Shove the Fumbler or Punishment in Olde London

You can now read the proceedings of the London courts from 1674-1913 online. These are the complete documents which include such things as punishments:

Anybody know what “Shove the Fumbler” is? A google search is exactly zero help.

There’s also some rather interesting accounts of prostitution trials.

“took his Cane, and gave her two or three good daubs” know what I mean, nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

There’s also supposed to an account of trial involving "laying hands on a cow with intent, but I haven’t been able to find it.

The “Proceedings of the London Courts” were the popular publications circulated from 1674-1913, and included witty phrases and popular jargon that wouldn’t appear in the actual court records. “Shove the fumbler” was both a crass description of the sex act, but more importantly in this case, was synonymous with being strapped to the back of a cart and whipped; borne out by the author’s clarification “OR receive the correction of the gentle lash for several crimes respectively no less tedious etc” The ‘gentle’ lash was a humorous jibe also - the lash was anything but gentle, and wasn’t banned in British prisons until 1948! (Publicly banned in 1868).

Well, it might be gentle, if those defendants pled down to that from capital punishment.

I found this is a paper entitled “A Century in the Making: The Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution, and the Origins of the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment” by John D. Bessler

William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal
Volume 27 (2018-2019)
Issue 4 Article 4
May 2019

“Shove the Fumbler” is a phrase used to mean to “[b]e whipped at the cart’s tail.” 1 EDWARD BULWER LYTTON, PAUL CLIFFORD 16 n.1 (1893).

https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1905&context=wmborj

And in case you need more:

In England, offenders (mostly those convicted of theft) were usually sentenced to be flogged “at a cart’s tail” along a length of public street, usually near the scene of the crime, “until his [or her] back be bloody”.

“To be whipped at the cart’s tail” was a harsh public punishment in England and its colonies where an offender was stripped to the waist, tied to the rear of a moving cart, and flogged through the public streets. [[1]

(https://www.mdhistory.org/only-the-instrument-of-the-law-baltimores-whipping-post/), 2, 3]

“Here’s that that will do you good, a Commodity for you, if you’ll pay for it you shall have enough of it.”

Dang, that brisk young girl sure knew her pillow talk.