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Then, the skin was intended as a body’s shield. In order to discipline the mind it was considered necessary to discipline the body. Flogging in the military, navy, schools and private homes was a common disciplinary measure in the nineteenth century. These were divided into instalments: when the skin had started to heal it was time to whip again. General of the British Empire, Sir James Charles Napier, in his Remarks of Military Law wrote that sentences of thousands lashes were common at the end of the eighteenth century. The post mortem examination of the soldier’s corpse, extensively reported by the Victorian press, provoked a burning political and medical debate on the effects of flogging on the health of a human being. The inquest into the Hounslow case sparked a national outcry. The coroner was Thomas Wakley, a surgeon, medical journalist, and also the Lancet’s founder – and an ardent anti-flogging campaigner. White’s body was just about to be buried when the coroner for Middlesex decided to hold a judicial inquiry. After performing an autopsy within Hounslow Barracks, the medical army officers declared that his death was in no way connected with the flogging he had received almost a whole month earlier. When John White was found dead in his dorm, two weeks after writing the letter of apology to his relatives, the skin on his back had healed. As a result, the Martial Court had sentenced White to 150 lashes. A few days earlier, White, under the effects of alcohol, had had an argument with his sergeant and, during the fight he had stroked the sergeant’s chest with a metal bar. The soldier, a 27 year-old south Londoner enlisted in the 7th Queen’s Own Hussars, apologised for not being in touch with his family due to “a great deal of trouble” he had been through. “I suppose you thought to punish me for not writing”, said Private Frederick John White in a letter to his brother on 25 June 1846.