The Spanking Writers

As those of you who follow us on Twitter will know, Haron and I recently toured the most remarkable National Trust property – a Victorian workhouse, on the outskirts of the lovely Nottinghamshire town of Southwell:

A place such as this was bound to be evocative, and so it proved from the outset with a sign next to the ticket desk for a board game: “Dare you play “Master’s Punishment”?” (Sadly, there were no copies on sale).

The introductory video explained how conditions were strict – “to discourage others”. A girl being admitted would be lectured – “you have wilfully chosen the path of profligacy” – before she would be “stripped and washed and handed her workhouse uniform”.

With an introduction like that, we found ourselves deep in a kinky headspace. There was no mention of corporal punishment on the tour – although it would presumably have featured in the schoolroom, particularly for the older girls who’d missed out on an education and were now learning to read and write.

As a result, I had to devise my own hierarchy of discipline. All of the staff would have carried a leather strap, used on a regular basis to correct bad behaviour. Once a week – perhaps on a Sunday morning – the women would be gathered together in the courtyard. A list of those who were deemed to have slacked in their work would be read out; they’d be escorted to the Master’s office, where a sound caning would await.

And then, for the most serious offences – say violence, theft, sexual misdemeanours or repeated misconduct – a girl would be taken to the punishment cell. There, she’d be left to wait until the govenors were ready for her. She’d then be washed thoroughly and dressed in a clean uniform, before being led into the committee room. Details of her offence would be read out; she’d be stripped and bent over the end of the long oak table, held down; and then she’d be birched until she was deemed to be suitably sorry.

The web is full of curious documents: few more so than “Extracts from the St. Helena Records” of 1673 – 1835, compiled by “Hudon Ralph Janisch, Esq, C.M.G., Governor of St. Helena”.

There are whippings galore – some, to be honest, really not the sort of incidents that could spark even the slightest kinky thought. But a few paragraphs seemed worth mentioning here. Raised eyebrows all round, no doubt:

Mr. Van Oosten and Mercy (wife of Jacob one of the Company’s slaves) ordered to be whipt at the Flaggstaff with twenty-one lashes each to be given alternately. The Governor had several times before admonished and severely reproved the said Van Oosten for keeping her company, warning him of Smitherman’s fate whose throat Jacob is suspected to have cutt for his being too familiar with his wife the said Mercy.

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Nathaniel Cressener’s punishment for expressing his sympathy with Eleanor Isaac saying “to save her being whipt he would be willing to lye two hours neck and heels to save her each lash.” Since he is so desirous to bear some punishment in favour of his wench he was ordered to be tied neck and heels in the usual manner an hour and if he likes it and continues in the same mind the Governor will make a bargain with him and to excuse the wench one lash for every two he will be tied neck and heels if she shall hereafter deserve punishment.

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For stealing a silver headed cane… the Gov. directs the Jury to a lenient verdict—found guilty to the value of ten pence and whipped with 39 lashes.

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Elizabeth Edwards mother of a child born 16th March is examined and states that Beale the late husband of her deceased sister is father and had promised her marriage—being told that such marriage would be illegal she referred to Deut. xxv., 5. This fault seeming to us to be in some sort the effect of ignorance we are willing to be as favourable as we can—ordered ten lashes at the Common Whipping post.

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Java Sparrows.—Prohibition against catching any for one year. Penalty—If a child to be whipped, if a grown person, fined.

Yep. Leave those sparrows alone. And take heed, girls: I now have it on good authority that 39 lashes constitutes leniency…

A couple of years back, one of our annual summer “Best of the kinky rest” selections was an article about “The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine”. This nineteenth-century journal was published by the widower of the famed Mrs Beeton, and its letters column at times degenerated into (or some might say ‘was enlivened by’) lengthy discussions about Victorian corporal punishment.

I’ve since been reading Kathryn Hughes’s magnificent biography, “The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton” – a truly exceptional work. It describes the Victorian era as “a time when middle-class homes could afford to keep a full complement of domestic staff, none of whom would think of answering back”. Indeed:

“One magazine, the Ladies’ Companion, dedicated a regular monthly column to dealing with servants (what to feed them, how much to pay, what to do when they answered back).”

