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FLOGGING BLOCKS

Whilst horsing was commonly used in English school, in many of the public schools the culprit took his punishment kneeling. At Eton the flogging block was one of the famous institutions of the place. It resembled the kind of block which we see portrayed in old prints as having been used in medieval times for decapitating prisoners:

The flogging blocks used essentially consisted of a twin-stepped wooden construction. A boy to be flogged would have to lower, or completely remove his breeches and any underwear, and kneel on the lower step of the block, bending his torso acutely over the upper step, so as to place his hands flat on the floor on the far side of the block. Sometimes he would be held down by two other boys. The cost of the birch was added to his bill as an ‘extra’. The birches used were bundles of birch twigs soaked in brine with the hard buds still left on. 

The Eton birching/flogging block displayed in the School’s museum:

An  image from a TV adaptation of the book ‘Tom Brown Schooldays’ in 2005. The book was written by Thomas Hughes in 1857, based on Rugby School in the 1830s. The image shows Tom sentenced to a caning. He makes his way to the punishment room in one of the dimly lit towers of the school. He approaches the birching block at the centre of the room awaiting the headmaster, Thomas Arnold’s (played by Stephen Fry) arrival. The caning understandably is not shown, only the facial expressions of both Tom and the Headmaster.

The collage below shows a young lady securely strapped down over a modern version of a flogging block. Unlike her schoolboy forebears, she at least has the comfort of a soft cushion under her tummy and a blanket on which to kneel! Her bottom has clearly been given a sound caning and subsequently anointed with some soothing cream.  Nevertheless it looks rather sore!

The following is an edited extract from a Richard Manton story called ‘The Man with the Golden Rod’, illustrated by Paula Meadows. It concerns a certain Mr. James Miles who is the superintendent of Hoo House, a C19 Reformatory for delinquent young girls and boys. In this extract, a number of the female inmates are caned in the reformatory’s punishment room equipped with a flogging block. Various members of the local judicial community are invited to witness the flogging.

Miles welcomes his guests to an excellent dinner, food and wine on expenses. Afterwards they all retire to the punishment room — the ‘Red Room’ as they call it at Hoo — prudently out of earshot of the rest of the buildings. 

Picture a long stone-flagged room, gaslight glaring harshly on white-washed walls. The windows are high up and barred. At the centre of the floor stands the fixed square wooden flogging block over which each culprit kneels. Several feet to the rear are leather chairs for the witnesses. They take their places, whilst Mr. Miles removes his jacket and rolls up his sleeves. He tests a slender three-foot cane. It has a rapier’s spring. Like a golfer practising his swing, he cuts the air a few times with a trial swish. 

The first delinquent is led in. She is just the sort of rebellious tomboy to make a disciplinarian’s fingers itch. Elaine is best described as a shouting, striding youngster. Her long fair hair combed from a central parting lies loose upon her shoulders. Narrow eyes and thin mouth give the broad oval of her face a look of snub-nosed insolence. This sturdy young rebel boasts robust young hips and thighs. 

The witnesses catch her defiant gaze with quiet smiles of anticipation, their eyes taking in her strong young legs, grey pleated skirt and white blouse. 

Her crime, it seems, was breaking the finger of one of the reformatory’s matrons. Elaine returns the gaze of the portly middle-aged justices that fill the room with a look of contempt. It seems she cares nothing for the impending punishment. Hardly waiting for the order, she sheds her skirt and kneels on all fours over the block. The tight white cotton of Elaine’s drawers show her to be ‘quite a big-bottomed girl in this posture’. 

Miles announces her sentence formally to the girl and the justices, assuring her that it will be with the cane across her bare bum-cheeks. He then nods to one of the reformatory matrons who unceremoniously pulls down Elaine’s drawers and tucks up the tail of her blouse, well clear of the full pale cheeks of her bottom. Elaine tosses back her hair, cranes her face round looking defiant. Such girls as this are a real puzzle, since defiance will merely earn her more lashes of the cane. 

