Corpun file 22174

The Baltimore Sun, Maryland, 1 May 1926

Wife Beater Jokes After Jail Lashing

Whipping Appears To Have Little Effect On Prisoner.

Women See Punching

Sheriff Potee Is Criticized For Seeming Lightness Of His Blows.

Click to enlarge

The lashing administered by Sheriff John E. Potee apparently had little effect on James H. Kingsmore, convicted wife beater, who laughed and joked yesterday afternoon and last night in his cell at the jail, according to the attendants.

The man was whipped in the main corridor of the jail at 10 o'clock yesterday morning. He was strapped and manacled to the whipping post, around which 200 or more spectators gathered about twenty feet away.

Women Attend.

In the front row of the spectators four women took their places and looked on, apparently unaffected. Later they said they had come "not out of curiosity but in the interests of womankind." They criticized the apparent lightness with which the Sheriff let the blows of the cat-o'-nine-tails fall.

Shows Slight Strain.

After Kingsmore had been returned to his cell, Dr. Frank T. Powers, jail physician, examined him and said that the whipping had resulted in a slight nervous strain.

Jail attendants said that later in the day the prisoner joked and laughed with other prisoners, seeming none the worse for his punishment.

Objects to "Circus."

Kingsmore's only remark, as he mounted the platform to be shackled, came when he saw a motion-picture camera in operation.

"I don't mind taking my medicine, but you should not make a circus out of it," he said to the guards.

The sentence of sixty days in jail, imposed on Kingsmore by Judge Eugene O'Dunne in conjunction with the lashing, will expire on May 15.