Anyone care to guess their recommendation on the final point? I’m imagining the liberal application of the hairbrush to maids’ bare bottoms for their cheek, with birchings for more serious or regular insolence.

There’s a description of the school that Isabella attended – yes, to my shock, Mrs Beeton had a first name other than “Mrs”:

“The Heidel’s establishment had started as a day school in the late 1830s, providing a rigorous syllabus for the daughters of well-to-do local people. However by 1850 the 40-year-old headmistress Miss Auguste Heidel was actively seeking British girls as boarders for her school, which occupied a series of premises in the picturesque heart of the city…

Isabella probably entered the school in the summer of 1851, when she was fifteen and a half. It is most likely that she was accompanied by her stepsister Jane Dorling who was vitually the same age.”

‘Rigorous’, eh? Who else is imagining cold showers and regular canings?

Then, on to the “Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine” itself – and the corruption of the letters column, or ‘Conversazione’ as it was known:

“The scandal started quietly enough, with a couple of letters that appeared in the spring issues of 1867. A mother wrote to say that she had returned from abroad to find that her daughter had been subjected to a ‘system of torture’ at the hands of her headmistress designed to reduce the waists of her pupils by means of tight lacing.”

The correspondence then “took flight into erotic fantasy. Every month there would be more letters, purporting to be from regular readers, which nudged the debate into distinctly sado-masochistic territory”:

“Just when it looked as if the tight-lacing correspondence was about to die down for good, an even more controversial conversational thread started up in the ‘Conversazione’. This time the subject was that well-known staple of soft porn, the whipping of maidservants and young girls…”

Readers “eagerly sent in accounts of ‘real life’ experiences which grew more preposterous by the month. Correspondents with pseudonyms such as ‘Etoniensis’, ‘A Rejoicer in the Restoration of the Rod’, ‘Miss Birch’ and ‘R.O.D’ told in immense and repetitive detail of ritualised floggings in ladies’ boarding schools and in clergymen’s studies”:

“The virtues of different implements were discussed with relish, as were the elaborate performances of removing clothing and strapping down the victims, the penitent tears and the urgent begging for mercy. Running in parallel was a second stream of letters purporting to be from women who had undergone such punishments and remembered them with gratitude, not to mention an enormous amount of detail.”

Sam Beeton published the material in a two shilling supplement, which “in addition to the letters themselves… carried advertisements for canes, whips and birches, as well as A History of the Rod and Flagellation and the Flagellants by Revd W. Cooper.”

It’s rather as though some respectable modern-day magazine – Tatler, say, or The Lady – suddenly branched out and produced a “spanking special”. And why not, I say? Perhaps we should all try writing in with appropriately inappropriate letters, and see if we can start a trend.

The Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology contained a rather fascinating article in its March 1916 edition, entitled “Punitive Pain and Humiliation”. The author, Marquis Eaton – a Chicago lawyer – starts with a discussion of the 1630 penalty for poisioning (“boiling in oil, water or lead”), but quickly moves onto more palatable topics:

The whipping act passed in 1530 required vagrants, without sex distinction, to be whipped naked at the cart’s tail; the statute remaining unchanged until the 39th year of Queen Elizabeth, when it was so modified that the culprits were permitted clothing from the waist line down.

In 1769 at Nottingham a young woman, 19 years of age, was found guilty of obtaining goods under false pretenses and was ordered stripped to the waist and publicly whipped on market day in the market place. It was not until 1791 that this statute was amended to forbid the whipping of female vagrants.

