Pleasurable Punishments
Seeking punishment for pleasure has a long history. Brothels catered for every perversion and kept a ready stock of instruments such as rods, whips and even more sophisticated devices. In the late eighteenth century flagellation was advertised and sought after, particularly by those who could afford the more expensive treatment. In Bloomsbury, Mary Wilson promoted her practice and women through the publication The Exhibition of Female Flagellants, boasting the best whippers in town. In Covent Garden, Mrs Collett’s establishment was frequented, not surprisingly, by the Prince Regent.
The nineteenth century witnessed a proliferation of literature relating to flagellation, such as The Exhibition of Female Flagellants (1860), The New Ladies’ Tickler (1866), Romance of Chastisement by George Stock (1870), and its sequel the Quintessence of Birch Discipline (1883), With Rod and Bum, Or Sport in the West End of London by Ophelia Cox (1898) and Lady Bumtickler’s Revels (1872).
Theresa Berkeley was a well-known dominatrix and a brothel owner in the West End during the mid-nineteenth century. She ran brothels first in Soho and then in Charlotte Street. Her specialty was flagellation and she was notable as the inventor of the ‘Berkeley Horse’, a notorious machine used to flog gentlemen. Henry Spencer Ashbee (1834-1900), a book collector of pornography, described her repertoire:
Her instruments of torture were more numerous than those of any other governess. Her supply of birch was extensive, and kept in water, so that it was always green and pliant: she had shafts with a dozen whip thongs on each of them; a dozen different sizes of cat-o’-nine-tails, some with needle points worked into them; various kinds of thin bending canes; leather straps like coach traces; battledoors, made of thick sole-leather, with inch nails run through to docket, and currycomb tough hides rendered callous by many years flagellation. Holly brushes, furze brushes; a prickly evergreen, called butcher’s bush; and during the summer, a glass and China vases, filled with a constant supply of green nettles, with which she often restored the dead to life. Thus, at her shop, whoever went with plenty of money, could be birched, whipped, fustigated, scourged, needle-pricked, half-hung, holly-brushed, furze-brushed, butcher-brushed, stinging-nettled, curry-combed, phlebotomized [act of opening a vein by incision or puncture to remove blood as a therapeutic treatment], and tortured till he had a belly full.
‘Pleasures of the Whip’ by Aubrey Beardsley.
Theresa’s instruments of pleasure were much sought after by the aristocracy and the rich. In her famous Soho brothel the reception rooms were garishly decorated. In one of the rooms, the ‘Skeleton Room’, a skeleton could be made to step out of a closet with the aid of machinery. Henry Mayhew described some of the bizarre rooms and her elaborate theatrical sets:
...rooms were fitted with springs, traps and other contrivances, so as to present no appearance other than an ordinary room, until the machinery was set in motion. In one room, in which a wretched girl might be introduced, on her drawing a curtain as she would be desired, a skeleton, grinning horribly, was precipitated forward, and caught the terrified creature, in his, to all appearances, bony arms. In another chamber the lights grew dim, and then seemed to gradually to go out. In a little time some candles, apparently self-ingnited, revealed to a horror stricken woman, a black coffin, on the lid of which might be seen, in brass letters, ANNE, or whatever name it had ascertained the poor wretch was known by. A sofa, in another part of the mansion, was made to descend into some place of utter darkness; or, it was alleged, into a room which was a store of soot or ashes.
Berkeley also enjoyed having a certain amount of torture inflicted on her by her clients – for the right price. She employed women who were prepared to take any number of lashes provided the flogger forked out enough.
The West End was well placed to provide brothels for rich patrons who would happily pay for the additional erotic and painful pleasures. Henry Spencer Ashbee wrote that very sumptuously fitted-up establishments, exclusively devoted to the administration of the birch, were not uncommon in London... It would be easy to form a very lengthy list of these female flagellants, but I shall restrict myself to mention a few only. Mrs. Collett was a noted whipper, and George IV is known to have visited her; she had an establishment in Tavistock Court, Covent Garden, whence she removed to the neighbourhood of Portland Place... Then came Mrs. James, who had... a house at No. 7 Carlisle Street, Soho. There were also Mrs. Emma Lee, real name Richardson, of No. 50 Margaret Street, Regent Street... But the queen of her profession was undoubtedly Mrs. Theresa Berkley... she was a perfect mistress of her art, understood how to satisfy her clients, and was, moreover, a thorough woman of business, for she amassed during her career a considerable sum of money. When she died in September 1836 she had made ten thousand pounds during the years she had been a governess.
Whipping was a common punishment and meted out to offenders irrespective of age and gender. For example, in 1679 four eight year-old boys were tried for stealing forty-eight bottles of ale from Francis Wheeler in St Martins. All of them confessed and were immediately taken out of the court and whipped. Likewise, twelve year-old Susanna Saunders was found guilty of stealing a hood and a pair of laced ruffles in 1684, for which she was publicly whipped. However, there was a thin line between those who meted out whippings as a genuine punishment and the secret pleasure some floggers derived from it. Such practices were all too common in certain institutions. In 1907 two sixteen-year-old boys, John Courtman and Albert Ingleton, who appeared at the Old Bailey for stealing a bicycle, were considered to be ‘too old to be flogged’ and were each given a four-month prison sentence.
The Revd Wm. M. Cooper wrote in a nineteenth-century standard work on corporal punishment (A History of the Rod in all Countries from the Earliest Period to the Present Time, London, William Reeves, 1877). In 1858 special regulations were issued for the punishment of naval cadets. They were not to be flogged according to the Mutiny Act, but simply with a birch rod, such as is used in public schools. Four cadets of the Illustrious having been guilty of such gross misconduct as would justify their dismissal from the service, the admiral in command suggested that they should be flogged with a birch rod... and the Admiralty sanctioned that course. In the circular issued from Whitehall to all commanders-in-chief, captains, and other commanding officers, it was enjoined that boys should not be flogged as formerly with a cat, but that in all cases where the offences could not be lightly passed over they should be punished in a similar manner to that which is in use at our large public schools – viz., by birching – and that in no case should more than twenty-four cuts be inflicted.
Birching had long been a standard punishment for boys, especially at the Royal Hospital School in Greenwich. Coldbath Fields Prison in Clerkenwell had until 1850 housed men, women and children; thereafter it was restricted to adult male offenders over the age of seventeen. Despite its aspirations to be a more humanitarian prison (it was designed by reformer John Howard), it became notorious for its strict regime of silence and its use of the treadmill. A cat o’ nine tails had been used on boys where Sergeant Adams the warden spoke of its effectiveness when he compared it to the birch. Acting as a witness for the Report of the Reformatory Schools Committee, 1856 he noted:
The punishment of flogging boys with the cat-o-nine-tails ought to be abolished not only as being too cruel but as being one which boys do not care about. We have substituted at Middlesex whipping with a birch rod, and boys who laugh at being put into a dungeon, and doubly laugh at flogging with a cat-o-nine-tails are upon their knees blubbering and praying not to be flogged with a birch rod – it deters them more than anything. I often sentence a boy given a month’s imprisonment to be well birched at the end of the first fortnight, so as to keep the terror over his mind.
Boys were birched during the daily exercise hour at Coldbath Fields. On some occasions it was so severe that that their yells could be heard through the window of a punishment cell on one of the top floors.