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From: Pentland <pentland@electronic-businesses.org>
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Subject: RULED BY THE ROD part 2
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2007 02:17:09 -0700
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===================

Chapter 5 OF MATTERS MEDICAL AND RURAL PASTIMES

By now the evening was well advanced. The tales of feminine discipline
and management had occupied the gentlemen through the soup, the fish,
the mutton pie and the jam pudding, to say nothing of copious
quantities of Claret, and some Muscadet to accompany the dessert. Now,
with their cigars lit, and the port to hand, they turned their
attention to their charges, ourselves.
  The Doctor wished to take up again the subject of what he referred
to as the pubic nerve. At their last discussion, they had agreed to
postpone a decision on the fate of that organ in each of us, to enable
greater thought to be given. Now the Doctor wished to bring the matter
to a head. He began by making each of us mount the chair in the normal
fashion but, for the time being at least, not for correction but for
inspection. He found this the best position in which to examine our
vulvas, and he was right, for it presented them well opened, between
our stretched thighs, and at a convenient height without forcing him
to bend unduly after his good supper. In turn, he probed our buds, and
the delicate membranes and fleshy lips by which they were surrounded,
reminding himself of their size, their response to stimulation, their
erectile qualities, their smooth glistening texture when aroused. When
each of us had mounted, spread our thighs, writhed under his
manipulations to the point, almost, of spasm, and revealed to him all
our most intimate secrets under his searching catechism of our habits
regarding those small reddened tongues, he dismissed us, and returned
to the table.
  "The best medical opinion," he began, "is that these organs,
unnecessary and superfluous to the reproductive process, can be
responsible for much disorder in the female. Their brains, more feeble
than in the male, are easily over excited by the nervous stimulation
emanating from these dangerous sources, often to the extent of
generating hysteria and many other ills. Currently the best
authorities are recommending excision, where there is thought to be
any risk whatever to the individual's stability.
  "In my opinion," he declared, "these three young females are all at
risk, for varying reasons, and to greater or lesser degrees, and I
would urge you to have their clitoris excised as soon as is
convenient."
  The Judge looked grave.
  "Is it your opinion that the matter is one of urgency, or that the
risk to their mental state and their good management is extreme?" he
asked.
  "No, I cannot say that," Dr Boucher replied. "We have provided them
with such support, with regular corrections, and physical restraints
to prevent unseemly rashness in their movements, that they may be
considered well under control, and not likely to burst out
precipitously."
  "I am mindful," said the Judge, "that husbands might one day be
found for these young women in our charge. While most men would
undoubtedly prefer them to be rid of these dangerous organs before
they have to take responsibility for their management, there are, in
my experience, a number of men, not large I grant you, but
significant, who gain pleasure from their wives' frenzy during
intercourse. If a woman is cut in this fashion, she generally loses
the ability to achieve this state, especially if she has no experience
of men before she loses the gland, and it would seem presumptuous of
us to deprive a potential husband of this pleasure, except it be a
matter of urgency. Are there no other, less drastic measures that you
could take?"
  "There are, Sir," the Doctor conceded, "and perhaps the risks
remaining after their implementation might be acceptable, so long as
they continue under our careful management. After all, if a
bridegroom, at some future date, were unhappy at her condition, there
is nothing to stop him having her excised as soon as she becomes his,
or even stipulating it as a condition of the marriage contract, that
she should come to him with it already removed."
  "What might be involved, Sir?" asked Papa, ever careful of our well-
being.
  "In the case of the eldest girl," the Doctor answered, "the organ
suffers from hypertrophy, that is, it is larger than the generality. I
would recommend that, as an interim measure, it should be reduced by
ablating the top third with the bistaury."
  I saw that Marion turned white; she had not forgot the bistaury
applied to her fundament, nor the cautery that followed it. I doubt
not that my own cheeks had turned as pale, nor had Charlotte heard the
diagnosis with any less perturbation.
  "As to the youngest, the organ is normal for a female of her age,
though set a little deep in the folds of the vulva. Moreover, though
it does not appear to be overly sensitive, she admits to stimulating
it quite frequently, despite our exhortations to refrain. I would
recommend, therefore that, for reasons of hygiene, the prepuce, or
hood, should be pruned, and a small incision made in the tip to reduce
the sensitivity somewhat."
  My belly contracted at the dire pronouncement, and I had to put a
hand on the wall to support myself, as he continued.
  "The middle daughter causes me the most concern. Of the three, she
is the most in need of a complete clitodectomy but if we save the two,
we should endeavour to save the third. The problem, as I see it, is
that she is too addicted to the febrile excitation of the organ.
Despite our warnings to the contrary, she has had to confess far more
frequently than her sisters, to breaking the prohibition, and she has
paid the price in stripes on her buttocks, though to no effect for,
within days, she offends again. The gland is properly formed, though
perhaps a trifle prominent, and extra sensitive. If we are not to take
the radical approach, then I feel that the proper course, in addition
to continued strict management naturally, would be to subject the
organ to a course of treatment, designed to thicken and coarsen the
epidermis, until its sensitivity is reduced sufficiently to bring the
problem under control. I am still a little uncertain as to the precise
details, but the best treatment would be, I think, to ablate a small
portion of the tip, then subject it to abrasion at regular intervals,
to slow the healing process, and promote a build up of scar tissue,
forming an insensitive shield."
  "Well, Sir," asked Justice Rodsham, addressing our parent, "how say
you? Shall their problem parts be dealt with as we are medically
advised is possible, if not certain, or shall it be the more radical
operation?"
  I think not a fraction of breath passed any of our lips as we
awaited our fates, and our knuckles were as white as our faces. We
nearly fainted from sheer relief when Papa answered.
  "Let it be the lesser, since, as you say, the radical excision can
be done at any time, if we or a husband desire it."
  We did not know then, to what this apparently compassionate decision
condemned us, or we would not have felt so much at ease, nor performed
our contagion extractive duties with quite so great a feeling of
gratitude. As it was, we went to our beds feeling as if we had been
saved from a fate too horrible to contemplate, and stroked our spared
buds, grateful that they were not to be torn from us, even if some
vague mutilation still menaced them.
  It was some days later that we were sent for, and set out for the
Doctor's residence, with George, the groom, driving us in the trap.
Arrived there, we were ushered into the surgery by Mrs Boucher, a
formidable lady whose appearance and demeanour were quite in keeping
with the Doctor's complaint of her at the vicarage dinner. We waited
nervously, in apprehension of the surgery we had been promised, though
we did not comprehend its full significance at that time.
  After ten minutes of agitated anticipation, the Doctor arrived,
bringing with him a young woman, no more than my own age, who he
introduced as his daughter, saying she would act as his nurse and
surgical assistant, and saying that we were to follow her instructions
as if they had been his own.
  "For," he said, "she has assisted at many of these operations, and
is quite conversant with the procedure involved."
  Though young, and not unattractive, her nature was obviously derived
from her mother rather than her sire, and she was a harpy in the
making. With a scornful tone, she ordered us to remove our clothing,
as far as our stays and shifts, telling us that she wondered we had
the poor sense to keep such an appointment, dressed as if for
visiting.
  "The simplest of attire would have been more appropriate to females
of your condition, for the very fact that you stand in need of such
trimming is disgraceful in itself, and you should not make a show of
yourselves at such a time, but rather, dress modestly and
unassumingly."
  She had each of us sit on the end of a leather couch, used for
examination purposes, and had us lie back, drawing up our shifts, and
exposing ourselves.
  "Open your thighs," she commanded, and proceeded to probe our nether
lips, and the secrets they held, pulling out our buds, and exclaiming
over each, in a tone of undisguised disgust. Mine she called an ill
formed berry, set in a cabbage leaf, while Charlotte's appeared to
her, or so she said, like some growth on rotten wood, but she reserved
her deepest scorn for Marion's lush bud.
  "Why," she declared, "'Tis like the eye of some monstrous slimy
toad. It is beyond me why Papa should trifle with these horrors. If it
were in my hand, I would have them out, all three, as I've often seen
him do in the past. Still, since it is to be reduction, rather than
excision, let us get you ready. You, girl," she called to Marion, who
must have been her senior by eight or nine years, "get yourself up
here, so that I may secure you fast."
  She stood by a narrow marble slab, mounted on a framework that held
it some three feet off the floor, at the best height for a surgeon to
operate. At one end a pair of metal bars projected vertically,
carrying at their tops two forks or stirrups. Marion was made to sit
on the end of the slab between the posts, then lean back until she lay
along the chilly marble. The shrewish 'nurse' fastened a broad leather
belt, attached at one end under the table, over Marion's waist, and
buckled it tight on the other side, thus securing her firmly to the
operating table. She took hold of the wrists and pulled them to the
other end of the table, securing them too with straps. Now she called
on Marion to raise her legs, the shift, of course, falling back to
reveal her mossy nest, and place each calf in one of the stirrups.
Secured with straps at the knee, she was now stretched wide, her vulva
completely open and unobstructed, and the patient secured so that,
whatever her agony, she could not move her hips a fraction.
  The young vixen then took soap bowl and razor, shaving off all that
soft intimate down that shields our private places, removing each last
delicate hair with deft strokes of the gleaming blade for, give her
her due, she did not lack skill which seemed to prove her boast that
she had assisted at similar operations many times before. Next she
cleaned down the site to be operated on with alcohol on a pad of
cotton, the action of the spirit in the delicate membranes, and the
skin scraped raw by the razor, causing Marion to writhe as much as she
was able in her fixings, and drew a whining protest from her lips. All
now being ready, she called to her parent.
  Dr Boucher came over at once, and made a last examination of the
site, before picking up a piece of soft copper wire and a length of
narrow glass pipe. He placed one end of the pipe over the swelling bud
of the clitoris, and sucked strongly on the other, drawing the bud out
to a length of half an inch or more up the bore of the pipe. Holding
it there by the suction of his mouth, he wound the wire tightly,
several times, around the base of the gland. When he released the
suction, and removed the pipe, the top of the bud stood stiffly on a
neck of copper, which held it firmly above the surrounding folds.
Twisting the long ends of the wire together, he fashioned them into a
handle, by which the bud could be held and manipulated. Now came the
moment of horror, for his daughter had already brought the cautery to
heat, and he had exchanged the glass pipe for the gleaming sharpness
of the bistaury. With a swift and practised stroke, he dashed off the
top of the swollen gland he held in its copper cradle, as one might
take off the top of an egg at the breakfast table, and with no more
emotion. Throwing down the deadly little blade, he snatched up the
cautery and had staunched the wound before the blood had fairly
started. Marion screamed one long gurgling scream, the two shocks were
too close to distinguish, then a string of choking cries that
gradually subsided until she lay still, except for a twitching of her
thighs and belly. Charlotte and I near fainted with the horror,
knowing we were soon to endure its like, but Miss Boucher watched the
proceeding with a stony face, only remarking, when Marion had got
herself in hand, "The good work continues, but it should have been
deeper, Papa."
  When Marion had been helped from the operating table, and placed to
recuperate on the couch, with a pad of cloth between her legs, the
Doctor indicated that he would take me next. I could scarcely walk for
terror, but forced myself to approach the marble slab, and stand on a
stool, so that I could sit on its end, still warm from contact with
Marion's body. I lay back, and Miss Boucher fastened the belt so
tightly across my waist and belly, I could scarcely breathe, and my
aspiration was not helped when she roughly drew my hands above my head
and secured them with straps, stretching me tautly. Now I was made to
lift my legs until they were near vertical. The shift had already
fallen to leave my thighs bare, but she pulled back on my legs, to
lift my buttocks somewhat off the table, and pushed the fallen folds
under me, leaving me quite bare from the waist down.
  Now came the moment of total surrender. With churning stomach, I
parted my legs and let each calf rest in one of the stirrups. Since
they were thirty inches apart, you may judge how widely I was spread,
and how open and defenceless my womanly parts. These the 'nurse' now
lathered thickly, then took the gleaming blade of the razor and set
about my glossy fleece. Despite having seen her dexterity myself, I
could not help but shudder at the feel of the cold steel on my flesh,
where no weapon so keen and threatening had been before. However I
cannot say it was a painful experience, save a nick or two, and I was
amazed to feel, by the end, that my bud, so dangerously close to the
sweeping blade, had actually stiffened in its nest of folds, and
pulsed warmly. I was not the only one to observe it.
  "How disgusting!" Miss Boucher observed, "but perhaps this may cool
your ardour." And she slapped the swab filled with alcohol, full on
that tender portion. The spirit on that pink and delicate membrane
stung abominably, and I shrieked with the shock of it, as it flowed
into the even more susceptible tissues below, even onto the entrance
of my maidenly sheathe. It was several minutes before I could
accommodate the pain, and stop my thighs and belly from their
twitching and spasming.
  Again it was the turn of her surgeon father. I would have shrunk
from his touch, had not my bonds held me rigid, when his fingers
tested my bud, and the glass tube took it in its sucky grip. Then the
wire was around it, gripping tight, and lifting it above the
surrounding folds, as it scarcely did in nature. I felt him give it an
exploratory tug, and braced myself for the agony that would follow,
but he let it drop, and took hold of the prepuce, or hood above it,
with forceps I assumed, for I could see nothing of what transpired
between my legs, laid back on the table as I was.
  The grip on my tiny hood tugged and twisted and then, suddenly, I
felt the blade slice into the flesh. It seemed to go on forever,
sawing away at the top of the fold, severing it close to the flesh
from which it sprang. It was a level of pain difficult to bear, and
the long slow ablation made it even more so. I contained, just, the
shrieks that rose to my throat, but whined like a whipped bitch
throughout, and lay, a mass of heaving sobs, when, at last, he had
trimmed my hood to what he considered a sanitary size. My whines soon
restarted, for, where I had feared the cautery, and had lain trembling
with terror, instead, he put several silk sutures in the wound to hold
it closed until it healed. And still I could feel my bud throbbing in
the confines of the copper coils, awaiting its own martyrdom.
  I felt his fingers grip the wire handle, then a bolt of agony, like
an arrow of white fire, shot through my body, radiating out to my
belly, my womb, my breasts even, for he had plunged the point of his
scalpel directly into the end of my most tender bud. This time there
was no question of holding in my screams. I let out a shriek that
echoed off the ceiling, then lay back, choking with the mingled sobs
and cries that, for some minutes, I could not stem, rekindled as they
were when his assistant applied astringent to the puncture, to reduce
the loss of blood. At least I had been spared the cautery.
  Not so poor Charlotte. After I had been removed to the couch to
recover, where Marion yielded me her place, going to sit on a bench
instead, for she was still weak from the shock she had endured,
Charlotte was put to the table, where Marion and I had already
suffered. Neither of us was in a state to observe her fate, but it
would appear that she was dealt with much as Marion. Certainly, from
what little of her cries filtered through my haze of pain, the pattern
seemed identical, and her wound, when we saw it, resembled Marion's
scabbed bud.
  The ride home was purgatory, as you may imagine, and we were very
sore for some days, Papa even excusing us our customary weekly
corrections until we healed, but we were healthy young women,
creatures notorious for their resistance to injury, and powers of
recuperation, and within ten days, what with careful washing with salt
water several times a day, and clean dressing to start with, we had
made good recoveries. Dr Boucher had called to see how we did every
other day, and had taken out my stitches on his third visit. Though it
hurt at the time, it was good to be rid of the drawing in my most
tender spot.
  We went back to our duties and our routines and, by the month's end,
were little changed from what we had been before. We had even begun to
experiment with that soft and intimate stroking, whereby we eased our
own, and our sisters', febrile tensions in the night. We were all
happy to discover that we still retained that ability, though we had
to tread warily on the newly healed tissue.
  Charlotte's pleasure, however, was short-lived, the more
disappointing for her that she was the most avid devotee of the gentle
usage. Indeed, it was this well-known addiction of hers that had
caused the Doctor to prescribe as he did, and now it was time for her
treatment to enter the next phase. On a day, the trap took her to the
Doctor again, for he preferred to treat such patients in his surgery,
where his operating table held them fast. We did not accompany her, so
did not see first hand what occurred. When she returned, she was much
distressed, and as sore as before. When it came to putting her in her
bed, and enquiring her state, she showed us her bud, once more scabbed
and swollen. It appeared the Doctor had used pipette and wire to catch
her newly healed gland in a copper vise, then had abraded it all over
with emery pasted to a board, such as ladies use to file their finger
nails. The process had gone on, minute by agonizing minute, while she
writhed and howled, and the stony faced daughter had looked on. Dr
Boucher had persisted until the whole surface had been worn away, and
blood seeped out of every pore. Then he had removed the wire grip, and
the gloating daughter had applied astringent, to generate more cries
to follow the howls and whimpers that poor Charlotte could not keep
back throughout that terrible scouring. Nor was that the end of
Charlotte's cause for misery, for the Doctor had informed her that she
would return at least twice more, for the treatment to be repeated,
more if the membrane over the gland did not thicken sufficiently to
deaden its sensitivity.
  In fact she had to submit to three more visits, three more sessions
in the stirrups of Dr Boucher's table, whimpering and sobbing, while
the Doctor ground away the new grown surface of her pubic nerve, and
the daughter watched, quite without emotion, or pity for her own sex.
  No matter, even the stormiest sea is crossed at last, and Charlotte
came to the end of her 'via dolorosa' eventually, but not before a
horny pad had formed on the once pink and glistening tenderness at the
joint of her love lips. Now it had a texture near as hard as the sole
of her foot, and that urgent responsiveness to a loving touch, that
she had enjoyed all too frequently before, to her undoing and
distress, had sunk to mere recognition that a friendly finger pressed
on the bud, though she could gain relief eventually, by urgent
circling at its base, with a finger tip pressed firmly home, but the
fine and careless rapture was no more.
  Despite Charlotte's rather serious loss, and our own lesser
diminution of sensation, we all three regained our well-being and our
feelings of security and place in the hands of our Guardians. Both the
Doctor and the Judge were frequent visitors to our table, bringing
with them the news of the outside world in which they held such
responsible office, though we might miss them for a few days when
affairs of scientific or legal import took them to London, Paris or
beyond. It was on his return from one such journey, to hear some
learned papers on the new theories of Magnetism and the electric flux,
that Dr Boucher made a further suggestion for the improvement of our
health by the application of the best of modern scientific and medical
discoveries. It seemed that, after attending certain seminars at the
Sorbonne in Paris, Dr Boucher had visited his colleague and fellow
worker in the field of female sexual disorders, Dr Dubois of that
city. Dr Dubois was very eminent in the field; indeed he had probably
done more to promote the benefits of clitoredectomy for the control
and management of unruly and dangerous females, than any other, so our
own worthy and trusted physician was always willing to give credence
to his ideas.
  Arising from the discussion on magnetism, and linking it to the
current theories on the menace of 'active' sexuality in the human
female, he had evolved the idea that the malignant emanations from the
female, which so disturbed men, and caused them so much distress, the
higher functions of the male being disturbed by the lower functions of
the female, these emanations he held, were magnetic, or perhaps,
electrical in some sense, and might be contained by similar methods to
those used by physicists working in the field today. His suggestion
was that conductive rings, placed as near as possible to the prime
sources of female energy, would trap the flux and neutralize it, so
that the woman would cease to be a danger to the men that were exposed
to her, or at any rate, the danger might be mitigated.
  The company discussed the idea over more than one dinner, while we
listened with interest, not knowing exactly what was planned, and,
eventually, it was agreed to make trial of the devices. After much
discussion, they settled that the first and foremost source of female
energy was those same nerve centres that they had recently curbed and
modified in us. A ring should be put in the hood, in such a way that
it hung and encircled the trouble spot, and thereby contained the
energy. Since the vagina was the next obvious site, communicating as
it did directly with the womb, the introit of that passage should be
closed by a ring through the 'labia minore', trapping any emanations
taking that route. It was objected that this would hamper a
bridegroom, but the Doctor pointed out that, on marriage, the one ring
could be removed, and new rings put in the holes in each lip. The
effect might not be so complete, but a young husband must expect to
take some risks. Finally they argued that the female principle also
had its seat in the breasts. Rings for each nipple were prescribed,
circling as much as possible of each teat, and capturing those lines
of magnetic flux that had their origin in the mammaries.
  Since our breasts, as well as our lower bodies, were to be included
in the experiment, we were for the first time to appear before our
Guardians, fully in a state of nature. This was a cause of some
embarrassment at first. Papa had seen us after our morning dunkings at
the pump, to be sure, but not the other gentlemen. Our reservations
were brushed aside, however, and additional stripes awarded for
questioning our superiors' judgement, it being pointed out to us once
again, that our Guardians were all professional men and, as such,
above the usual restrictions of modesty. We felt very foolish at our
ignorance, and humbly submitted ourselves to the biting rod in
expiation.
  The Doctor in fact upbraided himself for being so neglectful as to
omit our upper bodies from the periodic inspections he made of us, and
took the opportunity to examine each pair of breasts thoroughly,
checking them for size and weight, feeling their texture and testing
the sensitivity of the nipples, how erectile, how easily stimulated,
how closely connected to the lower organs, testing the connection by
manipulating a teat with one hand while resting the other on our lower
bellies, feeling for the first tremblings of spasm, a finger tip
within the furrow below waiting to feel the onset of lubricity.
  When the good Doctor was satisfied that he had the measure of our
mammary physiology and response, we moved to the next stage. Each in
turn was made to stand, her hands behind her neck, looking upwards and
thrusting her breasts steadily forwards. The Doctor took a strong
needle, set in a wooden handle, and a piece of cork. Placing the cork
against one side of a nipple, he selected the position for the entry
hole on the other side, lining the needle up carefully so that the
traverse might be true and level. When he was satisfied with the
alignment, he drove the needle through the teat, into the waiting
cork, thrusting firmly through with a short unhurried motion. It hurt
intensely, but even worse was the feeling as the flesh gave way before
the rising pressure on the needle, for the nipple is a surprisingly
tough and gristly organ, quite hard to penetrate from side to side,
until the tissue gives way, with an almost audible rupture, the
sensation of which makes any woman's belly churn.
  I said it hurt intensely, but only for an instant, though it took
rather longer, and dragged from us more whimpers and groans, when the
split gold rings were forced through the newly pierced flesh. Once
done, however, there was but bearable pain. Much the same could be
said of our rings in hood and vaginal opening. In some ways the
piercing was easier for, though it pained us rather more, and each
whined as the needle worked its way through the membranes, there was
no comparable sensation of gristle bursting that had so affected us
when the needle had transfixed our teats.
  And now we had four gleaming gold rings apiece, one in each nipple,
depending gracefully on our breasts, one above our bud, enclosing that
member like an encircling halo, and the last astride our vaginal
openings, like a Guardian at the gate. I must admit that, as I
regarded these elegant additions to my body, for so their permanence
seemed to create them, my thoughts were less on their scientific and
medical worth, than on the beauty of their appearance. It seems the
others were aware of similar sensations. Marion and I had long
discussions on whether we were obliged to confess this secret vanity
to Papa and earn ourselves extra stripes. Eventually I agreed with her
that, though it might be, in strict terms, our duty, yet it would
distract from the high scientific purpose for which the insertions had
been made, and we should not disturb the gentlemen with such frivolous
feminine matters.
  Now that we had appeared before the gentlemen once in a state of
full undress, we found it easier to repeat, which was just as well,
for amongst other ideas of the most up to date sort that the Doctor
had brought back from his studies in foreign parts, he now offered the
suggestion that we would fare better if we were to let the air
circulate on our skins as much as possible. Of course, we already did
so each morning in the stable yard, as we stripped to stand under the
pump and, since the introduction of our fetters at the knee, we had
worn no drawers, so some air could circulate around our lower bodies
and between our thighs. During the day, when women from the village
were present, and the groom was on the premises, anything more was not
possible for reasons of modesty, but now we were enjoined, once the
servants had left of an evening, to remove everything but our stays,
stockings and shoes, and it was in this condition that we now waited
on our Guardians at their nightly dinners together, for most nights of
the week we received at least one of our visiting benefactors.
  Our breasts, resting on the half cups of our corsets, proudly
displayed their rosy nipples, each teat bearing its golden ring. Our
high collars, buffed until the dark leather glowed, held our heads
proudly aloft, while the burnished chains at knee and crotch added
their own sparkle to our appearance, the fetters regulating our gait
to becoming femininity, and the crotch chains failing to hide two more
gold rings, which, though covered, were not concealed. Below the
fetters, our black silk hose was gartered at the knee, and on our feet
we wore glossy leather boots; black, with heels quite three inches
high, tight laced to half way up our calves. The Judge, a man of
infallible taste in all matters pertaining to female dress and
deportment, had chosen them for us himself, another in the
multitudinous evidences of the care they took for us.
  If you think we were guilty in some degree of feminine vanity, that
awful vice that afflicts most members of our sex from time to time,
you may be right, but remember, we paid fully for our vices, nor did
we grudge the cost. Moreover, our guilt was mitigated, if not quite
extinguished, by the knowledge that we were kept so close controlled,
and meticulously managed, that we posed no danger to the superior sex,
unlike those women allowed to run free, their vanity a danger and a
menace to all around them.