It is only recently that the Dutch abolished the public whipping of women… In Germany and Switzerland the magistrates and judges possessed almost unlimited power in this matter. There were towns in which they placed female offenders in an ingenious kind of machine wherein they could not make the slightest movement in order that the blows might fall all the more conveniently. One of these instruments may still be seen, it is said, in the old prison at the Hague. In some instances female prisoners were allowed to retain one garment and the flagellation was performed by a woman; but in general there was no idea of making any such sacrifice to decency…

One finds it often asserted that this administration of the lower discipline (a daily occasion in the police courts of Holland and elsewhere) was considered sufficiently interesting that visitors came in groups and paid the officials for the privilege of witnessing…

Ignoring all the evidence, those remain who deplore the receding popularity of the rod as an instrument of correction. They urge it for the larger service in the home, the school, and in institutions for education and reform.

And for kinky fun, of course! More from the article in another post soon…

Talking about “the rule of thumb” in my last post sent me on a link-following trail through the internet, at the end of which I came upon an article that discredits the wife-beating origins of the phrase. As I paged though, my gaze kept sticking on the wording of some legal cases quoted in the document.

State v. Oliver, Oliver had been found guilty of assault and battery and fined $10 for having given five licks to his wife with “two switches, which were about four feet long, with the branches on them, about half way, and some leaves. One of the switches was about half as large as a man’s little finger, the other not so large.”

and

In Fulgham v. State (1871): “Since then, however, learning, with its humanizing influences, has made great progress, and morals and religion have made some progress with it. Therefore, a rod which may be drawn through the wedding ring is not now deemed necessary to teach the wife her duty and subjection to the husband.”

and then,

Emperor Justinian I … gave a husband freedom to “beat his wife with a whip or rod” for divorcable offenses: withholding information from him about a plot against the government, adultery, plotting against his life, remaining away from his house without his consent, attending banquets or bathing with strangers against his wishes, or attending circuses, theaters, or other public exhibitions without his knowledge or against his wishes.

Plotting against the government… going to the theatre… definitely spankable offences, both of them.

I can’t get rid of a squirming worm of guilt for extracting pleasure out of reading these passages, but it doesn’t mean that I’m about to either stop reading them, or stop looking for more of the same kind.

But yeah – the rule of thum? Complete nonsense.

If my previous extract from a 1916 article on “Punitive Pain and Humiliation” gave rise to suspicion that the author was rather more interested in his topic than pure academia would have required, his next anecdote (from the mid-1800s) could certainly support a theory that Mr Marquis Eaton was indeed “one of us”:

There has been published a letter recently written by an English lady—a member of a distinguished family. At the age of 80 she has dictated for the benefit of her great-granddaughter an account of her own boarding-school days. She had attended Regent House, one of the most exclusive of the girls’ schools; one to which only young women of quality gained admission. She describes as follows the type of punishment which prevailed:

“I remember well the public flogging of one of the young ladies, only a few weeks before she left school to be married. Miss Pomeroy, our principal, said:

‘Young ladies you will dress half an hour earlier than usual today, and be in the class room at half past four.’

We looked at one another and Miss Darwin colored a little but made no other sign that she knew anything about the matter, and we went to our rooms. Upstairs we found out what it meant, for the maid who dressed my hair had tied up new rods expressly for the coming ceremony.

At the appointed time we were all in the class-room and Miss Pomeroy took her place. Miss Darwin was ordered to stand in the middle of the room and then our governess proceeded to tell us what her offense was, and what she was going to suffer. She was a very handsome girl; quite a woman in appearance and size, and she was richly dressed, but she stood there to take her whipping as a matter of course.

Miss Pomeroy rang for an attendant. ‘Prepare her,’ was the mandate. The attendant courtesied and requested permission to remove Miss Darwin’s gloves. Miss Darwin bowed (that was the formula) and the process of disrobing went on. Then the punishment blouse was put on, and then the young lady, taking the rod, presented it kneeling to Miss Pomeroy.

The governess took it, and came down from the dais, while Miss Darwin, between two teachers was led to a desk, and made to stoop over it, her hands being firmly held by attendants, and her feet being fastened in stocks on the floor. Then the governess with right good will whipped her until red weals arose in all directions on her white flesh. The castigation over, Miss Darwin, trembling in every limb and with blazing cheeks and sparkling eyes returned the rod to the governess kneeling, and retired to make her toilet, a servant bearing her clothes in a basket.”

