, prisons and police stations over the empire devised, adapted and used myriad contraptions under even more numerous names that juvenile and adult offenders were bent over to have their bare buttocks professionally lashed; some models also allowed a standing or leaning position for other implements.

A simple alternative position known from school discipline is horsing (again an equine etymology), where the person to be punished is hung by the arms from the neck and over the back of another person (e.g. a classmate), or on the shoulders of two or more colleagues.

A particularly ingenious device was a flogging table with two holes in it through which the offender's arms were inserted but otherwise left free and untied. When the offender's feet were tied into position and a strap fastened immediately above the waist, the offender would be immobilized but, having free (but useless) movement of hands and arms, would thrash about in the upper body in futile attempts at escape. This imparted a particular sense of helplessness to the offender as correction was applied.

History

It was the most common school, home and judicial punishment in Europe up to the 19th century when caning gained increasing popularity. According to some accounts even the legendary sting of the cat o' nine tails was less feared than the birch in certain prisons. The birch was always applied to the bare buttocks (as also on the continent), a humiliation usually befalling boys (like the boy's cat, likewise on the naked posterior), the 'adult' cat to the back or shoulders of adults -- although in the 20th century judges increasingly ordered the birch rather than the cat, even for robbery with violence (the only offence for which adult judicial corporal punishment was ordered in the latter decades of its use in mainland Britain).

Judicial birching in the 20th century was used much more as a fairly minor punishment for young boys, typically for petty larceny, than as a serious penalty for adult men. In this juvenile version, the birch was much lighter and smaller, and the birch was administered by the police, usually immediately after the magistrate's court hearing, either in a room in the court building or at the nearest police station.

In the United States, the paddle and whip-type implements including the prison strap have been more prominent.

Today birching is rarely used for judicial punishment, and has also almost completely died out as a corporal punishment for children. In Britain birching as a judicial penalty, in both its juvenile and adult versions, was abolished in 1948, although it was retained until 1962 as a punishment for very violent breaches of prison discipline. The Isle of Man (a small island between Britain and Ireland with its own legal system as a British Crown dependency) caused a good deal of controversy by continuing to birch young offenders until 1976. The birch was also used on offending teenage boys until well into the 1960s on the Channel Islands of Guernsey and Jersey. In the Caribbean Commonwealth republic Trinidad and Tobago the 1953 Corporal Punishment Act (http://www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/casos/articulos/seriec_123_ing.pdf Interamerican Court of Human Rights March 11, 2005 judgment in Caesar v. Trinidad & Tobago - §49) allows the High Court to order males, in addition to another punishment (often concurrent with a prison term), to undergo corporal punishment in the form of either a 'flogging' with a knotted cat o' nine tails (made of cords, as in the Royal Navy tradition) or a 'whipping' with a 'rod' [i.e. switch] of tamarind, birch or other switches and allows the President to approve other instruments; in 2000, the original minimum age was raised from 16 to 18, the legal threshold of adulthood (e.g. cases in 1999 on CorPun); corporal punishment in schools was completely banned, but there is reportedly wide support for a controlled reintroduction as recommended in 2004 by a government-initiated study.

Non-punitive uses

• It remains as a nostalgic sadomasochistic practice, mainly in Northern and Eastern Europe.
• In Finland, Scandinavia, Estonia and Russia there is also a tradition to strike one's body with soaked birch twigs in the sauna to increase blood circulation, opening the pores and as a form of massage. As these birch rods do not have their leaves removed, and are often softened by keeping them in water prior to use, there is no pain involved.

References

• references on CorPun website (on all corporal punishments) - search also for birch
• illustration of widely different sizes of birch at Eton and Christ's Hospital schools, on the "Corporal Punishment Archive" website