Chapter 6 EXCURSION AND ALARM

We were happy. We were protected and controlled, we were cared for and
corrected, we were useful and busy. How could women in our position
fail to be happy. Our Guardians took every care for our well being,
mental and physical. They regulated our lives for us, they ordered our
dress, they gave us stern discipline, without which womankind runs
amok to its own sorrow, and the destruction of God's superior
creation, man. They corrected us when we strayed from those strict
limits of discipline, and controlled us with purple stripes and red
blood shed. They kept us busy with household tasks so that we had no
time to be bored and contemplate mischief, as women are ever prone to,
they allowed us to wait on them at table, and shared their food with
us, even letting us drink from their own glasses, and they gave us the
joy of being allowed to serve them by drawing the poison from their
bodies, that sometimes seemed to overwhelm them.
  And do not think we were confined, or saw nothing of the world. Our
Guardians took us on many expeditions, some educational, some for
pleasure, all enjoyable in some degree or other, and improving to our
minds. On one occasion, the Judge came very early, we were still
drying ourselves after our dawn rendezvous with the stable pump, to
take the six of us, in his carriage, to see the antique judicial
punishments, still surviving in rural parts of the county, to which he
had adumbrated after dinner that evening, some weeks before.
  It was, indeed, a somewhat remote village to which we came first,
one of those small communities dominated by the Great House, or Manor,
and existing mainly to provide service to the gentry who were the
proprietors of the land. It seems that the Lord of this Manor, a man
of middle years, and used to command, the District Magistrate by
virtue of his holdings, had but two months gone, taken to himself a
bride from a wealthy London family. The lady, being town bred, or at
least grown accustomed to the manners and ways of metropolitan
society, was finding it difficult to adapt to the more autocratic ways
of the country gentry with their womenfolk. In the city, great respect
was paid to women and their wishes; here the opposite held, and
females were expected to show a proper deference to their menfolk.
This was her first visit to her new husband's rural retreat, and she
was still not come to terms with her status here. She had, apparently,
already been warned that her behaviour lacked proper respect, and then
she had overstepped the mark completely.
  In these country areas, it was an accepted fact that the gentry
might tumble the wenches of their households, and nothing thought of
it. Milady, it seems, had refused to abide by the local ethos, and had
not only upbraided her bridegroom in front of the servants, when she
had caught him with his britches down, pumping a rosy kitchen maid in
the stables, but had, when he laughed off the matter, so far forgotten
herself as to strike him with her crop.
  Such an assault could not, of course, be overlooked, however new a
bride she was, or high her station. Her fault was heinous and
doublefold, for she had struck both a husband and a magistrate. In the
interests of good order in the district, he resolved that no favour
should be shown, and a public example made, to 'encourage' other
females of all stations, by showing that not even the highest was
exempt. In any case, it were kinder to check her early, lest she stray
even further from the path of a proper wife, and become a mere
termagant, a misery to herself and all around her.
  Accordingly we arrived on the village green, the dew still on the
ground, to find a small crowd already gathered to see the lady
whipped.
  Under a spreading tree, in the middle of the green, outside the
church gate, there stood a tall stout post, adorned about its apex,
some six feet from the ground, by a pair of iron manacles. To either
side, at its foot, shorter posts, only half a foot high, were set in
the ground, and each carried a large iron staple. We had not been
there above five minutes, when the gates at the lodge opened and
deployed a small procession, consisting of the Squire, followed at a
few paces by his Lady, in turn followed by a frightened looking maid.
  The Squire walked purposefully, looking around to see who had come
to witness his bride's correction. He was a large florid man, in his
late fifties, powerfully built, and every inch the landed proprietor.
His delinquent bride was a lady over twenty years his junior, of a
very aristocratic appearance, tall, of a very fine figure, if a little
on the slim side for rural tastes, who looked straight ahead of her,
her chin held high, as if disdaining any who should see her shame. Her
glorious dark hair was plaited into a great rope that hung below her
shoulder blades. She was bare foot, and wore nothing but her shift.
  I wondered, at first, that such a fiery and defiant creature should
go so meekly to her flogging, but soon realised that, given the choice
of walking freely to her doom, or being dragged, kicking and
screaming, by the village constable, a lady of her breeding would
chose the path that retained her some semblance of dignity.
  Coming to the post, she looked to her husband in query. He nodded,
and she slipped the straps of her shift from off her shoulders,
letting it fall to her waist, and baring herself from neck to navel.
Her round and rosy breasts, still firm for all her thirty years, for
she had not yet borne a child, sat proudly on her chest, their large
teats, puckered and hard, though whether from fear or the coldness of
the day I could not tell. For whatever reason, they stood out like
small thumbs, still visible when she stood to the post, a breast on
either side of it, as she lifted her arms to the manacles above her. A
rough looking man standing nearby, no doubt that same constable she
had saved the duty of dragging her, advanced and secured the iron
bands about her wrists, leaving her stretching up, her body pressed
close to the wood, well worn at that point by the countless female
forms that had sweated their agony and, it is to be hoped, their
repentance, against it. She stretched even harder a moment later, when
the constable bent and pulled each slim bare ankle in turn, to lash it
to the rings on the side posts, thus spreading her widely, and forcing
her to go upon her toes.
  The Squire waved the thick black whip he carried at a thin
bespectacled individual in the front of the crowd.
  "Come, come, man," he cried, "are you to keep us waiting 'til past
our breakfasts? Read out the charges, and Madam's sentence, and let us
get on with it."
  The Clerk to the Court drew out a paper and read.
  "The Lady Camilla is found guilty of, firstly, striking a Justice of
the Peace. Sentence, ten strokes of the whip, on her bared back, to be
delivered at the public whipping post. Secondly, of striking her lord
and master, sentence, twenty strokes of the whip, on her bared back,
to be delivered at the public whipping post. God save the Queen."
  And the lady, thought I, for thirty strokes with that whip would
make a breakfast difficult to swallow.
  The Squire spoke sharply to the timorous maid, who scuttled forward
and lifted the great rope of hair from off the lady's back, draping it
over her left shoulder, to fall down over her breast. Now all was set,
and the crowd fell silent out of respect for the whipper and the
whipped. Stepping to the left of the post, the Squire measured his
mark, then drew back his arm and brought the whip slicing down across
the white back before him. It fell with a crack like a pistol shot,
and the lady's head came back with a snap, but she made no sound
whatever, though a livid red line sprang up across her shoulders, the
end curling round her side.
  Another stroke fell, an inch below the first, then another and
another, and so on in dreadful progression, the lady jerking under the
blows, as far as her stretched position would allow, but making no
more than anguished gasps at each cruel impact, letting out her breath
again, hissing through her teeth.
  After ten strokes, she wore a ladder of slanting scarlet rungs from
the top of her shoulders to her neat waist. Now her husband/
executioner moved to her right side, and repeated the ladder,
delivering the blows from his backhand. If they were not as hard, I
doubt the lady was aware just then, for she was beginning to show a
little distress. Her gasps had become sharp groans, a series of oohs,
trailing off into a low moan. By the time the second ten had formed
another ladder, criss-crossing the first, her sounds were more urgent,
though she still refused to cry out openly. Her master gave her a
short respite, then proceeded to the last ten, laying them on in two
lots of five, from either side, but this time he made them more
horizontal, and let the whip's end curl round her sides, to touch the
delicate fullness of her breasts. She jerked with renewed vigour at
this cruel assault on her tender dugs, giving a sharp cry at each, and
whining a little between, but it could not be said she broke, and she
endured to the end without screaming or howling, though she was
clearly hurt. Such fortitude is, of course, a mark of breeding, a case
of 'noblesse oblige'.
  When it was done, and she had had her deserts, her back was laced
and striated from shoulders to waist, the scarlet lines passing round
her sides and onto the round white breasts. At several places, bright
beads of blood stood on the welts, some coalescing to form trickles
that eventually found their way to her hips. She stood at the post;
her head dropped forward, her bruised shoulders heaving spasmodically.
When she was let down, she could, at first, scarcely stand, and threw
her arms round the neck of the diminutive maid to support herself, but
after a few minutes she recovered enough to stand upright and pull her
shift up to cover her nakedness, then, with her arm around the maid's
shoulder for support, and leaning heavily on her servant, she made
shift to walk back past the lodge, her back very stiff, but her head
held high.
  The Squire watched her go, then came to where we sat in the carriage
still, from where we had watched her whipped.
  "Morning, Rodsham," said he. "Doctor, your servant. These must be
your daughters, Vicar. Won't you bring them in and take some breakfast
with us? Warm work this early makes a man hungry. I dare say Madam is
a little warm too, but that's no reason she should not entertain
guests. She shall be down directly, when she is decent dressed."
  And so we all followed him into the Hall, and to the dining room,
where the servants had already prepared a fine breakfast. Our
Guardians seated themselves and, habituated as we were to the
practise, we made haste to get them bacon and kidneys, eggs and lamb
chops, as they required, moving swiftly, but demurely, our fetters
keeping our gait to that feminine glide so becoming in a woman, then
kneeling at their sides to be fed from their plates.
  "Capital! Capital!" roared our host. "Madam may show her repentance
by the same service." He sent at once for her to join us.
  In ten minutes or so, she came down, dressed a little informally, as
she could not have borne stays, but very composed, if a little pale.
She moved very stiffly, which accorded with our own restricted
movements and, obedient to her lord's command, waited on him just as
we did on ours. Though she had been foolish, or worse, to have
assaulted her lord so, I thought her very brave to have come
downstairs and served him so humbly, not half an hour after she had
been flogged to the blood. I think, though, she was much relieved when
our Guardians did not linger over long at their meal, but excused
themselves, and us, saying we were due elsewhere shortly.
  In fact, they were anxious not to miss the next item on our
itinerary. Duckings were, by tradition, carried out at noon of a
Friday, and we had some miles to go. Thanking our generous host, and
his well-whipped lady, we mounted again in Justice Rodsham's carriage,
and bade the coachman make haste lest we be too late. We need not have
worried, for he got us there, and time to spare, and the Gentlemen
produced wine from a hamper, while we waited.
  It was a very pretty village, a ring of trees around a green,
cottages on either side and, in its centre a large and muddy pond, its
surface coated with green slime, through which ducks drifted, dipping
their heads to grub for worms in the murky depths. On the far side,
cattle came down to drink, adding their own wet brown contributions to
the thick soup, the rapidly warming sun bringing out a pungent miasma.
On the side nearest to where we sat, sharing the Gentlemen's glasses,
a long beam was pivoted on a block set in to the bank. One end of the
beam carried a large stone, as a counterweight, while the other was
adorned by a crude wooden seat; no more than a flat piece of timber
fixed to the beam, with a narrow plank sticking up about three feet,
making a crude backrest.
  By now it was noon, and a noisy party came out of the inn, dragging
between them a strapping young woman of, perhaps, twenty-five or six.
A big girl, rosy cheeked, strong bodied and sharp tongued. She had
been tried by the villagers on the complaint of her husband, that she
did nag him constantly about his drinking, and had boxed his ears more
than once, when he had come home from the alehouse with too much drink
taken. Such behaviour could not be tolerated, if the community were to
live in harmony for, as more than one man pointed out - women had no
voice in the proceedings, naturally - if one wife were to practice
such unnatural behaviour, would not they all, and where would the men
be then? Ruined, all of them, with no pleasure left in their lives,
and only their wives' nagging tongues ringing in their ears.
  So she was condemned to be ducked, and here she came, manhandled by
two stout fellows, who had their work cut out to manage her. I never
saw a woman so unmindful of her duty to her man, and the custom of the
district. They forced her, kicking and cursing, onto the seat, and
tied her ankles together beneath the beam, her wrists behind the
backrest. Now they swung the beam out over the fetid pond, her weight
roughly balanced by the stone, so they handled it easily, just leaning
on it to keep their end down, and her up. The aggrieved husband did
the honours, crying out, "Dunk her, lads. Dunk her once, and dunk her
deep."
  With a great cheer, they let go the beam, and the chair, woman and
all, plunged into the murky water, until she was covered quite in
stinking green slime. The crowd cheered and counted, ONE and TWO and
THREE, and the men threw their weight on the beam, dragging her out
into the air. She coughed and spluttered, weed in her hair, her gown
soaked and fouled, a fearful stink all around from the disturbed
depths. As soon as she caught her breath, she began to curse her
husband anew, and every man in the village.
  "Oh Ho," said he, "she still has fire. We must see if we cannot
douse it quite. Dunk her twice, boys, and dunk her deep."
  Once more the men on the beam let go their end, and the cursing
virago disappeared beneath the scummy surface with a great splash,
disturbing the ducks and the cattle in their muddy shallows on the
other side of the pond.
  Now the crowd chanted, altogether, ONE, and TWO and THREE and FOUR.
This time, when they raised her, some of the spirit seemed to have
gone out of her, and she spouted quantities of dirty water, before she
found her voice.
  "You bastards," she cried, her language a disgrace to the gentle
sex, "call yourselves men, to treat a woman so? As for you, Tom
Partridge, don't think I'll have you in my bed in a hurry. You've
abused me enough, get me down."
  "Not yet, lads," he cried, "she's still a mite too hot. Down for the
third time, and let's see if that puts out the sparks. Dunk her
thrice, boys and dunk her double deep."
  This time, as she dropped into the green stench of the duck pond,
the crowd chanted remorselessly on. ONE and TWO and THREE and FOUR,
FIVE, SIX, SEVEN, EIGHT, NINE and TEN!!
  As they hauled her up, she fell forward in her watery seat, great
gouts of liquid gushing from her throat. She gulped air, retching foul
water, jerked in her bonds, and for above a minute she could not form
words.
  "Enough! Enough!" she cried, "I'll be a good wife. You shall stay
out as late as you will, only don't duck me again, Tom. I'll be
drowned," and much else, submissive and pleading, besides.
  Satisfied at her repentance, and hopeful of her conversion, though,
knowing the wilful ways of women, I would think him over hopeful, he
signalled to his cronies to swing her in to land, where one released
