It was not uncommon for an entire cell block or work
gang to be punished collectively. For some breech of Prison rules,
each man might have received 20 to 30 stripes. In an excerpt
from G.R. Scott's book Flagellation: The Story of Corporal Punishment
he writes: Up to 1899, whipping appears to have been a common form
of punishment in certain American prisons. In North Carolina, the
instrument of choice was a heavy leather strap, 18 inches long, 2 inches
wide, and half an inch thick; this strap being attached to a hickory stick
2 feet long. According to the testimony of a former prisoner of the Ohio
State Penitentiary, men were "whipped into bleeding insensibility"
with razor-edged paddles for certain crimes against prison regulations.
Geoffrey Abbott reports in his book Rack, Rope and Red-Hot Pincers:
In Sing Sing penitentiary of the 19th century, the instrument most feared
by convicts was the wire-tipped thongs of the cat-o'-nine tails.
Similarly, in San Quentin prison, inmates were whipped while strapped to
a ladder secured at an angle to the wall. Unlike the practice in
British jails, in which those being flogged had their necks and kidneys
protected by pads, San Quentin convicts were stripped naked for the whip.