A leather cat o' nine tails pictured with a U.S. dollar bill for size comparison. A U.S. dollar bill is about 15 cm (6 in) long, so the total length would be about 75 cm (30 in).
The cat o' nine tails, commonly shortened to the cat, is a type of multi-tailed whip that originated as an implement for severe physical punishment, notably in the Royal Navy and British Army, and also as a judicial punishment in Britain and some other countries.
Etymology
The term first appears in 1681 in reports of a London murder. The term came into wider circulation in 1695 after its mention by a character in William Congreve's play Love for Love, although the design is much older. It was probably so called in reference to its "claws",
which inflict parallel wounds. There are equivalent terms in many
languages, usually strictly translating, and also some analogous terms
referring to a similar instrument's number of tails (cord or leather),
such as the Dutch zevenstaart (seven tail[s]), negenstaart (nine tail[s]), the Spanish gato de nueve colas or the Italian gatto a nove code.
Description
The cat is made up of nine knotted thongs of cotton cord, about 0.8 metres (2 1⁄2 ft) long, designed to lacerate the skin and cause intense pain.
It traditionally has nine thongs as a result of the manner in which rope is plaited. Thinner rope is made from three strands of yarn
plaited together, and thicker rope from three strands of thinner rope
plaited together. To make a cat o' nine tails, a rope is unravelled into
three small ropes, each of which is unravelled again.
Variations
Variations exist, either named cat (of x tails) or not, such as the whip used on adult Egyptian
prisoners which had a cord on a cudgel branching into seven tails, each
with six knots, used only on adult men, with boys being subject to caning, until Egypt banned the use of the device in 2001.
Sometimes the term "cat" is used incorrectly to describe various other punitive flogging devices with multiple tails in any number, even one made from 80 twigs (so rather a limp birch) to flog a drunk or other offender instead of 80 lashes normally applicable under shariah law. The closed cat, one without tails, was called a starter.
Historical punishments
The
naval cat, also known as the "captain's daughter" (which in principle
was used under his authority) weighed about 370 grams (13 oz) and was
composed of a handle connected to nine thinner pieces of line, with each
line knotted several times along its length. Formal floggings—those ordered by captain or court martial—were
administered ceremonially on deck, the crew being summoned to "witness
punishment" and the prisoner being brought forward by marines with fixed
bayonets.
Sailor being flogged with a cat-o'-nine-tails while four sailors are waiting for their turn to flog him.
During the period of the Napoleonic Wars,
the naval cat's handle was made of rope about 60 cm (2 ft) long and
about 3 cm (1 in) in diameter, and was traditionally covered with red baize cloth. The tails were made of cord about 6 mm (1⁄4 in) in diameter and typically 60 cm (2 ft).
Drunkenness or striking an officer might incur a dozen lashes, which
could be administered on the authority of the ship's captain. Greater
punishments were generally administered following a formal court martial,
with Royal Navy records reflecting some standard penalties of two
hundred lashes for desertion, three hundred for mutiny, and up to five
hundred for theft. The offence of sodomy
generally drew the death penalty, though one eighteenth century court
martial awarded a punishment of one thousand lashes - a roughly
equivalent sentence as there was no likelihood of survival.
A new cat was made for each flogging by a bosun's
mate and kept in a red baize bag until use. If several dozen lashes
were awarded, each could be administered by a fresh bosun's mate—a
left-handed one could be included to assure extra painful crisscrossing
of the wounds. One dozen was usually awarded as a highly sensitizing
prelude to running the gauntlet.
For summary punishment of Royal Navy boys,
a lighter model was made, the reduced cat, also known as boy's cat,
boy's pussy or just pussy, that had only five tails of smooth whip cord.
If formally convicted by a court martial, however, even boys would
suffer the punishment of the adult cat. While adult sailors received
their lashes on the back, they were administered to boys on the bare
posterior, usually while "kissing the gunner's daughter" (bending over a
gun barrel), just as boys' lighter "daily" chastisement was usually
over their (often naked) rear-end (mainly with a cane—this could be
applied to the hand, but captains generally refused such impractical
disablement—or a rope's end). Bare-bottom discipline was a tradition of
the English upper and middle classes, who frequented public schools, so midshipmen
(trainee officers, usually from 'good families', getting a cheaper
equivalent education by enlisting) were not spared, at best sometimes
allowed to receive their lashes inside a cabin. Still, it is reported
that the 'infantile' embarrassment of bare-bottom punishment was
believed essential for optimal deterrence; cocky miscreants might brave
the pain of the adult cat in the macho spirit of "taking it like a man"
or even as a "badge of honour".