her bonds, no easy task, wet and slimy as they were. She fell at his
feet, protesting her sorrow at having berated him so in the past, and
swore to never vex him again. She made a sorry picture of a Magdalene,
kneeling in the muddy grass at the pond's edge, her gown soaked and
ruined, weed in her hair, great streaks of slime and green scum on her
face. Where was now the proud defiant termagant, who had cursed him
and his fellows but a few watery minutes before? Verily, the ducking
stool had the most beneficial effect on even the strongest female, if
applied with rigour.
  Tom turned and led the way back to the alehouse, his manly honour
satisfied, while she, her woman's place established, followed,
dripping, at his heels, like a whipped spaniel. Our little party,
edified and uplifted, left the scene to travel on to Sexton Hinds,
where we were to visit the county House of Correction for Women, which
lay just outside.
  We arrived about the middle of the afternoon, and were met by the
Chief Wardress herself, for Justice Rodsham was a man of consequence
in the county, and to be treated with all deference. She was a
veritable Amazon, a great strong woman, as tall as most men, and built
as broad. Her features, too, had more of a man's hardness in them than
a woman's gentleness, and we women shuddered slightly at the looks she
gave us, as if assessing us for punishment in her grim establishment.
Still, she treated us with civility, and invited us to take tea with
her, before touring the penitentiary.
  It was served by one of the prisoners, a young woman showing signs
of having been pretty before being brought here, but now, dressed only
in coarse brown gown, she was bare foot and appeared to wear nothing
else, and kept her eyes fixed firmly on the floor, so we could see
nothing of animation or character in her face. The wardress seemed to
have instilled a very real fear in her charges, and we were soon to
see evidence of her methods. We asked our hostess what manner of
offences had brought the women into her charge, and how long most
would stay. She told us that most were there for offences against
public morality, adultery, harlotry, defiance of their husband's or
family authority, that is being beyond proper domestic control, and
similar heinous crimes in women. They had few felons as such, for
thieves, murders, and infanticides, and the abortionists that aided
them, either went to the gallows, or if they escaped the rope, were
usually transported, formerly to the Americas, now to the new colonies
in Australia.
  After the tea, we followed her through the various parts of the
prison. First the rows of cells, where each inmate was locked up,
when not working, or undergoing punishment, in a stone walled chamber,
perhaps five feet by ten. It contained nothing but a plank bed fixed
to one wall, with neatly folded blanket, and a pail with wooden cover
for natural functions. Light, such as it was, and air, came from a
small barred opening high in the end wall. The door was massive,
fitted with a heavy lock and a small barred opening through which the
prisoner could be observed at any time. Set apart from the main rows
of cells, in a basement beneath, were a dozen more, thick walled and
well separated, where prisoners might be kept in 'solitary', not only
kept locked continuously, with no work or exercise periods, but not
even able to hear the sounds of normal prison activity. At the time of
our visit, there were five of these 'solitary' cells in use, mainly,
we were told, containing women who had been judged to have shown too
little respect in their attitude to the wardresses.
  We went next to one of the workrooms, where twenty or thirty women,
in the same brown gowns, that seemed to be all the clothing available
to them, sat at long tables, stitching more of such gowns, together
with wardresses' uniforms and, we were surprised to observe, civilian
clothing of all kinds. It seemed that the staff not only took care
that their own wardrobes were kept stocked, but took on work for local
merchants, that bought them little luxuries to soften the bleakness of
their surroundings. Naturally these luxuries were not shared with the
inmates, who had done the work that had earned them. These women were
here to learn their duty, and expiate their misdemeanours, not to
enjoy soft living.
  In another part of the prison, we were shown a similar sized group
at work in the laundry. Work was sent here by many local
establishments, the hospital, the workhouse, etc, and also by the more
worthy and wealthy householders. The women wrestled with blankets and
sheets and all manner of dirty linen, especially the monthly rags that
other laundresses refused. They doused them in great vats of steaming
water, rubbing them by hand on slatted washboards, wrung them out
before taking them to the lines. Others sweated with flat irons,
heated on an open hearth, to produce immaculate creases and gleaming
starched collars.
  All these workers were watched closely by wardresses, mostly as
large and as grim as their Chief, who moved amongst them, pointing out
errors in their work or reprimanding them for talking, reinforcing
their strictures with blows of the long black straps they all carried
at their belts. We enquired where the remaining prisoners might be,
for we had seen only about as many as would fill less than half of the
long rows of cheerless cells, and were told that, apart from a number
undergoing punishment, the rest were out on work gangs, and we would
see them that evening, when they returned.
  Punishments were carried out either in the prison yard or the large
square building next to it, which was set aside for the purpose. The
yard held a whipping post and a block for birchings, where those
women, condemned by the magistrates but spared the indignity of a
public flogging, might be whipped away from the gaze of the crowd. At
the time of our visit, however, there was no such sentence pending,
much to the disappointment of our Guardians, whose thirst for
knowledge in these matters was unquenchable.
  That is not to say that the yard was not busy. It was, in fact, a
hive of activity. A number of women, of all ages and figures, marched
round the perimeter of the yard, carrying on their backs large packs,
loaded with stones. We were told that these packs weighed from forty
to sixty pounds and were selected to be about one third of the
bearer's own weight. The women marched relentlessly on round the yard,
their sweating, straining bodies kept to their arduous and soul
destroying task by slashes of the overseer's straps, lifting their
knees high at every pace, for their dress was almost indecently short,
even for an establishment of females only, being more stiff shifts
than gowns, and leaving their calves quite bare.
  While the half dozen unhappy marchers kept on their inexorable round
of the yard, two other offenders crossed it back and forth, back and
forth, each carrying a heavy iron ball on each crossing, until they
had built a pyramid of ten iron shot, each of about twelve pounds
weight. When each had built her pile, six in the bottom set, three
above and the tenth on top, she had to dismantle it, one by one,
running back to rebuild the pyramid on the other side of the yard. I
do not know how many times each of them had completed this pointless
and back breaking exercise, but judging by their exhausted appearance,
they had been straining under the heavy and unwieldy balls for some
hours, and only the constant crack of the overseer's belts across
their legs and backs kept them from collapse.
  Nor were these the only 'defaulters'. In the punishment room, off
the yard, there were other devices for maintaining the strict
discipline which was the reformatory process for these women who had
failed to observe that docility and obedience so desirable in our sex
for both our well-being and that of the men we serve. We went inside
and the first thing that struck our gaze was a great engine, or
treadmill, that filled one wall. It was constructed like a millwheel,
a wooden drum about seven or eight feet in diameter, its surface made
from a number of parallel narrow wooden planks, like the treads of a
staircase wrapped around the circumference. A broad plank platform ran
along its entire length, about three feet from the floor, that is, on
the centerline of the machine, while a handrail was fitted above its
centre. There was room for several women to work the mill at one time,
and on the occasion of our visit, there were four women, gripping the
top rail, and almost running in their effort to keep up with the
turning of the wheel. The effort of constantly climbing stairs, as it
were, was obviously very great, for they sweated and heaved in their
attempts to keep up, but it was not their labouring breath nor grunts
of effort that struck us into shocked gasps of our own, but their
dress. The women were naked!
  Each of them strained at her task as nature had made her. The sweat
dripped from their bodies, running down the hot red marks of the
straps that kept them moving, their muscles rippled under their skins,
and their breasts swung with their efforts. I think our surprise must
have shown on our faces for the wardress made a point of explaining
the reasons for the women's presence here, and their state of undress.
  "That big slut on the end is here to cure her of laziness. She could
well do as much work as a man, but she complains when sent on the work
gang, and the overseers spend more time than she's worth trying to
make her do her share. When she's spent a few days here, she'll beg to
go back on the gang. These two sorry creatures," she pointed to a pair
of under nourished young women tramping side by side, "these two have
spent too much time in the laundry, gossiping rather than working,
although they know it's forbidden to speak in there."
  "And how long do they serve in here?" the Doctor enquired, ever
ready to accumulate knowledge.
  "They work from seven to twelve, with but a ten minute break," the
wardress replied. "At noon there is an hour, when they may eat, and
also do their share of prison cleaning, including their own cells. It
would not do for them to feel that this substitutes for their duties,
it is an additional punishment. In the afternoon, they walk the mill
from one 'til six, with a ten minute break again, mid-way."
  She gestured at the sweating crew. "Since the punishment hall is by
way of being a private place, and their efforts cause them to sweat
like mares, we have them leave their prison gowns aside, rather than
rot them with their sweat. Besides," she added grimly, "it leaves them
bare to the straps, which can encourage them the more."
  "And will they finish tonight?" the Judge asked in his turn.
  "All but that slut on the end," the wardress said, "she'll come back
on the morrow, and each day thereafter, until she begs to go back on
the gang, and we judge her ready to work her weight."
  "Why is the fourth here?" Charlotte asked, with her usual
unfortunate forwardness.
  The wardress gave her a look that seemed to suggest that she would
enjoy the tutoring of such a minx but, aware of our prestigious
Guardians, kept her thoughts to herself and answered fairly instead.
We all craned to hear, for the young woman was interesting, indeed.
About my own age, her nakedness revealing a very beautiful figure,
curved exquisitely, though with no suggestion of plumpness at any
point. Her hair was long and wild, dislodged no doubt by her
exertions, very draggled now, but obviously cared for quite recently.
She had a very beautiful face, firm round breasts, and long straight
legs supporting full rounded haunches. Her whole appearance showed her
to be a young woman of quality, despite the circumstances in which we
found her.
  "Ah an interesting case," the wardress answered, "a very tasty
piece, I grant you, but handsome is as handsome does. What you see
before you is a bride that shirks her duty. She was wed a month since,
but the marriage not consummated yet. She claims her young husband is
either incapable or unwilling, for it was an arranged match as you
would expect, both sides being gentry of the highest quality, but her
mother-in-law has it that, in such cases, it is always the bride to
blame. She has only to work hard enough at bringing her groom to the
bed, all hot and hard, and nature will have its way. But this
creature," pointing at the panting girl on the mill, "would not have
it, and said she had done all she knew, and the fault lay in her
husband. Well, the noble lady was not having that, and took Mistress
pink cheeks here before the magistrate, who happened to be one of the
family, and had her sent here for forty days for slandering her
husband and wilful failure to consummate the marriage."
  "And what has she done to be put to the mill?" asked I, emboldened
by curiosity and Charlotte's example.
  "Why nothing, Miss," was the reply. "Her mother-in-law declares she
is a lazy slut, besides unruly, and asked that she be worked hard
here, mentioning the mill herself, and, since she is a good friend of
the House," I guessed that the noble lady had been generous to the
head of the establishment, "we were pleased to fall in with her
wishes."
  Just then one of the overseers barked a command to the young woman
we had been discussing, and she let herself fall back with the
descending wheel, letting go of the rail and stepping off onto the
platform, where she clung to the guardrail, panting and trying to
regain her breath.
  "I thought you said they walked until six," said the Judge, "and yet
that young miscreant has been taken off with more than an hour to go."
  "Taken off the treadmill," agreed the wardress, "but she is not
finished yet. She has been let down to receive her birthday present."
  "What! Presents in the prison?" roared his Lordship. "I thought this
was a House of Correction, not cosseting."
  "Why, so it is, Sir," said the wardress hurriedly, "let me explain.
Today the young woman is twenty years of age, and her mother-in-law
sends her a special present. She is to receive one stroke of the cane
across her naked buttocks for each of her years, twenty in all.
Perhaps you would care to see it?"
  Nothing could have been better calculated to restore the Judge's
good humour more effectively, for he was always eager to see justice
done, and we all followed the wardress to the far side of the room,
where the reluctant bride had preceded us. There we found her already
'horsed', her well formed body bent over a padded wooden horse, her
feet parted a little to secure them to the legs at one end, her
breasts lying on the leather top, her arms drawn down to secure them
to the feet at the other end. Since the far end of the horse was
significantly lower than the near, her hips and buttocks were thrown
well up, her toes but barely touching the floor, and she was indeed
very well spread for the rod. The chief wardress went to the head of
the horse to address the pinioned rider.
  "Well, Miss," she said, mockingly, "such a thoughtful mother-in-law
you have, to remember that today is your birthday, despite your
slights of her. Since you are now twenty years of age, she has sent
requesting that we give you twenty reminders of her regard, and so we
shall, across these hinds, and with a penal cane."
  The young woman obviously lacked neither brains nor courage. Though
she had only been in the prison for a few days, she had had the sense
to realise that any show of spirit or resistance would only make her
plight worse, and that she would do best to be obedient at all times,
and speak only when addressed directly. Accordingly she held her
peace, and the Chief Wardress signalled to one of the overseers, who
stood nearby holding a wicked looking length of cane. It seemed to me
much like that dire object with which Papa, and our other Guardians,
struck so much fear in my belly, and fire in my buttocks. It was quite
as long, thick and flexible, and I could feel my knees tremble and my
belly gripe, at the thought of it cutting into female flesh and,
especially, mine.
  Advancing to the bent buttocks on the horse, the overseer laid the
rod across to measure her spot. I watched the taut rounds clench at
the contact, as I knew my own did, rebelliously, despite my constant
resolve to take my punishments wide open to the rod. I would suppose
that this young woman, though my own age, had had less frequent
acquaintance with such a rod. The overseer's arm drew back, raising
the rod to shoulder height, gaining room for a full blooded stroke,
then brought it whistling down, cutting the air with a ripping sound
before sinking into the soft white flesh with a noise like some
monstrous twig snapping.

