Cure for Bad Language

[Jonathan Lighter]

Yeah, ISTR reading about that stuff but the implications didn't fully sink
in. I think it may have been publicized during the Cummins Prison Farm
expose' around 1970.  Maryland, of course, despite being North of D.C., was
a slave state right to the end.  When (white) troops from Massachusetts
marched through Baltimore at the beginning of the Civil War, a mob stoned
them.

Flogging was abolished in the U.S. Navy and Merchant Marine in 1850, but not
till 1862 in the Army and Marines. Figure that one out!  Of course it was
only for enlisted men.
Almost as soon as the practice was gone, Congressmen were writing bills to
have it reintroduced.

Even in World War I, British soldiers could still be "crucified" on a wagon
wheel for many hours for drunkenness.

"The Good Old Days": there weren't any!!!

JL


On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 8:33 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Cure for Bad Language
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> OT comment. Apparently, not with enough horror, since scourging was
> used in state prisons as far into the North as Maryland as late as the
> 'Fifties, against black prisoners, at least. (It's amazing what can be
> learned by merely browsing the stack [sic] of a library like Harvard's
> Widener.) The photo showed a black prisoner stripped to the waist with
> his hands tied above his head to the arms of a Y-shaped whipping post.
> I didn't read the book, so I have no idea what constituted an offense
> punishable by scourging or whether white prisoners were also subjected
> to this in-the '50's?-in-the-US?-surely-you-jest! form of punishment.
>
> -Wilson
>
> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 10:25 AM, Jonathan Lighter
> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> > Subject:      Cure for Bad Language
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >  According to _The Whig Almanac_(N.Y.: Greeley & McElrath, 1850), p. 37,
> > a U.S. Navy sailor could be punished with twelve strokes of the
> > cat-o'-nine-tails for "improper language." This offense appears to have
> > been distinct from "insolence," "mutinous language," "contempt," etc. How
> > often this punishment was meted out is not indicated, but the threat must
> > have been real enough.
> >
> > According to the editor, "There is no uniform scale of punishment, and
> the
> > descriptions of the offenses are not seldom indefinite; but no one can
> read
> > the volume [sc., the report of the Secretary of the Navy] without a
> feeling
> > of horror, and a deep sense of the imperfection of the whole scourging
> > system."
> >
> > See:
> >
> >
> http://books.google.com/books?id=0lowAAAAIAAJ&pg=PT518&dq=%22whig+almanac%22+1848&lr=#v=snippet&q=punishments&f=false
> >
> > (N.b., "language," not "grammar.")
> >
> > JL
> > --
> > "There You Go Again...Using Reason on the Planet of the Duck-Billed
> > Platypus"
> >
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> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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>
>
>
> --
> -Wilson
> –––
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> –Mark Twain
>
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-- 
"There You Go Again...Using Reason on the Planet of the Duck-Billed
Platypus"

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org