"Prisoner: By four. In Belfast I was sentenced to receive 500 lashes, but they only gave me 300; they forgave me 200. In Londonderry they gave me 250. He mentioned two other places, in one of which he received 200, and in the other 150. He had deserted eight months ago, and had been a miner ever since, and the very first day he ventured to town he was apprehended. "The Lord Mayor: You must be incorrigible, or you would never have been so dreadfully punished. I cannot help committing you." In _Arnold's Magazine_ for September, 1833, a writer, speaking of flogging in the navy, says-- "I saw two men who were tried for desertion, and their sentence was to receive 500 lashes round the fleet. There is, perhaps, nothing on the face of the earth so revolting to human nature, as this most brutal of all outrages upon the feelings of gallant tars under such a sentence. The day the man is to be punished is known by the admiral making a general signal to copy orders. A midshipman from each ship goes on board the admiral's ship with a book, and copies the order, which states that, at a certain hour, on such a day, a boat, manned and armed, is to be sent from the ship from which the man is sentenced to be punished. On the day appointed, the signal is made from the admiral, for the fleet to draw into a line. The hands are then turned up in each ship, and every officer appears with his cocked hat and sidearms, and the marines are drawn up in the gangway, with muskets and fixed bayonets. "The ship launch to which the delinquent belongs is hoisted out, and rigged up for the bloody tragedy. In this boat are two boatswain's mates, with their cats, together with the surgeon and master-at-arms. The poor creature is now taken out of irons, in which he has been confined both before and after his sentence, and brought down from the deck into the boat. The master-at-arms next desires the mates to tie him up; he is then stripped, and a blanket thrown over his shoulders. The boats of each ship then make their painters fast, one ahead of the other, and thus form a long line of boats. The captain now looks over the gangway, the master-at-arms reads the infernal sentence, and the quantity of lashes the victim is to receive at each ship. The captain calls the boatswain's mate, and says, 'Go on, sir, and do your duty.'