Chapter 7 DIRE CONSEQUENCES

As the terrible length of yellow rattan bit into the pale buttocks,
with a sound that sent fearful spasms through my own belly, and I am
sure, through those of my sisters too, for we had heard it so often
welting our own rounds, the young woman jerked in her bonds, and
gasped at the shock of the impact, then drew in her breath, hissing
with the pain but bravely trying to endure it without crying out. A
short pause and again the cane sang, as it flew down to cut the
buttocks, a finger's width below the dark red line that had sprung up
across their fullest part after the first stroke. Again the girl, for
she was little more, gasped and sucked her breath, but she hung on
despite the pain that I knew, only too well, a rod such as this could
raise in a woman's flesh. She endured a further four strokes with no
more reaction, and the set of six blackening bars formed a broad band
across her lower buttock, from its centre, down to near her thigh
tops.
  The overseer handed the cane to another, who took it in her left
hand, and stepped to the bending woman's right. Now the strokes were
to come from the other side, and over lay the first set. The first of
these new strokes seemed to take the victim by surprise, I think she
may have been too preoccupied with her throbbing aching haunches to
realise the change had taken place, or what it portended. Whatever the
case, she squealed as the cane bit into her ripening welts, and moaned
as the pain flooded back after the first shock. But she was a
courageous young woman, and collected herself rapidly, adjusting to
the new assault, and taking the next stroke, and the four that
followed, with only a little more sound than her first six.
Admittedly, a grunted 'ugh' accompanied each searing cut, but she held
back from crying out openly, and only moaned a little between the
strokes, as she lay absorbing the pulsing agony that builds as the
blood creeps back into the bruised flesh.
  Now the first overseer took back the cane and stood to the left
side. She directed her strokes rather lower than before, more or less
on that slight fatty crease that divides the overhanging buttock flesh
from a woman's thighs. It is, as I can testify from much experience of
the same, a spot most sensitive to the rod, and seeming to burn in a
manner less easy to bear than higher up the hinds. The unfortunate
bride bent over the horse certainly found it so, for she gave a choked
cry at each stroke, 'aaahing' and 'ooohing' in acknowledgement of the
anguish she was suffering but, nevertheless, still maintaining
something of her control. She almost lost it, when the second overseer
took her from the right, overlapping the previous welts, but at least
it did not come as a surprise this time and, although her cries at the
impacts were urgent, still they might not be judged to be true
screams, though she was sobbing now between. When it was finished, her
buttock was a mass of thick purple ropes, the twenty welts from her
'birthday present' difficult to distinguish, and weeping redly on each
flank.
  She had shown amazing fortitude. Many times I had had twenty and
more strokes from Papa or one of the Guardians, but I doubt I could
have sustained that score of searching cuts without conceding screams
and shrieks of agony. Indeed, I felt quite sick thinking of it, and
quite irrationally feared that I might be called upon to take her
place; so much so that my knees trembled and my heart pounded in my
breast. As the reluctant bride was led away, her spine arched back in
a bow of anguish, her bent legs hardly able to support her, her feet
shuffling with her lameness as her bruised buttocks stiffened, I
distracted myself from the nightmares in my mind of bending in her
place, by turning my attention to the conversation between the Chief
Wardress and the Judge.
  "A fine correction, well laid on," said he. "She'll be glad
birthdays come but once a year."
  The Wardress gave a smile that made me tremble anew at the horror of
falling into her hands.
  "Indeed, your lordship, her birthday has passed, but her new
husband, whom she has treated so shamefully, will pass his twenty
second year next week and, just two days before her forty with us are
up, her mother-in-law will be five and forty. I think she will
remember those birthdays also."
  The afternoon had almost gone while we had watched the birthday
celebrations, and it was time for the work parties to return. We
watched from the Wardress's office window on the first floor as they
came in. The gates were opened to allow in a number of rough carts. In
each sat a score of women, ten along each side, their right ankles
fastened to a chain that ran down the bed of the wagon. As the gates
were shut behind them and the carts halted in the yard, the chains
were released, and the weary women stumbled out of the crude
conveyances. They were indescribably worn and dirty. Their short
gowns, which were all they wore, were caked with mud and grime, and
stuck to their bodies with their own sweat. Their hands were foul and
worn also, their nails broken, their palms blistered, their feet cut
and bleeding, for they had no shoes, though a few had found scraps of
sacking in which to wrap themselves against the hardness of the road.
For they had been on the road gangs.
  The turnpike was crossing the county and the Authorities had
prudently helped to defray the cost of their keep in the penitentiary
by hiring out the women to the contractors, to clear the path of the
new road, to break stone for its bed, to dig cuttings and pile up
embankments, to fetch and carry like beasts of burden, for it is known
that women are particularly well adapted, by their physiology, to
carrying burdens. I have never seen such worn and weary creatures, and
applauded the good sense of those in charge for devising so effective
a way of combining good husbandry with a regime that so obviously
achieved its aim of introducing fallen women to honest toil.
  When the last of the draggled and exhausted creatures had dragged
herself off for the frugal evening fare, before 'lock up' for the
night in their solitary cells, our Guardians began to offer their
thanks to the Chief Wardress and prepare for our departure.
  "But will you not stay for the Spanish Horse, Sirs?" she asked. "I
think you will find it instructive."
  Nothing if not eager seekers after knowledge, our Guardians at once
asked her for details of this strange sounding beast, and she, anxious
to please such worthy curiosities, set about an explanation. It was,
it seems, a form of punishment designed to 'break' even the most
recalcitrant soul. It was generally reserved for those who fought the
prison discipline, encouraging, by their example, lesser sinners, who
might otherwise have bent the knee and bowed the head before their
keepers. There was just such a bad influence in the prison now, a
widow of about seven and thirty, a fine strapping woman who had
determined to carry on her late husband's trade of corn merchant in
his place. The local growers and merchants viewed the development with
some alarm. Not only was her unwomanly descent into trade in itself an
affront but she was also proving to be so astute that their own
businesses were suffering. Their opportunity came when she was
discovered entertaining the young women of the district to tea, and
encouraging them to think of similarly going into lucrative trades, as
she did. Worse still, it was reported that she had bolstered her case
by remarking what dolts men were, and citing cases of business follies
committed by their own fathers and brothers.
  Such a thing could not be allowed, of course, for what would become
of society if women were to put themselves forward as the equals of
men? Such behaviour was flying in the face of nature and damaging to
the fabric of society. She was brought before a magistrate, who had
little difficulty in being persuaded that her behaviour constituted
corruption of minors and trying to take the girls out of the care and
control of their fathers; how could any right thinking man conclude
otherwise. At first it was suggested that, as no sane person could
possibly argue that women were the equals of men, she should be
committed to the local Bedlam for the insane, but wiser counsel
prevailed. If judged insane, her business would be run by trustees,
and would still carry her name. It was judged better to hold her
responsible for her actions, so that she might be committed to hard
labour in the Women's House of Correction for two years, and fined so
heavily that she was ruined, thus proving that a woman was quite
incompetent to run such a business, as it had collapsed after only a
year in her hands.
  Though she should have learnt her lesson, and tried to redeem
herself through meek and obedient service, she had continued to sow
the evil seeds of her misguided philosophy among the vulnerable minds
in the penitentiary. She had been flogged almost insensible twice, and
still continued to drip her poison. Now the end of the road had been
reached, and she was to be broken finally to the bridle of prison
discipline. The doctor, always the technician, asked for an
explanation of how this would be achieved, but the Wardress was
sparing of details, saying it could be appreciated best by viewing it
in action.
  Accordingly we delayed our departure, and followed the Wardress back
to the punishment hall. To a side we had overlooked before stood an
innocuous seeming device; a simple structure of two sloping sides,
constructed of narrow horizontal planks, each side about four feet
long and a yard apart at the base, and leaning towards each other,
until they met at a point about four feet from the ground. The top
planks met at a sharp edge, stained somewhat about half way along, as
were the sides below in a pattern like to a saddle. At the foot, on
either side, were rings with long thin straps. The only other features
of this innocent device were two vertical poles which were fastened to
each end face of the apparatus, and projected about three feet above
the top edge.
  While we were puzzling over the manner of employment of the strange
structure, two overseers arrived, marching between them the merchant
woman so careless of her condition as to rate herself an equal of men
and who, what is more, had attempted to disseminate her poisonous
doctrine to innocent and impressionable females, seducing them from
the proper duty they owed their fathers, brothers or husbands as may
be. As the Wardress had said, she was a fine looking woman, the more
pity she should have so disgraced her sex. She displayed a fine mature
figure, though not fat by any means, with high rounded buttocks and
firm breasts of an excellent shape and tipped with large red teats,
for as soon as she came to the 'Spanish Horse' she was ordered to
remove her one garment, and stand naked before us. Although it seemed
usual for women in the punishment hall to be deprived of their gowns,
on the grounds that they were rendered more accessible for the
overseers' straps, that kept them to their tasks, I believe that, in
this case, it was done more to humble the haughty spirit.
  First the woman's hands were bound behind her back, each wrist to
just above the elbow of the other arm, and a collar, with two long
cords depending from it, was fastened round her neck. During all
these preparations, the prisoner stood quite quietly, offering no word
of protest, seemingly resigned to her fate, though showing no sign of
fear or repentance, looking in front of her with her head held high.
  "That is a stiff neck," observed the Chief Wardress, "but I'll wager
she'll bend it by morning."
   Now two stools were placed, one on either side of the horse, and
the still proud prisoner invited to mount. With a look of disdain, she
stepped up onto the one, and swung her leg over the top of the horse,
to rest on the other.
  "Put your cunt to the rail," ordered an overseer.
  We recoiled somewhat at the coarse expression, but perhaps it was
appropriate for such an evil sinner. Once more she obeyed, bending her
knees, until the sharp upper edge of the device was pressing at her
entrance. As she came in contact, the overseer used her fingers to
part the plump lips between her thighs, until they lay either side of
the vee that formed the top edge. Next they took the cords hanging
from the collar and attached them near the tops of the two posts at
either end of the horse, leaving just a little slack, and went to
stand either side of the horse. At a nod from their superior, each
pulled out one of the stools on which the woman stood, letting her
weight fall fully on her crotch which, until then, had partially
supported her. She gasped as she felt the wood cut into her soft
parts, but still made no protest. It seems she was fully aware of the
futility of pleading or remonstrating with her correctors, since it
would sway them not a jot, and she preferred to maintain her dignity
in the face of adversity.
  The overseers wound a strap round each shapely ankle, pulling them
tight until her legs were stretched taut on either side, and adjusted
the cords to her collar so that she could lean but little, forwards or
back. The pull on her legs and the cords to her collar ensured that
she could not cast herself sideways, and she must remain upright until
she might be released, able only to adjust her position by but a small
degree, and must needs sit on her tender female parts. Watching her, I
became intensely aware of the chain that had been cutting into my own
crotch since morning. My female parts had only to endure the pull of
the strap. Hers must carry her whole weight. I shuddered at what it
might feel like to be seated thus, one's legs spread so that one's
knees could get no grip to ease the load, able only to rock a trifle
back and forth, making the choice between bruising the pubic bone in
front, or the coccyx behind, the tender tissues between suffering
whatever the choice.
  One could see that the prisoner was already aware of the terrible
situation she was in, for her body was tensed all over, the muscles in
her thighs and back standing out like bunches of cord below her soft
woman's skin. She constantly eased herself backwards and forwards, as
far as she was allowed, obviously feeling acute discomfort already,
and her night's vigil had scarce begun.
  By now it was past seven o'clock, and all our party were in need of
rest and refreshment.
  "She is a hardened sinner," said the Wardress, "and it will take a
while to make her betray her feelings. Do you repair to the inn in the
village, where you may find rooms for the night and a good supper,
then return here about nine, or a half past? She should be beginning
to sweat by then."
  Our Guardians were pleased to act on this advice, and so were
Marion, Charlotte and myself, for we had worn our 'uniforms' for over
fourteen hours without respite now, and our necks ached, our knees
were sore and the chains in our crotches seemed like knives.
  At the inn, we found that the landlord could offer us but one large
chamber, with three beds in it, but it was too far to go back to the
vicarage tonight, and Papa took it, ordering supper the while which,
when it came, proved to be very good. Our Guardians seem to have felt
their day well spent, and showed their satisfaction by feeding us
generously off their own plates, and giving us copious draughts from
their glasses. It was in a much happier mood that we women set out for
the prison, two hours or so later, for we knew we would very soon be
able to remove our chains and rest our weary bodies.
  Not so the prisoner. As the Wardress led us into the punishment
room, she turned her head to see who had entered, revealing a face
drawn with strain, the mouth twisted as she fought to resist the pain
gnawing in her vitals.
