How super crim ended WA floggings
Floggings should have been a punishment left in the convict era.
But, in fact, WA prisoners were still being flogged in the 1940s.
The last victim of the cat-o'-nine-tails was Sydney Sutton, a vicious criminal who spent most of his life behind bars and died in jail in 1978.
His crimes ranged from breaking and entering to rape, resulting in a range of prison sentences from 1920.
But it was his whipping in June 1943 that led to the punishment being stopped.
Sutton - dubbed "Super Criminal" by one newspaper - was also one of Fremantle Prison's most prolific escapees.
And the key he made in the prison workshop that allowed him to escape in 1943 is one of the most interesting attractions of an exhibition that opens at the prison next Saturday.
It was after his capture from this escape that Sutton was sentenced to be whipped 25 times.
But he collapsed after just 17 and, on doctor's advice, the remaining eight were postponed.
There was a public outcry and the final lashings were never performed.
"Sutton was brought out, fastened to the triangle with his hands tied above his head and his ankles firmly secured," the Mirror newspaper reported at the time.
"Then a flagellator, who wore a mask and was not a member of the jail staff, began the lashing.
"Though he has shown contempt for every other form of punishment, a flogging was more than even a hardened criminal of Sutton's type could stand.
"And by the time the cat had bitten into his back 17 times, a doctor examined the writhing, moaning man and decided that was all he could bear for the present.
"His back, streaked with the marks of the lashes, was carefully tended by the doctor and Sutton was taken away.
"As news of the flogging seeped through the prison, the effect on the other prisoners was profound.
"Of all jail punishments, none has a greater effect on a man's fellow prisoners - and presumably his former associates outside - than a flogging.
"It is intended as a deterrent, grisly and fear-impelling, but not sadistic."
The exhibition, Fourteen Decades - a History of Fremantle Prison, includes artefacts, photographs and artworks relating to each decade of the prison's 136-year history.
It will also coincide with the transfer of the management of the prison to the State Heritage Office, so all of WA's World Heritage sites - the prison, Ningaloo Reef and the Cape Range Peninsula, Shark Bay and Purnululu National Park - will be managed under the same portfolio.
Finance Minister Bill Marmion said the prison had been managed by the Department of Finance, Building Management and Works since 2011.
"I will be handing over Fremantle Prison with newly constructed climate-controlled museum spaces, a refurbished perimeter wall and other restoration works completed to the value of $1.5 million," he said.
Heritage Minister Albert Jacob said the prison had exceptional cultural heritage significance and was the best preserved of all Australian convict sites.