I want a movie version. NOW!

A little treat for those of you who share our fascination with accounts of historical punishments.

Let us take you back in time to New England. October 1662. Persecution is the order of the day. Three Quaker women – Mary Tomkins, Alice Ambrose and Ann Coleman – have travelled from England “on a gospel mission”, where they are hauled before the magistrate.

This functionary, as a prelude to the sentence he was about to impose, told them of the law that had been passed for whipping Friends out of the Colony.  Mary Tomkins replied, “So there was a law that Daniel should not pray to his God.” “Yes,” rejoined the magistrate, “and Daniel suffered, and so shall you.”

The following warrant, drawn up by the priest, who acted as the magistrate’s clerk on the occasion, was then issued.

To the Constables of Dover, Hampton, Salisbury, Newbury, Rowley, Ipswich, Wenham, Lynn, Boston, Roxbury, Dedhara, and until these vagabond Quakers are carried out of this jurisdiction.

You and every of you are required, in the king’s name, to take these vagabond Quakers, Ann Coleman, Mary Tomkins, and Alice Ambrose, and make them fast to the cart’s tail, and driving the cart through your several towns, to whip them on their backs, not exceeding ten stripes each on each of them, in each town, and so convey them from constable to constable, until they come out of this jurisdiction, as you will answer it at your peril; and this shall be your warrant.

At Dover, dated Dec. 22nd, 1662

Per me, RICHARD WALDEN

The account – on a Quaker website – continues:

The women being thus whipped at Dover, were carried to Hampton, and there delivered to the constable, William Fifield….

This constable the next morning would have whipped them before day, but they refused, saying that they were not ashamed of their sufferings. Then he would have whipped them on their clothes when he had them at the cart; but they said, ‘ Set us free, or do according to thy order;’ which was to whip them on their naked backs.

He then spoke to a woman to take off their clothes; but she said she would not do it for all the world. ‘ Why,’ said he, ‘ I profess I will do it myself.’ So he stripped them, and then stood trembling with the whip in his hand, and so he did the execution.

Others were similarly treated. Take one Mrs Hooton:

Passing through Cambridge on her return, she felt called to exhort the inhabitants to repentance… the instance of the magistracy, she was arrested, and for two days and two nights confined in a “noisome dungeon…”

On the third day of her imprisonment, Elizabeth Hooton being brought before the Court, was sentenced to be whipped through three towns and expelled the colony. The sentence was executed with great rigor; at Cambridge she was tied to the whipping-post, and received ten lashes; at Watertown she was beaten with ten strokes from willow rods; and at Dedham ten lashes more “laid on with exceeding cruelty at a cart’s tail.”

Later, she returned to Cambridge – despite having been banished – with her daughter. They were taken before the one of the magistrates, Daniel Goggin:

Of Elizabeth’s daughter he demanded, ‘Do you own your mother’s religion?’ To which she was silent; and yet they were sent to the house of correction, with order to be whipped. Next morning the executioner came before it was light…

He took her down stairs, and whipped her with a tree-stringed whip…. And taking Elizabeth’s daughter he gave the like to her also, who never was there before, nor had said or done anything. They not only received the usual number of ten stripes at Cambridge, but the same number in each of two other towns lying in the direction of Rhode Island.

It strikes me that I’m missing a trick in my roleplaying experience – I’ve never played a scene in which various gentlemen in neighbouring towns stand by, whips in hand, whilst convicted girls are ferried from one to the other to be flogged at each location in turn. It sounds rather fun. Now, who’s in ready driving distance?

A couple of rather remarkable incidents aboard ship emerged during a speech by the Earl of Mountcashell in the House of Lords on 22 March 1850.

