I’ve read several P.G. Wodehouse stories in which, for a humorously melodramatic effect, he mentions some unfortunate chap fear of being horsewhipped on the steps of his his club. Generally, the horsewhipping would arise from an unfortunate romantic entanglement, to be administered by the enraged father of some poor girl whose affections had been thrown away like a soiled glove.
It’s fairly evident the the tone and context that one did not see public horse-whippings in London’s fashionable club district, even in the era when Wodehouse’s stories take place. At the same time, though, there’s an air of familiarity about it, as if such things really did happen a generation or two before. Was that really the case? After all, Wodehouse’s characters occasionally refer to a daughter “not being the type to defy a parent” and her father being of the strict Victorian type.
So did these public extrajudicial horse-whippings actually take place, presumably in the 19th Century and earlier?
More of a pre-Victorian thing than a Victorian one, apparently, and by Wodehouse’s own time, as you noted, the custom had dwindled to little more than a joke. But it definitely used to be a thing.
The Lord Charles Carrington mentioned there might be the person who went on the become 1st Marquess of Lincolnshire, a prominent Liberal politician, and Governor of New South Wales. (I know of him because Carrington, a suburb of Newcastle, is named after him.
James Gordon Bennett, son of the founder of the New York Herald, drunkenly mistook a fireplace at his fiancé’s family mansion for a urinal, and was later horsewhipped by her brother.
The standard scenarios for horsewhipping seem to have been chastising someone who insulted or degraded a lady, and retaliating against someone who published insulting or scandalous allegations in the press, as in this 1827 example.
The publisher James Fraser was beaten by Grantley Berkeley with a weighted whip in 1836 for refusing to name the anonymous reviewer of his novel, Berkeley Castle. Both cross-sued. Fraser obtained £100 damages for assault, and Berkeley obtained 40/-. for libel. Fraser later died of his injuries.
The most famous case in the United States was probably the caning of Senator Charles Sumner on the floor of the US Senate by Congressman Brooks, in retaliation against Sumner’s insult of Brooks’ uncle, another Senator.
Oh, I’m not claiming that the law generally endorsed the custom of horsewhipping a man for ungentlemanly behavior. Similarly, duelling was illegal and punishable by criminal penalties in many societies where it was still socially acceptable.
Just because such extra-judicial means of conflict resolution were outlawed doesn’t mean they didn’t happen, though.
I remember that story from the Guinness Book of Records, 1971 edition, under the heading of “Most expensive faux pas” or similar, since it caused a multimillionaire wedding to be called off.
Interestingly, one of Trollope’s novels also features a duel, which by then was forbidden by law but apparently still happened once in a while; the duellers had to go to a beach in Belgium. Also, it was considered somewhat embarrassing socially. Duelling was in the odd position of being a scandalous embarrassment occasionally required by one’s honor.
Hmm, maybe we should bring back horsewhipping and duels. I would watch a duel. I also think we should bring back feeding Christians to lions, but I suspect that wouldn’t be a very popular idea.
Seeing as gentlemen would carry horsewhips everywhere because they actually rode horses it’s not really very strange. And presumably “the club” was somewhere you would know you would be able to find the bounder or cad as the case may be.
The modern equivalent is beating someone with a tyre iron or a maglight in the heat of passion because you find them schlepping your daugther or in bed with your wife. And that still happens plenty, just watch “cops”.
