Joe Huggins, condemned for throttling an old gentleman, is stripped to the waist and kneeling before policemen pleading for mercy while the executioner is rolling up the sleeves of his shirt to begin with the flogging. Wood engraving by J. Swain after Sir J. Tenniel, 1872.

The Garrotters Act of 1863 provided the penalty of corporal punishment with the "cat" for the offence of strangling. Two years after the Act came into force the number of offences which it was specifically intended to stamp out exceeded those which occurred before the Act was introduced. Peter Alfred Taylor, Liberal Member of Parliament for Leicester, campaigned for the abolition of flogging