Museum unveils exhibition by staging a public flogging

Volunteers re-enacted the brutal punishment of a Victorian convict to mark the opening of its new exhibition at the Courthouse Museum on Minster Road.

Bound in rope, the accused was marched to from the Courthouse to the Market Square, after an order from Ripon magistrates that due to her “petty larceny” of five shillings-worth of clothing she should be: “Publickly whipt at the Market Cross in Ripon on Thursday between the hours of 11 and 12 of the Clock...until their back be bloody.”

Ripon Magistrates Court heard cases from Ripon from 1830 to 1998. Conviction papers from the museum’s archives give a fascinating insight into other crimes that would lead to whippings, including failure to vaccinate a child from a paper dated 1871 and prostitution in Allhallowgate, dated 1887.

The Courthouse building was opened as a museum by Ripon Museum Trust in 2000 and this month a new exhibition is unveiled.

Courthouse curator Jill Wilkinson said: “We were delighted to be awarded a grant from Renaissance Yorkshire which allowed us to spend money on new mannequins, an audio system and graphic panels.”