  "This is an awful thing to do to one of our sex," she groaned. "As
we are both women, let it finish now. I am being split in half."
  "You claim womanhood?" retorted the Wardress. "You are more like a
hyena in a petticoat. Save that you have none, nor even a shift. No,
Mistress, sit there and be reminded of what you have between your
legs, that says that nature has made you less than man. I'll wager, by
morning, you'll have come to know the truth of it, and regret you ever
preached such foul treason against your lords and masters."
  The woman gave a groan, and I would have been sorry for her, knowing
only too well how cruelly such pressure in one's fork can serve one,
but I remembered why she was here, and my pity vanished. What would
become of the world if the natural rule of men over women were to be
upset, and what unhappiness she had already brought on the young women
whose minds she had poisoned?
  The wardress wished us good night, and good rest, inviting us to
come and see how well the reforming influence of the 'Spanish Horse'
had acted, when the termagant was taken down at seven, when her twelve
hours were up. I shuddered to think of her there, all through the
lonely hours of the night, perched on her agonizing mount in the dark,
unable to move, held secure, even if she should try to take refuge in
a swoon, adding her own sweat of agony and, perhaps, a drop or two of
red, to the dark stains left by those who had ridden the terrible
mount before her.
  Back at the inn, the gentlemen were eager for their beds, and we to
ease ourselves of the chains that vexed us so sorely, so all were soon
undressed, and in the case of the women, washed and soothed a little
after the trials of our long day. However, our close proximity to the
gentlemen, following a day that had seen them in our company
continuously, not to speak of the many other women they had viewed in
various states of undress and distress, had so worked on our Guardians
that nothing would serve but that we should each bend over a bed and
do our duty by their bursting discharges. This last duty performed, we
were at last allowed to find our rest, each lying on a mat beside the
bed of him she had just served; Marion, as befitted the senior, by
Justice Rodsham, Charlotte with the doctor, and I, his favourite, by
Papa.
  We all slept very well and were up betimes to go and see the
'Spanish Horse' relieved of its rider. Being from home, my sisters and
I were unable to take our usual dip beneath a pump, and were allowed
to use the gentlemen's hot water after them. I felt a little of
conscience at the luxury of it, though it was but warm when it was my
turn, but could not restrain the feeling of sweet comfort, as I
crouched over the basin to wash my still sore fork, before re-donning
my chain. We took only a cup of chocolate, before the carriage came
round to bear us off to the House of Correction, where we arrived but
a minute or so after seven.
  "My apologies, Ma'am," said the Judge, addressing the Chief
Wardress, "I hope we are not too late to see the outcome of last
night's treatment."
  "Why, think nothing of it," the woman replied, "we would have waited
'til noon for your lordship if necessary. The woman is not going
anywhere."
  Once again we found ourselves in the punishment room, viewing the
sorry figure on the horse. There was nothing of pride or defiance now.
Her head lolled as far as the collar would allow, her eyes were shut,
her mouth open. She made long low sounds, like a mother crooning to
her babe, but these were not the accents of maternal love, but of
female anguish from a woman in extremity. She was still conscious and
her lower body still rocked and writhed in a vain attempt to ease her
pain, but she seemed quite unaware that there were others in the room,
even when the overseers unfastened her legs and arms, unhooked the
cords from her collar, and made ready to remove her from the sharp
saddle she rode. They lifted her, and she cried out as the wedge of
wood left her flesh. When they set her on the floor, she could not
stand, but fell on her knees, then tumbled slowly onto her side, her
body curled up into a ball, her hands thrust deep into her groin to
clasp the bruised flesh between her legs.
  "Now then, Mistress," the Wardress addressed her, "have you learnt
your lesson, or would you ride further in search of enlightenment?"
  "No more! No more!" she cried piteously. "I'll not offend again.
I'll submit me to men, as is right, but do not put me up again."
  "So you see the error of your ways, and your offences against man
and God? Do you admit that men are your masters, and it is your duty
to serve? Do you regret the bile you have fed to your young
acquaintance, and that your teachings flew in the face of nature?"
  "Yes! Yes! I admit it all. I have been a disgrace to my sex, and a
corrupter of youth, but spare me the horse again."
  "I see you are cured of your madness," the wardress observed. "Take
her away, and set her on the work gang."
  "Very efficacious," remarked Papa. "The effect is quite wonderful to
behold. A brand plucked from the burning, a lamb that has strayed,
found again. I must speak to the carpenter, whether he may construct
such a device at the vicarage."
  If I had felt horror at the machine, just to see a woman broken on
it so completely, how may I describe the terror that flowed through me
as Papa proposed one for our use. Surely we did not need to be broken
so utterly? We were not perfect, perfection was reserved for the male
sex, especially holy men and hermits, and mere women could not hope
for it, as Papa had so ably and persuasively proved in so many
sermons, but we were docile and obedient, and surely our lapses from
grace were adequately contained by the whippings we received, our
sinful natures curbed by the constraints we wore. I shook so much at
what such a horse might be like, pressing with all the weight of one's
own body on that delicate tissue between my thighs, that I had to
brace my knees against their fetters to stop them trembling.
 It was with thoughtful expressions and dark foreboding that we
returned to the vicarage for, surely, we might expect to share many of
the dire punishments and disciplines that we had witnessed women
enduring this last twenty-four hours. Their cries and groans, their
writhings and spasms, their choking sobs would soon be ours.
  At first it seemed they would, and with but short delay, for Papa
commissioned Mr Bendham, the joiner in the village, to start work at
once on his own design for a 'Spanish Horse', and the two were soon in
regular communication over its construction. Mr Bendham suggested many
novel features, which our minds could not forebear to applaud, as
shining examples of that technical genius that was transforming the
manufactures of Great Britain, to the lasting benefit of its peoples,
though our bodies cringed from the implications for our suffering.
  First he devised an ingenious system, whereby a plank on either
side, about a foot from the ground, would swing out to form steps by
which the horse might be mounted but which, at the pull of a lever,
would drop down, like the hangman's trap, to leave the rider mounted
on the edge. And what an edge! Ever the craftsman, and determined to
work with only the best of materials, he had suggested to Papa that
mere pine would not serve, and produced a piece of black yew wood, as
hard as iron and shaped to a knife edge, that slotted into the top of
the structure with all the delicacy of inlay on a Sheraton commode.
His design also included a sliding yoke, which fastened round the neck
and held the rider upright at all times, but gave no support in a
vertical direction, thus eliminating any possibility of her taking any
of her weight off the yew wedge splitting her crotch.
  Though the shadow of this fearful device hung heavy over us, looming
nearer with each visit Mr Bendham paid to the vicarage, other
possibilities, favoured by our medical superintendent and our Judge,
were not so menacingly imminent, for both were from home. The doctor
had travelled to America with his friend and colleague, the celebrated
Dr Isaac Brown, to spread their gospel of the management of women, by
the modification of the pubic nerve, throughout the New World, that
society there should enjoy the same benefits that had been so
successfully propagated in Europe. Justice Rodsham was also from home,
having gone to sit on a committee considering whether corporal
punishment for women should be disallowed by the courts. Needless to
say, when the idea was first mooted, he conceived it his duty to go to
London straightway, to put an end to such dangerous nonsense.
  And now disaster struck, tearing apart our happy ordered world. One
minute we were content, knowing our place, secure in the firm and wise
governance of our Guardians, sustained by our restraints, without
which, so Papa, as a man of God, assured us, we would be as ravening
wolves or Scarlet Women, our guilt at our sinful femininity expunged
by the searing lines ruled across our throbbing buttocks, the next we
were as rudderless ships, or lost lambs.
  Papa's sense of duty was ever strong, and, in the absence of our
other Guardians, he conceived it his duty to take upon himself not
only his share of the burden of controlling our unruly selves, but
theirs as well. The burden was immense for, so it seemed, with the
others away, the danger of us erring was magnified in some way, such
that he frequently found that each of us needed more than our usual
weekly correction, and he would call us to his study at very short
notice between our regular visits, to lay fresh stripes on wounds
barely healed. Moreover, the effect of working on three of us without
assistance meant that he was more and more infected by the female
contagion, and required one or other of us to draw it from him every
night.
  One day, even this was not enough, and Charlotte was called directly
from her dawn ablutions to quell the raging inflammation in him, after
receiving six cuts of the rod for which apparently, she had become
due. That evening, I went for my regular visit, my buttocks still sore
and flaming from some dozen and a half of the cane that they had
sustained only two nights before. Now I was to receive another fifteen
strokes, which reduced me to tears, for I was already very sore when I
went in. While I stayed, wide thighed, on the arms of the whipping
chair, he undid his britches, and entered me behind, a process less
painful than of old, for the constant use had begun to stretch my
sphincter somewhat, and I could receive Papa's rock hard member with
more ease than heretofore. He set to work vigorously to draw the
poison from his system, and I to aid him by gripping him tight with my
anal muscle and, it seemed, he came quickly to that climax that
denotes the expulsion of the fluid, for I felt it hot and spurting in
my bowel, thinking his gasps and snorting sounds much above what was
usual, but supposing him just a little over wrought by the strain of
controlling three young and vigorous women. As he gave his last
choking gasp, he fell on my back, but I thought nothing of it, for he
often did, until he could recover his strength.
  I lay there for one minute, two, not daring to move my position
without permission, then imagine my horror, as he slipped out of me
with a small sucking sound as his member, still partly erect, left the
tight sheath in which it had been lying, and his body lurched
sideways, and fell to the floor. I was torn between concern for my
Papa and my obligation to stay in my position until given word of
release. Filial duty won. After all, I could always purge my
disobedience by going back over the chair, and taking my strokes
again. I knelt by Papa, calling to him to reassure me he was in
health. I felt desperately for a pulse, I leant my ear against his
chest to listen for his heart, I laid my cheek against his lips, to
feel for his breath. Nothing! No pulse, no heartbeat, no respiration,
our dear Papa had gone to his maker.
  Dropping my skirts, which had stayed about my waist, I ran,
unhampered by fetters, the loose band and the crotch chain rattling
between my legs. I had not run freely so for months and the
precipitate nature of my coming alerted my sisters to the presence of
some catastrophe. They ran with me, as fast as their linked knees
would allow, and came to where our dear Papa lay. Nothing had changed,
there was no mistake, no last minute reprieve, he was dead.
  After our first paroxysms of grief had subsided, we considered what
best to do. We could not leave him there, on the floor, his britches
and his small clothes all undone. In life he had always maintained a
rigid dignity, and we could not let it be less in death. Between us,
we carried him to his room and put him in a nightshirt, cleaning from
his maleness that foul substance he had been expelling at his going,
and the shameful excretions of my own body. We composed his hands
above his prayer book, lying on his chest, and left him to his peace.
In the morning we 'found' him thus, departed peacefully at his
prayers, and sent for the Attorney from Sexton Hinds, who was Papa's
man of affairs.
  The funeral took place three days later. There was a large
congregation of parishioners and admirers of the sermons that Papa had
published for the edification of men, lay and clerical, who had care
of the souls and bodies of the weaker sex, but of family there was
none. Papa had no relatives that we knew of, certainly he had never
spoken of any, and we had lost all contact with our mother's family
after her death. We entertained them all at the vicarage, and thanked
those who had come from afar to honour a man of learning and
erudition, whose teachings on the holy duty of women to submit to men,
and of men to rule them with firmness and the rod, had been such a
power for good in a world falling into the devil's clutches.
  The surprise came at the end of the day when, all others having gone
their ways, we sat down, wearily, with the little wizened attorney, to
hear Papa's will and what estate we might have. His will was simple.
He left everything he had to the three of us, jointly. He said he
trusted that his efforts over the years had done much to curb the
natural waywardness and destructive potential of our kind, but that we
should be for ever on our guard, and if we felt our natures to be
taking control of our lives, to place ourselves immediately in the
care of some strong man, who would direct us back to a proper path.
His trust in us was touching, but his estate took us quite aback.
  We had known nothing of his affairs, thinking simply that his
stipend had sustained us all, and would now cease, leaving us
destitute, once a new vicar was appointed to the living. Imagine our
surprise to learn that he had left us a small fortune. Not the wealth
of the truly rich, but enough invested in the funds to ensure we might
live comfortably for the rest of our lives. Its origins were obscure,
but it seemed in part to have been our mother's dowry, and part his
earnings from the hundreds of improving works he had published.
  We began to plan a glowing future. It was Charlotte who suggested
that we should leave the county for Bath, that elegant and fashionable
town, where we could live in ease, and enjoy the arts, music and
society it offered.
  At first Marion demurred, saying that Bath was too dangerous for us,
a city full of idleness, shallow girls and scheming matrons, and all
manner of light people, but Charlotte persuaded her that we had all
the more reason to go, since we might serve as beacons of light to
those young women liable to be seduced by the licentiousness of the
city, showing them how another way of life was possible, giving true
fulfilment. Now we began to lay our plans for the translation from
country vicarage to fashionable Bath.

