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The cat o' nine tails, commonly shortened to the cat, is a type of multi-tailed whipping device that originated as an implement for severe physical punishment, notably in the Royal Navy and Army of the United Kingdom, and also as a judicial punishment in Britain and some other countries.
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The term first appears in 1695, 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]) or the Spanish gato de nueve colas.
The cat is made up of nine knotted thongs of cotton cord, about 2 1⁄2 feet or 76 cm 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 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.[1]
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.
The naval cat, also known as the captain's daughter (in principle, it was used under his authority), weighed about 13 ounces (370 grams) and was composed of a baton (handle) and nine cords.
Contrary to popular belief, the standard cat was not the most feared implement; being made of rope, it was less painful than a leather whip or a wooden birch-rod, while the modes of application (number and intensity of lashes, anatomical target, baring) of any implement can be more important than its intrinsic potential.
All formal punishments—ordered by captain or court martial—were administered ceremonially on deck, the crew being summoned to "witness punishment" (although usually adults and boys separated, which was apparently not strictly observed in practice) and drama enhanced by drum roll and a whole routine, including pauses, untangling of the tails, a drink of water and so on, which it is believed were intended more for the benefit of the watching crew than for the actual participants. Informal "daily" punishments, usually without assembly, including canings, were often left unrecorded.
The thieves' cat, to inflict punishment for theft, which was considered a particularly offensive crime aboard ship, had each of its thongs knotted three times to cause additional pain.
During the period of the Napoleonic wars, the naval cat's handle was made of rope about 2 feet (0.61 m) long and about 1 inch (25 mm) in diameter, and was traditionally covered with red baize cloth. The tails were made of cord about a quarter inch (6 mm) in diameter and typically 2 feet long.
A new cat was made for each flogging by a bosun's mate and kept in a red baize bag until use. In Trafalgar time, it was made by the condemned sailor during 24 hours in leg irons; the nine strongest falls were kept, and extra lashes were administered if any of the selected falls were found to be sub-standard. 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.
In some cases a cat with a wooden handle was used, and steel balls or barbs of wire were added to the tips of the thongs to maximize the potential flogging injury.
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,[2] 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.
"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."[3] Penalties of hundreds of lashes were imposed for the gravest offences, including sedition and mutiny. The prisoner was rowed 'round 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 was when a man taking this punishment would kill him, as infections would spread."[4] After the flogging was completed, the sailor's lacerated back was frequently rinsed with brine or seawater, which served as a crude antiseptic. 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.
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.
Naturally, it was also used elsewhere in the Commonwealth, notably at the penal colony in Australia, and also in Canada (a dominion in 1867) where it was used until 1881. An 1812 drawing[5] 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.
The cat-o'-nine-tails was also used on adult convicts in prisons; a 1951 memorandum[6] (possibly confirming earlier practice) ordered all UK male prisons to use only cats 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.
Especially harsh floggings were given with it in secondary penal colonies of early colonial Australia, particularly at such places as Norfolk Island (apparently this has 9 leather thongs, each with a lead weight, meant as the ultimate deterrent for hardened life-convicts), Port Arthur and Moreton Bay (now Brisbane).
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)[7] and Barbados in 1993 (only to be formally declared inhumane and thus unconstitutional by the Barbados Supreme Court).
Trinidad & 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 & 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 & 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.[8]