Then Miles orders her to call out the number of the first stroke. 

Now comes the biggest shock of all. The rebellious youngster, in a burst of foul-mouthed, four-lettered defiance, refuses to call out the numbers of the strokes. She yells to the world that Miles is a bastard, and an effing bastard at that. Then tossing back her fair hair again, Elaine stares round at the witnesses. The broad oval of her snub-nosed face is still suffused with defiance in her narrow eyes and thin mouth. How she curses the well-fed justices. In the privacy of the punishment-room they smile back at her knowingly, showing her their amusement and delight in her predicament. They let her see them sitting forward in their chairs for a close-up of the subject. Mouths pursed and eyes bright, they survey the sturdily broadened cheeks of Elaine’s backside in its present posture. Whatever the explanation of her vulgar impudence, she must have known better than to hope for a reprieve later on. When the justices have such a bare-bottomed tomboy over the block, all leniency is forbidden. 

So Miles gently and almost teasingly measures the cane across the full pale checks of Elaine’s young bottom. For all her defiance, the youngster is gnawing at her lower lip apprehensively. Her hands are clenched desperately and her buttocks are tensing and shifting under the menace of the cane’s touch.

With all the time in the world, Miles takes aim. Then, raising the cane, he brings it down with an ear-splitting crack across the full pale cheeks of Elaine’s bottom. She gasps at the smart and her bottom-cheeks begin to arch and squirm. Miles knows from long experience that the initial smarting impact of the cane across Elaine’s adolescent behind will swell in intensity to a savage climax several seconds later. Expert that he is, he aims each stroke to coincide with the climax of its predecessor. 

Naturally there is an electric tension in the room as the smack! … whip-smack! of two more uncounted strokes rings out across Elaine’s rear cheeks. This is accompanied by a gasping, a wrestling, and the strained creaking of the punishment bench. Surely the rebellious youngster must know as well as the witnesses that she will yell at the top of her voice for the first counted stroke, sooner or later. Only then will the official punishment begin. Incredible though it seems, she is actually trying to add to her punishment while she can still bear to. 

After a number of uncounted strokes, the inevitable happens. A sizzling lash of the cane causes Elaine’s sturdy young buttocks to clench frantically. As the impact  swells, she tosses back her fair hair, looks round at the witnesses in consternation, and yells out, ’ONE!’ 

The justices smile knowingly at this triumph of their power over her adolescent rebellion. The eventual submission of the victim is inevitable, but they prefer it when they have to wait. 

Miles’ mouth is set tight. The cane thrashes down with a pistol-crack report across the red cane-wheals already blossoming across Elaine’s backside. The sequel is predictable and easily imagined:

‘Two! … Three! … Fo-o-o-ur! …. FI-I-I-VE! …. SIX! …. Please, not across there again! 

No! N-O-O-O! …. O-O-O-W! …. My BOTTOM! Oh, please count that one! Ple-e-e-e-ase! …. 

O-O-W-HOO-HOO-HOOO! …. SEVEN! …. E-E-E-Y-OW! …. OH, NO! NOT THERE AGAIN! …. 

AHH! …. EIGHT! …. NINE! …. No-o! Not there again! It isn’t fair! …. Y-O-O-W! …. TEN!’

Does this sound-track show the unacceptable face of law-and-order? One can well believe that by this stage of the discipline, the fiery spread of Elaine’s bottom-cheeks ‘resembled a girl made to sit all day on a cruel thorn-bush infested by angry wasps!’ 

After more than a dozen counted swipes of the cane across her bare bottom, even a sturdy youngster like Elaine is frantic from the lingering smart. Then there comes a wickedly-aimed stroke across the willow-pattern of cane already striping her backside. In a fury of anguish, Elaine twists her face round again, with eyes brimming and mouth howling, yelling, ‘My arse! Oh, you bastards! You bastards!’