Chapter 8 THE DIE IS CAST

The euphoria did not last. Although we still spoke of life in Bath,
each of us was having private doubts, but did not, at first, share
them with the others. By unspoken agreement we had conducted our
lives, since Papa's untimely demise, exactly as he had taught us. We
still resorted to the stable yard at dawn, to squirm and shudder under
the pump, we still walked with heads held high by our collars, we
still wore our crotch chains, hauled up taut as bowstrings, though we
did drop them at night to wash our sore flesh since, with no men to
serve, they would otherwise have remained in place day in day out to
the detriment of health and hygiene. At night we lay in our beds,
wrestling with the temptation to ease our fretful spirits by stroking
our pubic buds.
  Since our visit to the doctor's surgery, we had all made a good
recovery, though Charlotte's had been delayed by her repeated, and
painfilled, returns. My own tender tip had hurt excruciatingly, after
it had been stabbed by the lancet, and had throbbed for days, keeping
me from sleep with its insistent pain, but all things pass, and it
healed cleanly, as did the scar of its hood, and, within a month, I
found my fingers straying to it again. Moreover it seemed, if
anything, a trifle more sensitive than before. Marion had healed
alongside me, and confided that she was in a similar case. Poor
Charlotte had a longer and harder road to tread. She came back in
tears from her visits to the surgery, the long abrasion of her wound
more difficult to bear than the first sharp incision, and, what with
the constant reopening of the wound, and the effect on the whole
surface of her bud, she was not ready to essay the soothing touch for
several weeks after we had already found we were still capable of
receiving relief by this route.
  When she did come to essay the delights of her bud, she found that
the doctor had partially succeeded in his aim of rendering her immune
to such stimulation, for she found it less sensitive by far than
heretofore, but she was far from deprived of feeling in that spot,
merely more isolated from it by the thick callous on the little
button, and it was not long before she had discovered how to arouse it
to remission, by running her finger tip around the base, with a firm
touch that conveyed the pressure to the still active nerves beneath
the surface, and accomplishing her end by slightly indirect means.
  Now though, we had no one to whom to confess these departures from
discipline, and fell into the way of going to Papa's study, and
entering them in his leather bound ledger, just as he had done so
zealously when we had confessed our sins to him.
  Could we continue to dream of life in Bath, and, if not, what would
become of us without support and discipline? We began to think more
and more on how we would cope, on our own, without a man's strong hand
to rein in our natural female follies. We would go to pieces, we would
go astray, we would go, as Papa never tired of warning us, to the
devil.
  Matters came to a head one day when Mr Bendham arrived with the
finished 'horse'. We did not know what to do. We could not turn him
away, and it was, in any case, a pet scheme of Papa's and must be
honoured for his sake. We had him take it up to the study. After he
had been paid and gone, we went back up to the study to view the new
arrival. It was a fine piece of work, as one would expect from Mr
Bendham, a craftsman of the old school. Its polished surfaces gleamed
and shone. The brasswork of the step mechanism winked in the
lamplight, the black straps glowed darkly. Along its top the dark yew
stretched like a strip of polished jet. We looked at it, and at each
other. It was no surprise that Charlotte spoke first, she was still
the forward one, but her words startled me, though they but echoed my
own thoughts.
  "Such an exquisite piece of work, and we shall never know its feel,"
she said, almost wistfully.
  None of us spoke for a minute then Marion said, "I wish to know what
caused that poor deluded woman to recover her womanhood. With your
help, I will mount the horse, after supper, and make trial of its
effect."
  We murmured our assent, and went down to prepare our evening meal.
  Afterwards we gathered in Papa's study and looked again at the
seemingly harmless example of the joiner's careful work. Marion had us
lift the plank steps, until they locked in their raised position,
ready to bear a rider's feet, then examined the yoke to support the
neck, without taking any of the weight.
  "I shall dispense with this," she declared, and proceeded to take
off her dress. Quickly she stripped to her stays, discarding gown and
petticoats, boots and stockings, taking off her fetters, unlatching
her crotch chain and tucking it into her corset lace, so that it was
held well clear of her crease.
  "Come, Charlotte," she said, turning her back, "make haste to secure
my arms behind, as you saw that woman's," and then, when Charlotte had
carried out her wishes, she stepped onto one of the raised planks and
swung one long leg over, to reach the other side. She stood a minute,
her nether lips poised just above the iron hard black rib of yew wood,
lowering herself until she made an experimental contact, then spoke
again.
  "Annabel, dearest, part my lips there as you saw in the
penitentiary, and Charlotte, do you fasten my ankles for me."
  The straps for securing the ankles were attached to the outer edges
of the steps, so that, when they fell to their lowered position and
locked in place, the ankles were drawn down with them, and the legs
stretched taut. When I had gently parted her plump nether lips, she
lowered herself fully, until the yew edge pressed firmly into her pink
inner flesh, and sat with her weight mostly on that portion.
  "Shall I lift the lever?" Charlotte asked, for the mechanism that
dropped the plank steps was operated by a lever at the end of the
structure.
  "No," she replied through clenched teeth, "it is not something I
would ask either of you to do for me. Fasten a cord to it, and put it
in my fingers, then put out the lamp, and leave me. Come back no
sooner than a half hour, to see how I fare. If you remain, I might cry
out for help before I have tasted it fully, or your tender hearts may
mistakenly terminate my trial before it is complete."
  Charlotte and I looked at each other doubtfully, but she was our
older sister and we had always deferred to her instruction. We made up
the cord as she had asked, and left the room, taking the lamp with us.
Outside the door, we both paused, with the same idea, that we should
stay a moment to guard against disaster, for neither Marion nor the
apparatus had been tested before. We waited with bated breath for a
count of ten or so, then heard a clack, as the lever lifted and the
steps dropped down and latched into place. Immediately there was a
gasp from Marion, as of surprise at what she felt, then silence. When
the quiet had lasted a full minute, we crept away, reassured she was
not immediately in distress, and feeling guilt at listening so
furtively outside the closed door.
  We waited below in some concern, watching the clock, and hurrying
back up as soon as it showed thirty minutes had passed, taking the
lamp with us. As we entered the room, we were aware of a low groaning,
and found Marion rocking slightly on her cruel perch, her body
strained and tense. Though she was, perhaps, more softly covered than
the woman we had seen at the prison, nevertheless her every muscle
stood out below her skin, perspiration beaded her forehead and
trickled between her shoulders, her head lolled back as far as her
tall collar would allow.
  When she saw us, she exclaimed in a strained voice, asking how long
had elapsed and, when we told her we had come prompt at the half hour,
as she requested, she groaned again.
  "Take me down," she said, "it feels as if I have been hung here more
like three hundred minutes, not thirty. I have my answer now; this is
a dreadful situation for a woman, and not to be endured. Quickly now,
get me down."
  We hastened to do her bidding, undoing her wrists and releasing her
ankles, then lifting her between us until she stood or, rather, half
crouched on the floor, for the pain in her fork led her to put her
hands to it for comfort and hunch herself over them. We hurried her to
her bed and laid her gently in it, then soothed her to sleep without
questioning her about her ordeal.
  The next day came Mr Attorney with documents to sign and the Bath
papers, with details of the social whirl and, more to our purpose,
properties to let. We had a busy day with him and with the
advertisements after he had taken his leave, laying them out on the
table and trying to distinguish through the fog of fantasy what sort
of dwellings they might be, for householders will ever laud their
sheds as palaces, and their agents are even less to be relied upon.
  I sensed that Marion's heart was not in it, and Charlotte, too,
seemed a little distrait, whilst I myself found my mind not as taken
up by the plan for Bath as formerly, my thoughts returning to the
previous evening and the scene in Papa's study. We made desultory
review of the houses on offer and then took our evening meal. After
supper, Charlotte, who had been uncharacteristically silent, stood up
and removed her clothes, leaving only her corset. She said not a word
until she was stripped, nor did we question what she did.
  When she had laid her fetters on the table, she turned to us and
said, "I am going to the study. Pray come for me in forty minutes, to
see how I do."
  I turned to Marion in amaze, but she nodded reassuringly, and said,
"let her be. This is something each must do for herself."
  In forty minutes we went up to the study, finding it in darkness. We
could hear Charlotte breathing very hard and, when we had lit the
lamp, discovered her, as we had known we would, mounted on the horse.
She had been to Papa's cabinet of curiosities and taken the handcuffs
with spring catches, that he had had off the Bow Street Runners when
he had visited London last, and now they held her wrists securely
locked behind her back. Before she had put them on, she had reached
down each side to fasten the straps on her ankles. Holding the cord
from the release lever between her teeth, she had set her parts to the
wicked black edge of yew wood, then pulled on the cord to drop the
side planks, so that they locked down, holding her legs straight and
keeping her balanced on her fork.
  Now she had been there near forty minutes and, like Marion, the
strain showed. There were tears on her cheeks and her muscles stood
hard as ropes as she tried in vain to find some attitude less
agonizing than another.
  "It is enough," she gasped, as we came in sight. "I know now what it
means. Let me down quickly, I beg you."
  We needed no second asking, and in a trice had unfastened her legs
and got her down. It took a minute to find how to unlock the
restraints on her wrists, but then she clasped her centre, as Marion
the night before, and curled herself around her pain, until it eased
enough for her to straighten and thank us for rescuing her.
  The next day we carried on our self imposed regime, still true to
Papa's memory, but we were all very withdrawn. I can only guess at the
thoughts that troubled my dear sisters, but I know that my own were
partly on what our future might hold, but mainly on what they had
experienced and I had not. That evening, after supper, I rose from
table, with no more word than Charlotte before me, and stripped down
to my stays and collar. At the door, I turned to them and said, "Come
for me in an hour."
  They nodded in understanding, and I climbed the stairs to the study.
  By the light of a candle, I found the handcuffs, set the steps,
arranged the cord from the lever where it was in reach. I mounted the
device, throwing a leg over the apex until I was standing upright on
the two steps, and leant over sideways. I found I could just reach
sufficiently to set the loop of the strap about my ankle, and draw the
buckle tight. When I had secured the other, I leant forward as far as
I could and blew out the candle, leaving myself in inky darkness. Now
I drew my nether lips apart with trembling fingers, and set myself
gently down on the hard sharp edge. As my weight began to bear on my
tender tissues between my thighs, I began to get a first faint inkling
of what might be in store, but I pushed on with my design.
  I had purposed to explore what manner of torment this might be, just
as Marion and Charlotte had done already, and I would not turn back
now. I took the cord between my teeth and put my wrists into the
cuffs, snapping shut the half rings so that they would not open again.
Now I was totally secured and could not leave until someone released
me. There only remained the last, crucial act that would plunge me,
without reprieve, into that pit of anguish I had seen the others
writhing in before me. I settled my fork as firmly as I might upon the
painful ridge, my toes only taking a little of my weight, and made to
pull the cord.
  My coward body rebelled and would not do its duty, fearful of what
it might mean. My brave sisters had been weeping after little more
than half an hour, and the mature and masterful woman in the prison
had been reduced to a whimpering wretch, all her boldness fled. I was
determined that I would make trial for myself of this breaker of
woman's mutinous spirit, and resolved that I would release the lever
on the count of five. Slowly I counted them out, focusing my thoughts
entirely on the fact that, on the count of five, my head would go
forward and the lever would move, blotting out the consequences and
thinking only of the need for the action itself. The stratagem worked.
Blindly, unthinkingly, I counted off the numbers and on five, just as
I had willed it, my head bent forward, taking the cord with it, the
lever moved, the steps fell away from beneath my toes, and my legs
straightened, letting my whole weight sink onto my most intimate and
delicate female parts.
  Dear God, how it hurt from the outset! I gasped as the full pressure
bit into me for the first time. It cut into my pubic bone in front,
for I was still leaning forward, even though the cord had dropped from
my mouth as I had opened it in shock. I rocked back to ease it, and
the blade of the horse cut into me behind. I tried to find a point
between, but only served to cut more deeply into my softest tissues as
well. There was no position where one could escape, or even mitigate
the grinding ache below. I found my body tensing, the muscles
hardening as I had seen them in others. I sat rigid for a few moments,
until the pain went beyond endurance, but then moved slightly,
relieving the first hurt a trifle, but merely transferring it to
another portion of my tender anatomy, where it built up from the
merely excruciating to the unbearably dreadful, and I would move a
fraction, again, in a vain attempt to find some surcease of the agony.
  I sat there in the darkness, concentrating on my hurts. There was
nothing to distract me, perhaps nothing could, and I began to see how
a woman put in this position would look inwards to her soul, and see
and repent her wrong doing. From time to time, I heard a strange
moaning sound and did not realise for a long while that the weird
keening came from my own lips. Tears ran down my cheeks, and every now
and again, my careful equilibrium was shaken by a belly deep sob,
which rocked me on my knife-edge, sending a new peak of savage pain
into my vitals.
  My hour on that dreadful mount, for Marion assured me they had come
on the very tick of sixty minutes, was the longest of my life, and
seemed like a dozen years of torture. When they found me, I was
moaning and sobbing, almost unable to speak, just croaking, "Get me
down, for pity's sake, get me down."
  They hastened to comply, and I lay on the floor, curled into a ball,
holding the bruised and pulped flesh between my legs with both hands,
as if I could somehow pluck out the throbbing agony that still raged
there, as the blood was restored to the bruised tissues. When I could
at last contain the ache, I tried to stand, but had to be assisted,
for my legs had become weak as jelly and, when I essayed a step, the
pain broke out anew, and I had to shuffle with my legs splayed wide,
resting on my sisters' shoulders, as they helped me to my bed.

  The next day, Marion, our leader as always, sat us at the table when
our frugal breakfast was done, and broached the subject that had been
overshadowing us for days.
  "We must give more thought to this proposal to remove to Bath," she
said. "Tell me that I am not deceived in thinking that both of you
have found doubts in your deepest minds as to the wisdom of the
undertaking?"
  We both admitted it was so and she continued.
  "I think we are particularly vulnerable. Papa made it abundantly
clear that we were weak creatures, and in need of a discipline and a
restraint, much above the commonality of womankind, and we have become
used to this support for our frailness. How do you think we would fare
if we were to lose it?"
  "I think it would go ill with us," I replied, and Charlotte agreed.
  "I was the instigator of the plan," she confessed, "and still I
hanker for it at times, but, more and more, I know in my heart that we
need a man's strong rule. Oh! Bath would be delightful, I know it, but
would we be happy without our fetters? Without the sharp sting of
correction when our guilty selves tell us we deserve it? What would
stop us becoming a danger to ourselves and to every male we come in
contact with, if we are not subjected to another's will and rod?"
  My heart almost burst to hear my own fears and doubts, that I had
hugged to myself these last ten days, expressed so lucidly by another,
and to know that I was not alone in looking with apprehension on our
coming change of life.
  "But what can we do?" I wailed, quite in despair, now that my fears
had become expressed rather than suppressed. "Dear Papa is gone, and
we are alone."
  Marion put her arm round me to comfort me.
  "Hush, Annabel," she said softly, "all is not lost. We have no
commitment to Bath, and will make none."
  "But we cannot stay here for ever," Charlotte objected. "There will
be a new vicar appointed to the living soon, and we shall have to
leave the only home we have ever known and, even if we could stay, how
would that serve our needs?"
  "I have an idea," Marion replied. "Listen and I will lay it before
you. We must turn to our other Guardians. The doctor will not return
from the Americas for some months yet and, in any case, his household
is already overstocked with women," - and such women, I thought,
recalling the grim mother and the stony faced daughter, a young woman
as devoid of pity and human feeling as a stoat among rabbits - "but
the worthy Judge has but a housekeeper, and a large house, with rooms
for all. We would not come without dowries, our inheritance gives us
the means to pay our way, in addition to the service we would take
pride and pleasure in giving. He should be returning from the
Commission at any day. Is it your will that I should write to him,
apprising him of our situation, and begging him to take us in and keep
our weak womanly spirits in decent bondage and disciplined restraint?"
  We fell on her neck, drowning her with our kisses, thanking her for
her brilliant scheme for our future. The letter was written that
night, we all colluding in its composition, ensuring that it conveyed
the true depth of the submission we offered and the strong hand we
craved, and it was despatched to the Judge's house, the other side of
Sexton Hinds, the very next morning. Within four and twenty hours we
had our answer, and we burst into tears of happiness as Marion read it
to us, her voice trembling so, she could hardly continue.
  It seemed that Justice Rodsham had returned from his labours on the
commission on judicial punishment, where he had partially succeeded in
stemming the treacherous tide of misguided philanthropy that would
remove the reins of corporal punishment from females, with all that
that implied for the well-being of society, to find a parlous
situation in his own household. As stated before, his only servant
living in the house permanently was a housekeeper, a good looking
woman of close on forty years, but buxom and well built, with fine
features, long black hair, rounded bosom and buttocks, that had been
with him since she was a young woman in her twenties. It seems that
the creature had betrayed him by letting herself be got with child,
whose we could not tell, for it seems she went out but little. Knowing
that her condition could not be hid much longer, she had confessed
all, immediately on the Judge's return. There was no chance of her
being allowed to stay on, the scandal would be too great, and she was
to be despatched to distant relatives in the West Country, where she
might disguise her sins under the cloak of being recently widowed and
bearing a posthumous child.
  Meanwhile the Judge was without a housekeeper, and we might come and
take on that role. Weeping anew at his generous spirit, we hastened to
compose our acceptance, and soon we were seated in the carriage he
sent for us, on our way to our new home and the comforting arms of
discipline and correction so necessary to the female good. We took
little with us, save our small valises containing what clothes we had.
We wore our fetters, our chains, our collars, as we hoped we would
forever, and I cradled in my arms that fat leather bound journal in
which Papa kept the record of our transgressions and corrections and
in which we had meticulously set down each instance of departure from
the paths that he had taught us, since his untimely departure.
  The trap and its pony were given to George, the groom, as a
gratuity, while such of the furniture left in the vicarage that the
new incumbent did not wish to purchase for his own use was to be sold,
and the proceeds divided amongst the daily women who came in to share
the housework, on condition that they renew their vows to love, honour
and, especially, to obey their husbands, else it was to be taken from
them and sent to the Women's House of Correction, for the use of its
stern Governess. All else we had brought away followed in the
carrier's cart, Papa's cabinet of curiosities with its whips, canes,
straps, chains and restraints, that dread armchair on which we were
used to pay for our sins with the stripes and sufferings of our
buttocks, and the 'Spanish Horse', that worthy mount that can carry
even the most recalcitrant of females on the painful journey back from
sin to salvation. Once they, and we, were safely installed in the
Judge's unyielding care, we were sure our happiness and health would
be assured.

