B is for Birch

The birch-rod - villain at the center of a myriad of Victorian school day classics - has a curious history.

In medieval times, England's only export of note was Walnuts.   And canny farmers noted that Walnut trees that were close to birch trees would, from high wind interaction, get their bark scarred and thickened by being flayed from inter-tree territorial warfare.   And as a direct consequence, yield a bigger crop than those sheltered from such assaults.

The earliest bunch of birch twigs were assembled to beat up on sapling walnut trees, to make them bigger and stronger.   It is reported that a piece of doggerel from those days read "A woman, a dog, a walnut tree, the more you beat them, the better they be."   (Hey don't shoot the messenger - I am simply reporting what I read.)

The move from using a birch rod from its agricultural role to a means of discipline was inevitable.   And in its early years, it was used as a very formidable flogging implement - designed to break the skin, draw blood and break the spirit the victim.   Doctor Arnold would flog schoolboys, not spank them.   They understood clearly the difference between the two.

Meanwhile, after the pendulum swung away from the public whippings of the 1700's, the rights for magistrates to order corporal punishment for sundry offenses had virtually disappeared by 1840.   And then began the very odd, but widespread practice of them sentencing people to very, very short stays in prison.

Up until 1967, visiting magistrates to Prisons (and before then, the by-then defunct Work-houses) could sentence any inmate to a birching for breaches of prison discipline.   So from about 1850 to 1920, children aged 10-14 were routinely sentenced to 7 days "Hard Labor" for theft and the like.   A visiting magistrate would then order the miscreant to the beating that the local magistrate could not order directly.   A sentence of 14 days hard labor was seen as a request for two consecutive good hidings to be delivered, one week apart.   The letter of the law was met, but the correct punishment was eventually delivered.

For adults, the pain of receiving such a punishment was much, much harsher.   The birches were longer and heavier, and used with viscous efficiency.    To allow for this, short sentences of adults tended to be in monthly increments up to three months.   Serious prison terms started at 18 months: those signficantly less than that was the nod that additional action should be taken.    The de facto "maximum" short term sentence of three months hard labor was taken to suggest three birchings were merited, with at least a month of recovery between each of them.  

The last female prisoner to be birched under the UK penal system was an inmate of Holloway Prison, and that took place in 1962.   Which is quite recent, really, for a punishment not available for use on civilians since 1840.

And over at Kira Barcelo's blog, the B of the day is for Bohannon.