SAHR talk: Don Hagist on Eighteenth-Century Corporal Punishment
Thursday 23rd May 2024
Acclaimed historian Don Hagist spoke to the Society about 'Surviving the Lash: Corporal Punishment and British Soldiers' Careers' on Thursday, May 23rd 2024.
A recording of the talk is now available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/OfBCj90Kv0I
Synopsis: The use of corporal punishment, particularly lashing, in the eighteenth century British army is well-known, but rarely is it looked at in the context of the individual soldiers who did, and did not, receive such punishments. This talk presents information from British regimental records to reveal the proportion of men who actually received corporal punishment, how those punishments were administered so that they were survivable, and the effect on their subsequent careers.
Speaker biography
Don N. Hagist is the Managing Editor for the Journal of the American Revolution (http://allthingsliberty.com). His studies focus on the lives of common British soldiers in the 1770s and 1780s; he has written several books, including "Noble Volunteers: the British Soldiers who Fought the American Revolution" (Westholme, 2020) and "These Distinguished Corps: British Grenadier and Light Infantry Battalions in the American Revolution" (Helion, 2021)