Chapter 9 ALL CHANGE

We arrived at the Judge's home in the late afternoon, with barely time
to put our modest belongings in the rooms allocated to us and see that
the carter carried the 'horse' and Papa's cabinet and armchair into
the Judge's own study, before we must set to, to put the house
straight for his comfort and prepare him a meal. Subsequently we were
summoned to that same study, where he read us a stern lecture on the
danger in which we had stood, having acted with independence of men
for many months, and decreed that we should start our rehabilitation
and show a proper submission to the Master of the house by submitting
to a flogging that very night, tired and weary though we were from the
journey and the trauma of being uprooted from our home of so many
years.
  "It is best you start in the manner in which you intend to
continue," he assured us. "A little fatigue will only make you more
receptive to the rod and its curative powers. But first," he added,
"there are some small formalities to be concluded, regarding your
income. You will have no need for funds of your own, since you will be
living under my roof and I will make you such allowances as are
necessary from time to time for household expenses and any strictly
necessary items of feminine expenditure as may arise, judging each
application on its merits. You will, therefore, each sign a note to
the manager of our local bank, authorising him to pay over to me such
dividends and other income as it accrues."
  We could find no argument with this reasonable request, although we
had made shift to run the old home for some months without male aid,
and we each signed a note as indicated, trusting to the learned Judge
to correctly assess the validity of our requests for personal funds,
should the need arise. Often a man will see clearly that what a woman
thinks is necessary for her appearance or hygiene is, in fact, nothing
more than vanity or extravagance.
  The business concluded without delay, we turned our attention to
that so familiar armchair, in its new and unfamiliar surroundings. In
fact, the difference was not so great. The Judge's sanctum was much
like that dark, austere chamber that had been poor dear Papa's place
of work and study, a largish room with heavy desk, bookcases and
leather furniture of suitable sombreness, and decorated in a
appropriately dark and brooding fashion, that was nicely calculated to
banish all levity from one's thoughts on entering, if indeed there had
been the slightest lightness of disposition among any of us when
summoned to that place of Judgement and execution.
  It was not so crowded that it could not receive the familiar chair,
the awesome 'Spanish Horse', and the cabinet, with its cargo of
corrective instruments, and still leave room for full free play of
those same rods and straps.
  It was quite like old times as, one by one, we bared our lower
persons, mounted the chair, our knees wide spread by the spacing of
the arms on which we knelt, and lowered our heads to present our
buttocks fully to the Judge and the formidable rod he had selected. It
was one of the more 'difficult' canes Papa had purchased for our
maintenance and I found myself weeping tears of shame for my fear and
humiliation when having to spread my buttocks on the chair and,
especially, at the feeling of openness behind, where my rather plump
and pouting pudenda showed boldly between my parted thighs.
  It was too long since I had been made to abase myself in this
manner, and it showed. I was blubbering freely before even a stroke
had fallen, and writhed and sobbed under the rod as, three months
before, I never would have done.
  By the third stroke, I positively howled. My hips weaved, seemingly
of their own volition, I could not control them, and the fourth also
heard me giving tongue, as that brutal cane fell across my unpractised
buttock, the welts now thick and dark on the previously pristine
surface. It crossed my mind, even in that extremity, that they would
probably never be wholly without mark again for the indefinite future.
The thought did not persist long, driven out by the fifth cut, a
beastly stroke, somewhat lower than the rest, indeed, on the gluteal
fold itself, such a sensitive spot, even when used to correction of
this strength, unbearable when so ill-prepared. Once more I howled and
the rod returned, to sear me not a finger's breadth below. In the
position we adopted on the well-spaced arms of that dire chair, one
was peculiarly vulnerable to a stroke like that, on the thigh more
than on the buttock, and it could be excruciating. Could be and was on
that occasion. I writhed and sobbed without restraint.
  When I had quietened somewhat, rather than giving the order to
dismiss and dismount from the chair, the Judge addressed me on the
inadequacy of my performance and the need for me to do better. As an
aid to this rehabilitation, I was awarded two extra strokes, and
promised I would have the six to do over again, if these were not
taken with sufficient stoicism. You may be sure I made neither sound
nor movement under the rod for those testing extras. The fear of
having to take more of the same was even greater than my distress at
the pain of the present visitations to my poor sore buttocks.
  Though I hated them at the time, when I was able to contemplate my
aching buttocks objectively, in the privacy of my bed, it was some
small comfort to know that I had made amends by taking them with
better dignity. I had not been called upon to relieve the Judge's evil
humours, since only one sphincter sufficed, and Marion did the
honours, as befitted the eldest girl.
  We had cast ourselves upon the Judge's charity, I mean in the sense
of caring for our moral needs, our financial requirements were more
than satisfied by our father's legacy, at a time when the Doctor was
abroad, spreading the gospel of his surgical treatments for feminine
ills and, by the time he returned, we were safely installed in the
Judge's home and settling down to our duties there, benefiting from
regular and unremitting discipline that kept us healthy in body and
mind. He did not delay to visit his old friend, the Judge, and, with
great generosity, undertook to be our medical superintendent, as in
the days when we lived in Papa's vicarage and he had been a frequent
visitor.
  Indeed, on the occasion of his first visit to our new home, we were
made to submit to a full examination, to see how our bodies had fared
in the intervening months.
  "The female body is a complex mechanism," he warned us, "liable to
quickly lose its tune, if not properly exercised, and prone to develop
strange maladies if not kept under a strict regimen."
  We were instructed to strip ourselves entirely, not even retaining
the corsets and restraints we seldom otherwise were without. We stood
in a line, arms at our sides, chins up, but eyes cast down so as not
to seem to be challenging our male superiors. When the Doctor had
given us an overall viewing, he called on each in turn to get up on
the heavy desk and lie back while he probed further. When my turn
came, I found the hardness and cold of the polished wood strangely
disturbing and, again, I had got out of the way of allowing my body to
be handled freely without shrinking. It was further proof, if any were
indeed needed, of the frailty of women, and how far they will
backslide if the reins are loosened even for a moment. It only
reinforced the wisdom of our mentors in putting us back as quickly and
as strictly as possible into that moral corset and stern rule in which
we had flourished before.
  The Doctor's probing was searching. First, he greased his hand and
introduced two fingers into my vagina, stretching, though not
rupturing, the hymen and seeking out the inner lining and the soft
nose of my cervix, where the neck of the womb intrudes on the vaginal
tube. He explored thoroughly, until I began to squirm at the
discomfort and prolonged tension induced by his manipulation.
  He cautioned me to stillness, but withdrew and examined the bud of
my sexual nerve, still very sensitive and active, despite the surgical
procedures to which he had subjected it some months before. He
murmured something about it needing further attention, at which I
could not suppress a small whimper of fear, then bade me turn onto my
belly and draw up my knees under me in a frog-like crouch.
  The pose served to throw up my buttocks, and I was even more exposed
when he made me part my knees widely, opening up the divide and
letting the cool air play on the pouting button of my anus, for, since
resuming our service of the gentlemen's juices, I had found my nether
orifice to have once more become slightly swollen and inflamed, being
conscious of it at many times during the day, even when not serving in
the study, and always when answering a call of nature.
  While I had been adjusting my position, he had freshly greased his
hand again, and I soon felt two fingers probing the puffy rose of my
sphincter. They burrowed deep and were joined by a third, and then a
fourth. By now I was breathing hard, being hard put to it to maintain
my pose without flinching, so great was the pressure. He withdrew a
fraction, though his fingers never wholly left their lodging in my
anus and, when they returned, they had been joined by a thumb. His
whole hand formed a wedge, which he drove with unrelenting pressure
into my poor sore anal ring.
  At first, he could only make but little headway, though what he
gained pained me deeply. He growled at me to loosen up and let him
enter, reinforcing his demands with several violent slaps of his hard
hand on my bare buttock. I concentrated all I could, remembering the
advice we had been given once, that a gesture as if trying to expel
some sordid solid from one's bowel in fact opened up the sphincter,
allowing entrance of a male member or similar. It worked in this case
also, though the Doctor's fist was not to be compared with a mere
penis, and stretched me horribly. Nevertheless, with a great effort on
his part, and many groans on mine, the greased palm entered until the
sphincter closed about the wrist, still painfully distended but less
excruciatingly than when the widest part of his hand was passing
through the narrow opening of my anus.
  Now his hand was in me to the wrist and he unclenched his fingers,
tightly packed until now in a wedge or cone, and let them wander in my
bowel, probing its lining, seeking out the organs lying close by, and
separated only by the thinnest of membranes, taking those he found
between his fingers and squeezing or pulling on them.
  The sensation was unbelievable, unbearable, totally overwhelming. It
felt as if he had taken my entrails and tied them in a knot, or forced
my womb into my throat, choking me. I gasped and groaned, writhed on
his impaling arm like an eel on a fork, uttering small sharp cries in
a jagged stream of sound.
  At last he ceased his internal examination and withdrew. His exit
was much faster than his entrance, and the sudden extraction of his
hand, besides the inevitable stretching of my sphincter again, as the
widest part passed through, seemed to act as a suction pump, feeling
as if my guts had been sucked out behind it. I lay puffing and blowing
on the desk top for a minute or more, before I could regain enough
strength to descend, and start to put my dress in order once more.
  My sisters had not fared any better. Where Marion had been spared
quite such an intrusive examination of her rectum, she had been
obliged to submit to such a forceful stretching of her nether lips
that tears had come to her eyes, while Charlotte had not only endured
an internal examination almost as brutal as my own, but had had her
nipple seized in forceps, and drawn out until she bit her lip and
moaned at the pain. It seemed a severe way to treat tender female
flesh, but doubtless the Doctor understood best what must be done.
  As a result of these medical explorations, we were prescribed a
number of treatments over and above our regular regime. In my own
case, these consisted of a series of hot oil enemas, taken twice a
week, each of two quarts, hot enough to almost scald, and to be held
for fifteen minutes before relief was allowed, on pain of unspecified
but fearful penalty if released sooner.
  Marion was made to stand, legs widely spaced, for thirty minutes at
a time, with small vices clamped to her nether lips, from each of
which depended two one pound weights. The ordeal was aggravated by her
being made to stand totally still, any movement causing the weights to
swing and clash, whereupon the time endured to date was ignored and
the thirty minutes calculated from the new starting point. She seldom
got free in less than an hour, and shrieked when, at last, the clamps
were withdrawn from her cringing flesh.
  Charlotte was subjected to a similar ordeal, but in her case a
weight of two pounds was attached to each nipple. At least she did not
have to maintain stillness to avoid clashing, since her breasts were
widely separated, but she nevertheless held herself mighty stiff to
mitigate the action on her stretched breasts and teats.
  It was ten weeks before the Doctor decided that his treatments had
done their work and that we might drop them from our routine, the
physical deterioration subsequent on our temporary deprivation of male
authority having been dispersed by medicine as effectively as our
mental degeneration had been repaired by strict correction at the
Judge's hand.
  At about that time, too, we had acquired a third Guardian. During
Papa's lifetime, we had had the benefit of the three principal pillars
of society, Religion, Medicine and the Law. The last two we continued
to enjoy, but there was a vacancy for a religious mentor; fortunately
this opening was soon filled. The Judge was acquainted with a
churchman, a Bishop no less, who had lately returned from the Far East
and had been appointed Suffragan to our local diocese. He was invited
to dine at the Judge's home and, after our very first meeting,
undertook to see to the health of our souls, as the Doctor and Judge
took care of our bodies and conduct.
  We had only been told that we might expect a guest for dinner, and
you may imagine our astonishment, mixed with hope and dread, to find a
tall austere figure, dressed in black apron and gaiters, the only
relief in his costume the white tabs at his neck, a purple sash about
his waist, and the gleaming jet of rows of tight buttons that ran down
his form-fitting gaiters from thigh to ankle, outlining muscular
calves that spoke of a strong, athletic body beneath his other regalia
of office.
  After dinner, the Judge announced that he would conduct his usual
inquisition into our state of moral health and need for further
discipline, and invited the Bishop to delay his departure in order to
witness how well we were cared for. Accordingly we were subjected to
our normal catechism followed by penal correction on our cringing
buttocks, which we bared in the usual way, despite the presence of
this senior churchman. We hoped our naked femaleness would not offend
him, but I fear he was struck down by that same affliction that so
troubled our Guardians on these occasions; his body filled with
malignant juices, the pressure of which had to be relieved if he was
to remain hale.
  As usual, I was the last in line to be judged and it was, therefore,
my freshly corrected buttocks, with their fifteen stinging welts, that
he seized in his steel-like grip, as he presented the Episcopal prong
to my tight anal ring. He was, indeed, a mighty man before the lord,
as the Good Book has it, and his massive member drew a groan from my
bitten lips as he forced himself into me. Several painful minutes
later, I had progressed to loud strangled grunts with every stroke he
made, but consoled myself for my pain with the thought, as he gave
half a dozen last rapid drives and I felt his juices explode in my
belly, that I had performed a necessary service for the Anglican
church, a rite to whose urgency the Bishop's vigorous behaviour was
ample testimony.
  When he had recovered his breath, and adjusted his Bishop's apron to
cover his loins again, he pronounced himself much taken with the
principles already established for our care, that women, being weak,
needed to be constantly restrained, and that suffering was a sure way
to salvation, or at least, an aid to avoiding damnation.
  He had spent some time in Imperial China, and offered to instruct
our Guardians in alternative methods of female control to those
already practised, so that comparison might be made of their efficacy.
While we were, naturally, flattered and grateful for his interest, I
for one could not suppress a chilling shudder in my belly at the
thought of more, and greater, ordeals to come. I strove to control my
weakness and express proper thanks for what we might be about to
receive.
  These gifts of care were not long in materialising. The Bishop had
acquired many mementoes of his years in China, especially it seemed,
of those instruments used in the Imperial Harem for the better
regulation of females, a subject on which he seemed to have made
himself somewhat of an expert. He had expressed a desire to meet us
again as soon as may be, and a few days later returned to dine with us
again.
  This time he did not come empty handed. After dinner, he produced a
curious device which, he assured us, was called in China, where it had
originated, a 'Kang'. It was a circular piece of wood, or rather made
up from several pieces of timber fastened together. It was a form of
wooden wheel, some three feet or more across, and over two inches
thick, made from teak or other dense hardwood, and very heavy.
  The disc was split along a diameter, with a hinge at one end and a
hasp at the other. In the centre was a circular cutout, of a size to
fit a female neck and, on either side, nearer the rim, two further,
smaller, opening suitable for a woman's slim wrists. He proceeded to
demonstrate on Marion. As eldest, she found it her privilege to
pioneer nearly all the various means our Guardians took such trouble
to provide for our better regulation.
  With her neck carefully positioned in the centre hole, and her
wrists in the flanking pair, the device was closed and a padlock
slipped into the hasp, making it impossible to remove without the
appropriate key. Now she had lost the use of her hands entirely, and
it did not take us long to begin to appreciate the true horror of the
position. Fixed thus, a woman could not fend for herself in any way.
She could not feed herself, nor even brush a fly from her face, nor
spilt food from her chin, since her hands could not reach in that far.
The width of the wheel meant that she could not pick up objects, even
from a table, nor do anything to repair her toilet.
  Moreover, she would be entirely dependent on others for those
natural functions that must inevitably arise during any prolonged
incarceration in the kang. Either she must humiliate herself by asking
another to hold up her skirts while she squatted to pass water or
relieve her bowels, or she must foul herself as she stood. In either
case, she could not clean herself after, and must ask another to wipe
her between her legs or in her cleft.
  Just to wear the hideous device for any length of time was torture,
one's neck and arms beginning to ache after only a few minutes, to
burn after half an hour, to scream in agony after half a day. We each
of us were sentenced to periods in the kang from time to time,
sometimes even to days at a stretch, and we rightly came to fear it
greatly.
  Sleep was not easy, though one learnt to lie on one's back with the
edge of the wheel wedged into the angle between head board and
mattress, though the position was precarious and any movement in one's
sleep was liable to have one rolling sideways and waking in terror and
discomfort.
 And I for one never quite overcame the shame and humiliation of
having to ask another woman, even, or perhaps especially, my own
sister, to lift my skirts for me to relieve myself, since she must
necessarily stay holding my clothing while water gushed from my slit
or, horrors, while I strained to empty my bowel as quickly as I might,
to shorten the ignominious performance. Sometimes even this was not
possible, for my inhibitions froze my bowels, even though, but minutes
before, I had abandoned my vain efforts to keep their exigencies in
check, and begged my sister to aid me.
  And then, ultimate shame, to have to bend or squat, opening one's
thighs, while someone else plied wet cloth between one's nether
cheeks, washing away the traces of one's degradation from one's
fundament, or employed a drier portion of material to wipe the last
warm golden drops where they dripped from between the plump lips of
one's sex. I often came nearer to tears from these degrading acts,
than from the most aching cuts in my behind from whip or cane. The
shaming of it was bad enough, the helplessness of the position added
to it tenfold, and we all feared it greatly.