On board training ships,
where most of the crew were boys, the cat was never introduced, but
their bare bottoms risked, as in other naval establishments on land,
"the sting of the birch", another favourite in public schools.
Flogging round the fleet
"The
severest form of flogging was a flogging round the fleet. The number of
lashes was divided by the number of ships in port and the offender was
rowed between ships for each ship's company to witness the punishment." Penalties of hundreds of lashes were imposed for the gravest offences, including sedition and mutiny.
The prisoner was rowed around the fleet in an open boat and received a
number of his lashes at each ship in turn, for as long as the surgeon
allowed. Sentences often took months or years to complete, depending on
how much a man was expected to bear at a time. Normally 250–500 lashes
would kill a man, as infections would spread." After the flogging was completed, the sailor's lacerated back was frequently rinsed with brine or seawater, which was thought to serve as a crude antiseptic (although it is now known that seawater contains significant microbial components).
Although the purpose was to control infection, it caused the sailor to
endure additional pain, and gave rise to the expression "rubbing salt
into his wounds", which came to mean vindictively or gratuitously
increasing a punishment or injury already imposed.
British Army
The British Army had a similar multiple whip, though much lighter in construction, made of a drumstick with attached strings. The flogger was usually a drummer rather than a strong bosun's mate. Flogging with the cat o' nine tails fell into disuse around 1870.
Whereas the British naval cat rarely cut (contrary to graphic
films) but rather abraded the skin, the falls (tresses) of the British
Army cat were lighter (around 3.2 mm (1⁄8 in))
and the string was in fact codline - a very dense material akin to
tarred string. Although the total whip would weigh only a fraction of a
naval rope cat, the thin, dense codline tresses were far more likely to
cut the skin.
It was also used elsewhere in the empire, notably at the penal colonies in Australia, and also in Canada (a dominion in 1867) where it was used until 1881. An 1812 drawing
shows a drummer apparently lashing the buttocks of a naked soldier who
is tied with spread legs on an A-frame made from sergeants' half pikes.
In many places, soldiers were generally flogged stripped to the waist.
Prison usage
The cat-o'-nine-tails was also used on adult convicts in prisons; a 1951 memorandum
(possibly confirming earlier practice) ordered all UK male prisons to
use only cat o' nine tails (and birches) from a national stock at Wandsworth
prison, where they were to be 'thoroughly' tested before being supplied
in triplicate to a prison whenever a flogging was pending for use as
prison discipline. In the 20th century, this use was confined to very
serious cases involving violence against a prison officer, and each
flogging had to be confirmed by central government.
Penal colonies in Australia
Especially harsh floggings were given with it in secondary penal colonies of early colonial Australia, particularly at such places as Norfolk Island (apparently this had 9 leather thongs, each with a lead weight, meant as the ultimate deterrent for hardened life-convicts), Port Arthur and Moreton Bay (now Brisbane).
Modern uses and types
Judicial corporal punishment was removed from the statute book in
Great Britain in 1948. The cat was still being used in Australia in 1957
and is still in use in a few Commonwealth countries, although the cane
is used in more countries.
Judicial corporal punishment has been abolished or declared unconstitutional since 1997 in Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, South Africa, Zambia, Uganda (in 2001) and Fiji (in 2002).
However, some former colonies in the Caribbean have reinstated flogging with the cat. Antigua and Barbuda reinstated it in 1990, followed by the Bahamas in 1991 (where, however, it was subsequently banned by law) and Barbados in 1993 (only to be formally declared inhumane and thus unconstitutional by the Barbados Supreme Court).
Trinidad and Tobago
never banned the "cat". Under the Corporal Punishment (Offenders over
Sixteen) Act 1953, use of the "cat" was limited to male offenders over
the age of 16. The age limit was raised in 2000 to 18.
The Government of Trinidad and Tobago has been accused of torture
and "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of prisoners, and in 2005
was ordered by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
to pay US$50,000 for "moral damages" to a prisoner who had received 15
strokes of the "cat" plus expenses for his medical and psychological
care; it is unclear whether the Court's decisions were implemented.
Trinidad and Tobago did not acknowledge the Court's jurisdiction, since
it had denounced the American Convention on Human Rights several years
before the Court started hearing this case.