It all started innocently enough, with the case of the emigrant ship Sabraon. Well, perhaps ‘innocently’ isn’t quite the right word, given the fate that befell a group of orphan girls from a foundling establishment, sent on the trip by the Poor Law guardians:

The surgeon… had proposed shortly after the vessel sailed that the captain and the mates should engage some of them to wait upon them as servants, and the result was of course what might have been expected…

It was alleged that the captain had failed to prevent unrestricted intercourse between the officers and sailors and the females on board; that he had taken one girl to wait upon himself…

But more shocking was “the case of the four girls on board the  Ramilies who were flogged for misconduct… one of them having struck the matron”. He noble lord flourished a letter from one of the girls on board.

She was not one of those flogged, but she witnessed the flogging, and she said, “Some of the girls were put in irons and flogged; their names were PhÅ“be Spooner, Margaret Mack, Catherine Morgan, and Jane Dowling…”

These girls were stripped to the waist, and flogged on their bare backs. [T]he captain said they were not hit hard enough, and desired another person to take the rope and strike harder, the Burgeon standing by and holding their arms…

If more evidence was needed, his lordship continued by “pulling out a piece of platted rope, the thickness of a man’s little finger, about two feet and a half in length, from his pocket… the identical rope with which the girls were flogged.” “It had been brought to him by a person who was on board, and who had seen it used upon them.” (Is it too much to hope that the artefact might, to this day, be preserved in the parliamentary archives?)

Such scene potential – given the distance of time since the events actually took place. I’ve even managed to dig out a contemporary press report of the Ramilies incident, from the Perth Gazette and Independent Journal of Politics and News of 27 July 1849. Oh how I love online newspaper archives!

A fascinating little item from the Herald Courier, Tennessee, back on June 23:

It may come as a surprise to many of my readers to know that Bristol once had a whipping post.

I well remember the site…. a one-story brick building [which] served as the mayor’s office and also as the headquarters of the Bristol News. At that time, the mayor served as city judge.

The whipping post was at the west side of this building near street side.   Occasionally, the mayor sentenced a law-breaker to receive so many lashes at the whipping post. It was the duty of the town sergeant to wield the whip.

John B. Keller, who long served in that capacity, made the first whip used at that post. It has been told that he became very proficient at its use.

At such times, the action began with the mayor standing in his office door reading the sentence as the prisoner stood tied to the post. There was always a large and eager crowd standing by to witness the carrying out of the sentence.

Mr. Keller would call out, “Lash one.” The crowd would yell, “Strike,” and strike he would. And so it went until the prescribed number was met. When the last lash was applied, the crowd would break out in loud cheers. The released prisoner would then leave the scene in a rather brisk manner…

The last account of a public whipping here that I have record of took place in 1882. How long this form of punishment continued, I do not know.

I do like the idea of a chorus of girls being made to call for the next blow to be inflicted on one of their number. I must weave that into a scene sometime!

Something of a find, methinks: an article that appeared in The Mercury, a newspaper in Hobart, Tasmania, on Saturday 3 January 1885. I uncovered it in the wonderful online archive of old Australian newspapers, and have done my best to correct the site’s rather quirky transcription of the text. It’s rather long, but that in itself is part of its attraction:

A NEW ORDER OF FLAGELLANTS.

The following letter has appeared in a Sunday journal called The People, published in London, under date October 20 last. If the writer may be believed, she has been most brutally and shamefully ill-treated. There is a circumstantiality about the letter which goes some way to prove its truth.

Sir, –

Excuse the liberty I take in writing to you, but I thought I would let you know how some poor girls are treated who cannot help themselves. Though I am a full-grown  girl, 19 years old, for only taking in your paper, which my step-mother had told me not to do, I was stripped naked, tied up, and severely slapped and beat with a birch rod by a gentleman and friend of my stop-mother, and who goes to the same chapel as she does.

The custom of whipping girls and women, I believe, is quite general, and no wonder, when we find newspapers advising the use of the rod. I know several cases besides my own of women being  whipped.

