I'm sure that young girls like Lydia and Kitty would NOT be allowed to watch a flogging(!), both in a general sense (why would supposedly delicate females watch such a thing?) and also because the flogging was military, not civilian, business, but I'm sure this bit of news circulated as quickly as any other. It seems to me that even in the military, floggings must have been a comparatively rare (and extreme) punishment if it was considered news worth circulating. I wonder what was considered a flogging offense? Good question about whether JA may have been trying to indicate Lydia and Kitty's shortcomings - I don't know the answer to that! Maybe they could be so lighthearted about it because although they'd heard of it, they really didn't know what a flogging involved?