Tragic death of Private Yuthinan: a lesson from British history  

The death of Private Yuthinan Boonniam brings to mind the death of a British soldier, Private John White of the 7th Queen’s Own Hussars, who died in July 1846 after undergoing a sentence of 150 lashes with the cat o’ nine tails at Hounslow Barracks near London for striking an officer. The British military and the government tried to hush up the death and the army surgeon issued a death certificate citing natural causes and tampered with the corpse in order to hide the evidence.  
At the barracks the men were incensed by the death of their comrade and the officers took the precaution of withdrawing their ammunition for fear of mutiny. Word got out into the local community and, unfortunately for the establishment, the local parish priest, the Reverend Henry Trimmer, decided to intervene by refusing to bury the dead private unless an inquest was held, which required an autopsy. The jury at the coroner’s court found that White’s death was caused by what the coroner described as “the revolting punishment of flogging”, prompting public outrage and enraged letters to the Times detailing many other instances of deaths by flogging in the military as well as cases where soldiers condemned to floggings had committed suicide rather than endure such horrifying punishment. Due to the bravery of one lowly priest, the British establishment was forced to reduce the maximum corporal punishment sentence, which had previously been unlimited, to 50 lashes. A slow process had begun that led to the ultimate abolition of flogging in the British army in 1881.
Clearly there were some differences between the death of Private Yuthinan and that of Private White. However, the story shows how difficult it can be and how long it can take to persuade a powerful military establishment to reform a system of punishment, whether formal or informal, that it believes, as the British military establishment did, is essential to maintaining discipline.  Unfortunately, Thailand has no coroner’s courts with juries, but it has many brave people like the Reverend Trimmer who could step in, as he did, and act as catalysts to get the long process of reform started.
George Morgan
Bangkok