What I mean by this is this; my step-mother wrote to a popular weekly paper complaining of my conduct and asking for advice, and this is the answer they sent, which I saw myself in answers to correspondents, which she had marked out with pen and ink:-

“To One in Trouble.- What we should advise would be the use of the birch rod. Your daughter-in-law being 19, we cannot see that should make any difference ; if she is not too old to be wicked she is not too old to be whipped.

If you are not strong enough to whip her yourself, get some friend to do it for you. Got a birch broom, take about twenty long stiff bushy switches, tie the end with thick string to form a handle. It should be about as thick as your wrist, it will break no bones.”

Now, Sir, is it right to punish any  girl in such a manner? I was brought up with my grandmother at Maidstone till I was 19; she dying, my step-mother brought me with her to London. My father has been dead some years. She is a little stern spirity woman, and very religious, going to chapel every night and three times of a Sunday. She was very strict with me, and seemed from the first to take dislike to me..

She was very plain in her dress, and did not like me to look smart. A white feather I wore in my hat she took out and put into the fire. I wore fringe over my forehead and she made me alter my hair I had been in the habit of taking in Tit Bits, Ally Sloper and your paper. This she told me not to do, as it was not fit reading for a young woman like me, and if I wanted to read there was plenty of good books, which was true, but they were all dry religious books, which I did not care to read.

Well, one day she came in my room, and I was leading your paper, and she asked me what I was reading of, and told me to give it her at once This I refused to do, but put it into my pocket. I must admit I was rather impudent. Well, she flew into a violent rage with me, and though I was about as big again as her I was quite frightened by her.

She told me she would humble me, with my good looks and my hat and feather. She said she would have me whipped  like a child.   She would bring me down, and ordered me to bed. I did not resist,   but began to un-dress. She said she had been advised to have me  whipped, and she should try what, a birch rod would do. She then locked me in.

In about an hour she came into the room with a large birch rod in her hand, followed by a gentleman looking like a minister. He was about 35. She then said to him, “This is my daughter-in-law, and I wish you to whip her most severely.” He then said, ” Miss ——, I am very sorry to come on such-unpleasant business, but I am sure the whipping I am going to give you will be for your good, and you must submit: you must be made to obey your mother-in-law ; if you are not corrected it is quite certain you will go to ruin,” and other words to the same effect.

I was then rolled tight up in the bedclothes, laying on my face. I was then stripped to my waist, and putting his left arm around me, he gave me a good many slaps as hard as he could. I was then stripped quite naked, my hands were tied together, and he tied me up to the wall till my feet were almost off the floor.

He then gave me a severe birching ; the pain was so dreadful on my already smarting skin that I screamed so loudly that she tied my head up in a shawl to stifle my cries. I was then let down and locked in my room for the night. I could not sleep all night for the smarts ; from mv waist to my knees was crimson and covered with weals and bleeding.

Well, after this I was very careful not to offend her if I could help it. But I got whipped several times after-wards, but not so severely. She used to send him a note to come and whip me when I offended her ; I was only tied up once since the first time.

Strange as it might seem to you, when I have spoken to her and appealed to her as a religious woman not to have me so exposed, and so shamefully  whipped, she makes out she is doing right. She says nothing is indecent if not done for the sake [of] indecency, and it was quite necessary I must be whipped, and she could not do it. and he was the only friend she knew that would do it, and as to the »tripping that was part of the whipping, and would take sorne of the pride out of me   It was no more than calling in a doctor to attend to a delicate case.

But in spite of her fine talk, I know it is not right for any  girl  to be so indecently  whipped. Please excuse the paper as I have no money to buy any.

Yours etc.,

E. A.

I have no doubt that the letter in question did appear at the time – indeed, there’s a copy of the very article on the site:

I do, however, wonder whether E.A.’s story is genuine. It wasn’t at all uncommon at the time for spanking enthusiasts to submit fictional pieces to the press, masquerading as real-life accounts – appearing in publications such as the Englishwomen’s Domestic Magazine. Whatever the truth of the matter, the article’s a rather delightful discovery. And should any budding E.A.s out there want to meet the clergyman, my dog-collared shirt is ironed and ready!