Bedouin And Bridewells

Obligingly he described the 'coffle', a line of naked women, secured by iron collars, linked with chains, often with their ankles fettered also, and marched in this condition across deserts and through dark forests, their flagging footsteps goaded on by the overseers' whips on their backs.

In the cities they would be put, one by one, on the block and auctioned off to the male that was prepared to pay most for their charms. I thought how this might well be compared to the fate of the daughters of the County families, whose matches were arranged on much the same terms, but did not disturb the young ladies delicious shivers by mentioning the topic.

The Colonel went on to describe how these men, having laid out their gold, required value for it, expecting abject obedience, devoted service, and unlicensed pleasure from their slaves, but first they must mark them as their own, so that there could be no hope of escape. Before she left the block, each slave would be bent over it, and a hot iron, carrying her new owner's mark, would be pressed into her buttock, while she screamed her defeat and enslavement.

These brands were very carefully applied, so as not to diminish the woman's beauty and the man's pleasure in it. Often the design was an ornament in itself, and some of the more delicate and decorative might be burnt into the shoulder, the thigh or the breast, where it might show to advantage.

Beside the branding iron, owners also employed the piercing needle, to perforate nipples, noses, even labia, in which they would set heavy rings of gold or silver which, like the brands already burnt into their flesh, both marked the wearer as slave and the man's property, and enhanced her attraction for him.

While he described the means by which men marked and decorated their slave-girls, the younger ladies had continued to give off excited sounds of sweet alarm and delighted terror, but they fell more quiet as he told of the other side of the coin, of the punishments with whip and bastinado, cruel cords and cheerless dungeons, while they sat quite frozen when he spoke of the mutilations that might follow some sexual indiscretion. Not adultery, for that a sewn sack, weighted with stones, would carry them to the bottom of the sea, or the executioner would stretch them naked in the sun and peel the skin from them strip by strip with his cruel blade, but there were lesser crimes between women that must be paid for.

Men and countries varied, he said, some treating it as harmless as is the case among ourselves, in this civilized country of ours, but others resented it as a reflection on, or a detraction from, their own masculinity, and forbade it utterly. A girl caught polluting herself, or another, in such a household might have her delicate sex bud torn from her body, so that she neither indulged in its stimulation again herself, nor allowed another to.

This frightful intelligence bid fair to cast a shadow over the girls' bright chatter, and it was as well that, about this time, the chaos on the far side of the curtain stilled and the cast were ready to proceed.

When the curtain rose again, it was on a most sombre scene. The walls were draped with coarse canvas, painted to represent bare stone, and from a hook, that normally carried a heavy lamp, a length of crude iron chain depended. The only furniture was a kitchen table and wooden chair, at which sat Mr Rochester, in sombre black, with stove pipe hat, writing in what appeared to be a ledger, or register of some kind.

Now Blanche appeared again. Her costume could not have been more different from those that had gone before. She was dressed in black bombazine, her hair caught in a severe bun on the back of her head, under a small lace cap. She dragged with her her sister Mary, who was wearing a stuff gown of the poorest quality and, it would appear, little else, for her head and feet were bare.

She seemed rather reluctant to play her part, and was hauled up in front of the table, as if before a tribunal or magistrate. He appeared to address her sternly, pointing at her and at his book, then making some note on the page. Mary fell to her knees, her hands placed together in an attitude of pleading, but the black figure at the table waved her away. Blanche dragged her to her feet, then over to the chain on the opposite wall. She wrapped the chain round Mary's wrists, hooking the free end up so as to secure her, partly on her toes, facing the wall. She took the gown between her strong hands and ripped it clear down the back, then tore it again, so the material hung in tatters, leaving Mary bare to her waist. Though it was a dumb show. she cried out at the exposure, but Blanche silenced her with a hiss of disapproval.

Though not of such exceptional beauty as her sister, Mary was never the less very well formed, her shoulders smooth and inviting, her breasts full and firm, crowned with delicate red cherries that stood out thick and hard now, whether from fear or excitement I could not tell.

Now the audience made a collective sound of surprise, or was it expectation? Unseen in the gloom, and from the angle at which we looked up at the stage, a martinet lay on the table at which Mr Rochester sat, and he rose and handed it to Blanche. She accepted it and stood behind her sister, a little to one side, and lifted her hand. When it fell, the cords of the martinet hissed through the air and struck Mary across her white shoulders. She grunted and jerked in her bonds, and Blanche struck again. Mary gave a small cry, then protested in earnest.

"Not so hard, Blanche. There is no need to whip me so, it is only a show."

"Be quiet," Blanche hissed back, "there must be no talking in Charades."

Mary whimpered, for she, quite rightly, feared what Blanche was capable of, and she was not proved wrongly fearful. Blanche continued to bring the four cords whistling down to eat painfully into the soft flesh offered to them, until Mary's back was laced with bright red lines from neck to waist, the knotted ends digging into her side and even touching the side of one tender breast on several occasions. Poor Mary received a dozen full strength strokes from a whip that was no make-believe, but one kept for disciplining the dairymaids, stout girls who needed a strict instrument of correction, nor did Blanche hold back, but laid it on with all her athletic strength. By the end Mary was in tears, and had to be helped from the room, so distressed she made no attempt to cover her nakedness, leaving her bare breasts for the eyes of all.

It had been obvious to all that Blanche disdained her sister as a 'milk-sop' and it would appear she had taken advantage of the situation to thrash her far more harshly than anyone had expected, in order to make her expose herself for weakness. If so, she signally failed, for Mary showed considerable bravery under a cruel whip.

It did not take the divining party long to decide on the word. BRIDE had been immediately obvious, but the scene at the cistern was a little more ambiguous. However, Blanche's performance in whipping her sister as a bawd made all certain, and Colonel Dent gave the jury choice as, quite correctly, BRIDEWELL.

The party broke up into little groups, each discussing the merits of the playlets, or congratulating one of the players, who had come out to receive their due. When someone remarked that poor Mary, who had not reappeared, had been treated rather more harshly than necessary, Lady Lynn was heard to snort in derision.

Why, she declared, what was shown and done was nothing. When she was a girl, she'd been taken to see the old Bridewell, when it was in full flower. Then the bawds were whipped to the blood, on entering and on leaving the establishment, and any person of quality, who cared to present the Keeper with an appropriate fee, might take a whip or rod to any delinquent that caught his, or very often, her, fancy. The women were particularly fierce, she opined, using the poor wretches as whipping girls for their husbands' mistresses, that were out of their reach, though the latter was not always the case. A discarded Mistress might well find her way to the Bridewell, either because, bereft of her protector she might quickly sink to join the drabs or, sometimes, because, once vulnerable, a jealous wife might find the means to persuade the authorities to take her up on some flimsy charge. In either case she might look forward to an unhappy stay, for the wife might call and skin her back, any time she chose.

Nor was it just Mistresses of low birth that could be trapped so. One Lady of not just gentle breeding but, also, titled in her own right, was denounced to the authorities, at the time of the late wars, and found to be carrying letters to the French tyrant giving details of the disposition of troops, and expressing admiration for his person and his government. Despite her denials, she was sent to the Bridewell to be held. For a month, the wife of the Nobleman whose bed she had been warming, would visit her daily. When she finally was rescued by her family, her back was torn to ribbons, and she never held her head up in Society again.

You may imagine the state of lubricious excitement in which the girls of the party retired to their beds that night, each refusing to sleep alone, on account of the nightmares that might come, and hence sharing a bed with a friend of their bosom and, no doubt, other delicious parts of their anatomy.