Whipping post is a post to which persons are tied when being whipped as a form of punishment. Such beatings once took place in public. Most villages in England and the American Colonies had whipping posts in their public squares. The posts were often set up with another device called the stocks (see Stocks ).
Today, few persons are sentenced to be whipped. Fines and prison terms have replaced physical beating as forms of punishment in most countries. British law allowed whipping until 1948, and Canada abolished the whipping penalty in 1972. Delaware, the last state of the United States that allowed physical beating, prohibited the punishment in 1972. Whipping is still a legal punishment in some countries, including Singapore and such Muslim nations as Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.
