3-065-684 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Ashantee War: the camp whipping-post at Inquabim, 1874. The British Army in West Africa. 'Inquabim, the first stage from the coast, distant only seven miles from the town of Cape Coast Castle, is but a small station. Its whipping-tree, however, is an institution of most needful discipline for the multitude of Fantee baggage-carriers and others hired to convey stores of food or ammunition to the front. Any negro porter who has been guilty of theft or desertion, or has wilfully cropped his load and refused to go on, is bound closely to this tree of sorrow by the rope usually coiled round its trunk, and is there flogged by a police-sergeant of his own race, under the orders of an English officer'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.