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Added 2022-06-17 23:45:42 +0000 UTCAs I was saying, flogging was a violent spectacle. It's amazing to me more people didn't just straight up die from it. Interesting side note, as I mentioned before, military men were often selected as floggers due to their experience with the lash. In the book Tasmania's Convicts by Alison Alexander, Alison goes into a bit of detail about how military punishments were actually considerably harsher than convict with sessions not being limited and could go from 100 to 200 lashes, while convicts rarely were awarded more than 30. (I'd expect this had a lot to do with not wanting to damage your free labour too bad) Still, depending on the flogger, your shoes were still about to fill with blood.
As you might expect, being taken to the triangle was seen by fellow convicts as a mark of honour, especially if you displayed strength and didn't cry out or show visible signs of pain. Flogger and flogged hence entered into a weird hyper macho competition during the display. While some convicts once free men wanted to "remove the stain" of their convict past, others bore their scars as marks of pride on the outside.
Flogging aftercare consisted of pouring salt over the wound and rubbing lard into it to help prevent infection. I've read the salt part often was done less for infection and more for the extra pain inflicted, hence the old idiom.
Anywho, Alison's account of convict life is pretty good reading if you want a more modern and balanced look at convict life, it's not as bleak as most historical sources paint the experience in Tasmania to be. A lot of the older sources almost try to glorify or mythologize the suffering, Alison really gets into the stats and first hand accounts to demystify things and put them in context.