The last phases of her punishment are extremely undignified. After a stroke wicked enough to raise goose-pimples, Elaine’s tomboy bottom thrashes in a paroxysm of wild agony, and her lips scream profanities. The snub-nosed rebel turns the broad oval of her face to the witnesses, her mouth forming an ‘Ooo!’ of dismay at what she has so pitiably shrieked. She knows that such impudence qualifies for extra chastisement. To Elaine’s shrill and frantic protests that she can bear no more, Miles only replies that she will be made to bear it anyway. 

During the rest of the evening Miles plies the cane with the virtuoso skill of a concert pianist before his guests. Every 20 minutes or so, the door of the Red Room opens. One pretty miscreant leaves, rubbing her behind cheeks tearfully, and another is summoned.

A series of three images by an unknown artist from a story from ‘Janus’ called ‘The Memoirs of Dolly Mason’ possibly by RT Mason. The ‘heroine’ in the story, Dolly Mason, is employed as the principal disciplinarian in a girl’s convent school. Girls are caned whilst held down over a wooden block:

Here is a short extract from the story:

‘The young buttocks across the block before me were adorable, being plump and with a skin of satin. As I measured the long cane upon them I recall, as though it were this very morning, marveling at how fair a bum could belong to so arrogant and disobedient a girl. Had not she been reared in the plushest lap of luxury? Was not she as a boarding pupil in this superior young ladies’ seminary, in the care of men and women both wise and truly loving? Did not she, as to meals, fare wholesomely? And was not she clothed cleanly and with a uniform at once genteel and smart? 

How fortunate therefore was her lot. Yes despite all this, there was incontrovertible evidence (and the intention never denied) that she had been the ring-leader in a midnight masturbation party of five other girls, the youngest 13 and the eldest 17. Three had been apprised with candles actually in position. 

No rule in the seminary was clearer than that masturbation among the girls should not be. The punishment for offenders was no less forthright and well known: six strokes of the cane across the bared bottom, the ring-leader (if proved) receiving ten. 

The ring-leader was kneeling before me, the crime against the wisdom of the seminary having been tearfully admitted and the leadership confessed. As I pondered all this, how could I, born in abject poverty but saved for educated upbringing by the wonderful intervention of luck in the form of a kind and well-to-do old gentleman, not feel contempt for such a malefactor? Yet at the same time, wish to do all in my power to set her firmly on the correct path of good conduct. The waywardness had to be arrested. The badness rooted out so that the delicate plant of ladylike virtue could flourish. Condoning pity at this stage would, as well I knew, be the worst that could befall the senior pupil now feeling for the first time the initial tap-tap of the measuring rod. 

Nervous myself, yet resolute of purpose and now satisfied I had the range of the fascinatingly attractive rear, I nodded to the gentleman holding down the shoulders indicative that I was ready. The cane was raised high above my head and brought whistling down with all my shoulder force behind it. The cut fell perfectly across the centre, evenly divided by the crease and the entire bum seemed to leap with frenzy into the air as a shriek arose like (as I was advised later) nothing heard within the seminary before. 

It was my first essay into the business of thrashing although had anyone then told me it was to be my business and one in which I was to attain select distinction, I would have refused to believe it. For at this seminary, on this late April day, I was merely, in duty, obeying the urgent request of my dear guardian and his friends, all governors of the academy. 

But of that day I shall relate in due course, since the forward route of the story demands of me that I now deal with the events of that thrashing session. For, in addition to the masturbation group, there were no less than eleven other young women upon which the pliant stock of justice was on that day arranged to fall. 

The first slash having been received by the ring-leader and her shoulders being once more forced under implacable control, I addressed myself to the completion of the sentence. The ensuing nine strokes were supplied with timed regularity, on every five seconds, and in a varied placing so that at the conclusion the posteriors were as raging fires to the sight and to judge from the clamorous blubberings of the subject, likewise to the feel.

More to come…