  It had fallen to my lot, in a wholly natural manner, to service the
Bishop, just as I had serviced that other man of the cloth, dear Papa.
Since, as I have already remarked, the Right Reverend gentleman was
possessed of a more than usually adequate manhood, the act was painful
for me, a matter of no consequence, of course, I being only a female,
but, much more importantly, difficult for the Bishop to inaugurate,
although, once entered, he made good shift to ram me thoroughly, to
his complete satisfaction.
  He opined that, while a tight ride was a blessing, we might all
suffer some easement of our fundaments without sacrificing our
efficacy as extractors of their harmful effusions. Having obtained our
other Guardians' agreement, he undertook to provide the means for this
easement for, he assured us, the problem was not unknown in the
Imperial Palace and methods had been devised there to cure the
condition.
  Accordingly, some three days later, for the Bishop had formed the
habit of calling at least twice a week to see to the care of our
souls, we found ourselves required to prepare a buffet meal, that
could be set out beforehand, and to come to table, ourselves, devoid
of gowns and petticoats, wearing only our stays and gartered
stockings. In a mixture of curiosity and trepidation, for a novel
summons always heralded some new pain or humiliation for us, we
complied, though, woman-like, our curiosity ensured that, quite apart
from the obedience we owed, we would never think of balking at the
call to duty.
  We found that, besides the sideboard full of cold meats, bread,
fruit and wine, that we had set out previously, the dining-room now
contained a stout wooden bench, quite wide and long enough for three
to sit on it, with space to spare between.
  And these spaces were well defined for us. Set into the bench were
three cones of dull bronze, perhaps an inch across at the tip, which
was adorned with a ball of the same diameter, and swelling at the base
to at least two and one half times that dimension. The cones stood
about eight inches high and were formed, at their base, into a wide
flange which appeared to be attached to the bench by screws, thus
ensuring that it and the very solid timber frame were effectively one
piece. In contrast to the ancient Oriental aura of the standing
bronzes, this underpinning of plain stout timber was obviously from
the shop of some local joinery.
  We were instructed to line up with our backs to the bench, and the
meaning of the order did not allow for much doubt as to the next
proceeding. Marion appealed on behalf of us all.
  "Sirs," she pleaded, "if we are to be stretched, these unfeeling
stumps of bronze may tear the linings of our tender rear tubes, unused
as they have been for three days now. May we not at least use a little
of the butter set for your repast, to ease their entry, and thus spare
us actual injury? I do not believe it will interfere with the
expansionist capabilities of the treatment."
  It was fairly said, and the gentlemen listened to her prayer with
care. After consulting the Doctor, the Judge gave his permission, and
we each took a little of the fresh farm butter, set out on a silver
shell, and applied it to our threatened anuses, which had been
cringing at the thought of penetration, dry, by the monstrous
phalluses that menaced us.
  Now we resumed our places, and the Bishop gave the order we had been
expecting, and dreading.
  "Set your fundaments against the stretchers," he commanded, "and let
your weight come on them, until they sink into your bellies."
  Lubricated as we were, the first part was comparatively easy, and
cost us but little pain, the smooth balls sinking in under our weight
with little difficulty. As we sank, however, so the discomfort grew.
Not only were we painfully stretched by the increasing girth of the
pillars of bronze, but they seemed to fill our bellies, causing us to
breathe with more and more difficulty. We still wore our steel-boned
corsets that constricted our ribs. Now, with our bellies filled with
cold metal, even our diaphragms were impeded, and our shallow breath
came in short rapid pants, as we sat with heads thrown back and open
mouths.
  If we had thought our position unbearable, we soon had cause to
think of it, in retrospect, as the very pinnacle of comfort. Each of
us in turn was made to lift up her knees. A length of broomstick was
passed under them and we were made to pass our forearms under the
stick and clasp our hands around our lower legs, where they were
seized and secured together with thongs. Now every ounce of our weight
was on our bottoms, and our high drawn knees ensured the cones were
forced to their utmost depth into our protesting bowels. We groaned
collectively as we tried to adjust ourselves to this ultimate
penetration, not believing that there could be worse to come.
  "Although they are well stretched," the Bishop said, "the effect can
be even more pronounced, and accomplished quicker, if the woman can be
induced to move about a little, to work the wedge in her bottom,
altering the angle at which the stressed sphincter lies, and moulding
it into shape."
  Dear God, I thought, I could no more move than fly. Even now, the
strain is killing me, and the slightest movement would be
excruciating.
  As if he could read my thoughts, the Bishop continued his homily.
  "Unfortunately it is sometimes difficult to convince the woman that
she should make the effort. They seem stubbornly reluctant to obey
properly given instructions in the matter, while so impaled, on what
the Chinese describe so picturesquely as the 'Enhancer of Perfumed
Fundaments', and it is usually necessary to provide some additional
encouragement."
  I shivered at what this might imply, then froze again, as even the
mere trembling that had shaken me was arousing fresh degrees of
discomfort in my poor stretched bottom. The Bishop came forward but,
with my head back and my eyes half closed, as I concentrated on my
private pain and breathless apprehension, I could not well tell what
he did. There was some movement below the bench, a flare, as of a
match being struck, I could smell the sulphur, and then silence for a
while.
  Slowly I became aware that the cold shank of metal in my anal
opening was warming. Some of the chill had gone out of it already,
from contact with the wet inner warmth of my body, but now I was
convinced it was actually more than just matching my own body heat, it
was beginning to exceed it. Within a minute, I was sure of it, the
bronze wedge was definitely getting hotter! Another two minutes and
the heat was beginning to become uncomfortable, and still it increased
and in another minute I could stand it no longer, despite the anguish
I knew I would cause myself, and I wriggled on my perch to try and
move the heat to another part of my tender ring. Judging by the groans
on either side of me, my sisters were also experiencing the same
effect, and were equally helpless to escape the inevitable
consequences.
  "You see," remarked the Bishop, a note of smugness in his voice.
"Nothing elaborate. A simple candle set below the bench, and heating
the bronze though a prepared hole. They cannot resist its influence,
and I'll warrant we'll see them dance a merry jig before we're done
taking our repast."
  And so we did, and sang them a mournful song to go with it, moans
and groans, and piteous cries of, "For pity's sake, Sir, remove the
heat. It is burning up my belly. I shall be ruined for all time," and
much else besides from each of us, for the pain in our tender passages
was unendurable.
  The gentlemen took no notice of us.
  "Rest easy, gentlemen," the Bishop reassured them, "the candle is
nicely calculated to scorch them without burning. True, they will be a
little discommoded for a few days, when passing their motions, but
there will be no permanent harm done, and see how vigorously they work
their tight rear tubes against the expanders. An hour a night will
quite suffice to ease them, in this fashion, and we may enjoy the
first benefits at once."
  And so they did, immediately they had finished their brandy and
cigars, pushing the debris of their meal aside for us to clear when we
had recovered sufficiently to resume our duties. In the meantime,
those duties were to consist of offering our tortured anuses for their
use.
  But first they must be extricated from the appalling spires on which
they were impaled. It was not as easy as it had been to set us on
those hideous pricks, for we had near lost the use of our arms and
legs, even when they were released from the thong and poles that had
held them rigid and useless for so long. At first, we could do no more
than try and stretch them, moaning afresh as setting our feet on the
ground altered the angle of our bodies to the invasive cones and awoke
new torments in our bottoms, but gradually we eased enough that we
could raise ourselves slowly off those brutal bronzes and, with our
Guardians' help, stand swaying weakly. But not for long. We had only
been released so that we might serve, otherwise we might well have
been left even longer, for the better reconstruction of our
fundaments, so now we must turn and kneel over the same bench we had
just quitted, a hot stem of metal, sticky with our own juices,
resurgent between each pair of us.
  I could have well done without this further reaming of my poor
bumhole but, compared with the dreadful invasion I had just suffered,
even the Bishop's mighty manhood seemed comparatively mild and, at
least, soon withdrawn, leaving only a slight additional soreness and a
sticky ooze behind. The gentlemen then bade us goodnight, and retired
to their rooms, leaving us to clear away the dishes and make good the
house, before making our usual preparations for the night. I
reflected, as I secured my 'saddle strap' between my legs, reawakening
the soreness in my ravaged behind, that at least we had been spared
the disciplinary accounting and searing cuts of rod or cane that
followed, that were normally the culmination of these bi-weekly
dinners.
  Besides the kang and the 'Enhancers of Perfumed Fundaments', the
Bishop had other souvenirs of his Oriental ministry. We endured in
turn 'The Butterfly's Kiss', a small jewelled clip whose extravagant
name describes its shape but does not convey its effect, for it is
applied to the bud of the sexual nerve and is anything but a kiss. The
Serpent's Bite would be more appropriate, and we each mewled and
writhed as we stood, hands behind head, trying to absorb its terrible
hurt, to demonstrate that fortitude it was designed to test.
  There were 'The Milk Needles', so named from the milky pearls with
which they were decorated and the teats into which they were plunged,
and the 'Celestial Sandals', celestial in that only a Goddess without
weight could bear them, a flesh and blood woman hobbling and moaning
from the devilish little points set in the toes and heel. We whined
and writhed, too, when anointed with the 'Passion Honey', a sticky
substance exactly matching the sweetness for which it was named, but
compounded from radish, peppers and exotic Chinese herbs, its viscous
nature causing it to cling to the tenderest of feminine tissues, and
its burning bite inducing counterfeit passion.
  But the most ingenious was 'The Bed of Unrelinquishable Torment'.
  The Bishop had been most impressed by the pose in which we had to
take our corrective exercises, kneeling with wide-spread legs on the
arms of the sturdy armchair that had once adorned Papa's study, and
now did the same for that of the Judge. He had commented that an
awkward pose contributed to the effort a girl had to make to maintain
her position, much to the good of her soul, but that, occasionally, it
could be beneficial if she were made helpless before the flagellation
proceeded.
  "Strap 'em down, d'ye mean?" the Judge asked. "Could be a useful
variant, I suppose."
  "Indeed," the Right Reverend gentleman agreed, "and there are more
subtle methods too. A young woman may be most elegantly placed, and
endure the most stringent punishment, and yet not seem anxious to
escape or shield her person. If you like, I can demonstrate the effect
on my next visit."
  As has already been recorded, the Bishop was now a regular diner and
there was but little time passed before we were welcoming him again.
When we women had cleared the table and reported to the study in our
usual state of undress, we found that a new piece of furniture had
been added.
  It was a bench, long and low, beautifully constructed and decorated,
with mother of pearl inlays, a lacquered finish, and various elegant
and interesting cut-outs and curlicues to break up the stark outlines
of a simple bench but, under it all, the careful eye could still see
it was a sturdy construction.
  "Though I know it has been the custom of the House that the eldest
sister should demonstrate each new piece of apparatus first, I have a
fancy for my own special charge, Annabel, to make first assay of 'The
Bed of Unrelinquishable Torment'," the Bishop observed.
 "I see no objection," the Judge ruled.
 Thus it was that it was I that was first summoned to mount the bench.
I was made to lie, face down, along its length and to pull myself
along until my breasts, half hanging out of my stays in this posture,
fell into two of the curious cut-outs, painted and inlaid to represent
the mouths of fat exotic fishes. Then I must part my legs to let them
lie along the sides of the bench, my sex directly over another of the
openings, this time fashioned as the long gaping mouth of a great
dragon coiled along the bench between my knees.
  I lay still, as ordered, my arms stretched in front of me along the
lacquered surface. Suddenly I started, and was immediately told to
stay still. Something had moved in the space beneath my left breast
and touched the nipple which, to my shame, stiffened at the contact.
It was for all the world as if the fish had begun to suckle on the
teat, though I subsequently learnt it was but a tube, on the other end
of which a bellows pulled, drawing in the fleshy stub. With my breast
now drawn fully out of my stays, and into the recess, I gasped again,
for tiny teeth, the serrated jaws of a metal clamp, had seized the
nipple at its base, and held it tight. Now the mechanism drew on my
right teat until it too had been secured by the teeth below the bench.
  I cannot describe the strange feelings of terror and excitement
mixed that this outlandish restraint induced in me, but I had more to
come. Something rose from the dragon's mouth, forcing itself into the
tight slit between my pouting sex lips, as if the dragon was using its
tongue to salute me there, then its jaws closed on either side,
trapping the lips against the tongue. Those jaws were equipped with
short needle sharp teeth, which gripped my tender flesh, piercing the
skin to the depth of a finger nail's thickness only, but set to drag
themselves ever deeper, the more I resisted their pull. Clenched
together around my captive vulva, the dragon's jaws withdrew, and my
sex with it, pinning me to the bench.
  Picture me then, my breasts gripped in the mouths of Pisces, my sex
in the locked Dragon-jaws. I lay on the bench, my arms free, my legs
free, but totally captive, unless, that is, I cared to drag my most
intimate parts from their traps, scouring the skin from them in the
process, and much of the tissue besides. It was doubtful if I would
have escaped with either teat recognisable as a nipple, and my labia
more than bloody rags. No wonder it was described as
'Unrelinquishable'!
  In this position, I received twenty cuts from the Judge's most
potent rod, cuts that had me writhing and whining on the bench, trying
to endure as best I could. I clasped the bench under me with my arms,
holding my breasts tightly into the ravenous mouths of the fishes,
lest I inadvertently pull on them in my agony and tear the tender
dugs. I would have liked to have dropped my knees either side of the
bench behind me, and gripped tight there also, but to do so would have
canted up my pelvis, and the Dragon would not permit it, sinking his
vicious teeth deeper into those fleshy lips at even a thought of
withdrawal, and I must lie with my legs along the bench, straight out
behind me, bunching up my nether cheeks so that the cane might
penetrate into their base with ease, cutting me there until I bled.
  It was a masterpiece of ingenuity, appreciating a woman's response
exactly, leaving her bound, yet free of the comforting security of
bondage, which females will use to reduce the exercise of fortitude,
which is such an essential part of the rehabilitative process inherent
in their correction.

Posting remainder immediately

    

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