Topic: Discipline
Keeping Soldier in Irons is Abolished
The Victoria Advocate, Victoria, Texas, 10 June 1923
London.—Lieut. Col. Walter Guinness announced in the [UK] house of commons recently that the army council has decided to abolish Field Punishment No. 1.
Corporal punishment in the army was abolished in peace time in 1868 for the reason that some commanding officers were discovered to be introducing many illegal punishments to avoid having to resort to the lash. Then, in 1881, flogging was finally done away with, and two forms of field punishment, known as No. 1 and No. 2, were introduced, it having been found necessary to employ some form of punishment in the field which should cause the offender no injury and which should not prevent the performance of his active military duties.
Under field punishment No. 1 the offender could be kept in irons—fetters, or handcuffs, or both—and attached for certain periods of time to a fixed object. He could be subjected to any labour, employment, or restraint as though he had been sentenced to imprisonment. Field punishment No. 2 was precisely similar, except that the offender could not be attached to a fixed object.
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