Flogging with a cat-o'-nine-tails, a whip with nine knotted cords, was the most frequent punishment in the British army. In front of the assembled regiment, the drummers flailed the cat against the bared back of the prisoner. This illustration is inaccurate in that the prisoner was stripped only to the waist. It was hoped that witnessing either a flogging or an execution would act as a deterrent. The drum major stood by to hit the drummer if he did not hit hard enough, and the surgeon was there in case the prisoner neared death. In many cases a punishment of a thousand lashes took three or more sessions as the prisoner had to be taken down and hospitalized until his back healed enough for the flogging to continue without endangering his life. Like Lord Wellington, many people felt that the cat simply made a good man bad, and a bad man worse. In The Narrative of Private Buck Adams (Cape Town: The Van Riebeck Society, 1941) the author notes:
The number of men I have seen flogged during my career of 23 years and 8 months in the Service would not be less than 100. I have closely watched the career of many of the recipients of this degrading punishment, and I can safely say that I never knew even one that it made any improvement in, either in his moral character or as a soldier. But on the other hand, many a good and brave soldier has been lost to the Army through the brutal punishment of the lash....
It was not until 1881 that the advocates of the lash were finally defeated and this method of punishment abolished completely.
