Curious Cases of Flagellation in France
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
O Digitized by tfe Internet Archive in 2014 f https://archive.org/details/b2044l93§ I CURIOUS CASES OF $ I a g e 1 1 a t i o n IN FRANCE • t I Five Hundred Copies only op this Book have been done. the present is M 179 # » CURIOUS CASES OF U "V f glagellattott in grauce CONSIDERED FROM A LEGAL, MEDICAL A^D HISTORICAL STANDPOINT 5*3 WITH REFERENCE TO ANALOGOUS OASES IN .* a ENGLAND, GERMANY, ITALY, AMERICA, AUSTRALIA and the SOUDAN * He is much mistaken, in my opinion, who thinks that authority exerted by force, is more weighty and more lasting than that which is |v>t>- enjoined by kindness." TERENCE, Adelphi. t\ J* 5 fe SECOND EDITION Copyright, Entered at Stationer's Hall 11 LONDON h} Privately printed for the Subscribers to Dr. Cabanas' t^-> "BYPATHS OF HISTORY* 1901 fir BP 6 ^UPP a /cvi< Printed by G. J. Thiejie, Nimeguen (Hollande). PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. ifflhere are subjects which an Englishman is generally taught he ^> must not talk about, hint at, or even think about. Such tabooed topics are those relating to everything sexual. Whenever a man is suspected of being a Nihilist or an Anarchist, and the police search his dwelling, woe unto him, innocent or guilty, if there be found the least scrap of ultra-radical literature. With printed works bearing upon the relations of the sexes, the bibliophile is put doivn as a vile seducer, a madman, or as a follower of Oscar the Outcast. Thanks to this system of hypocrisy, observable in all Protestant communities, many social problems, which, if resolutely worked out in the open light of day wotdd be undoubtedly conducive to the happiness of nations, by purifying the state of society, are left untouched, and when a timid searcher tries to throw a feeble ray of light upon them with only a half- opened lantern, he is warned off such dangerous territory by cries of fear, terror, disgust, and scorn. Thus it is patent that the theory of flagellation, whether religious or erotic, has never been thoroughly set forth in a serious work and probably never will be. Flagellants and their victims will not confess their failings, and if by chance they do, they utter more falsehoods than a fortune- teller, so we are perforce driven to pick up our information as best we may, searching through the dusty pages of forgotten VI PREFACE. volumes of olden times, and contemporaneously scraping up precious tit-hits from all kinds of books in all languages and from the public prints, veluti in speculum. And then with all due modesty, as befits a true author and his generous publisher, we confess that the subject is a vast one, immense, and as yet awaiting its historian, because it embraces every nation. All the world flogs and ivill be flogged, more or less, according to climatical and hereditary influences. We have a pet idea of our own, and that is that lascivious manias are handed doivn to us from our fore- fathers. If one of our ancestors was a whipper in the active sense, delighting at the whistle of a supple birch, we also love to flourish a bunch, of twigs before the handsome, half-laughing, and half-crying face of a none too-unwilling fair damsel: wife, companion, or faithfid, female friend ; while if our great-grandfather was in the habit of pulling out a silken purse and slipping its rings to hand over a couple of guineas before being strapped on the Berkeley horse, tee, his degenerate descendants, are as likely " as not to be regular customers to the up-to-date " massage establishments of the West of London, where " Nurse Tottie,^ deals in " discipline treatment " at a sovereign an hour. We cannot, alas! prove our statement, as Granny keeps her secrets, and never tells us youngsters how many times her husband, the last of the port-wine drinkers, kissed the rod on his knees before her, or made her, his latvful spouse, beg for mercy at the foot of the fine old mahogany four-post bedstead. Therefore, lovers of literature relating to all topics bearing upon love and marriage, or sexual curiosities, however peculiar, will hail with delight all neiv matter tending to open out fresh departures in this particular branch of social science. We are certain that every student, well-informed though he may be, will be interested in this new work, where there are several undiscovered cases relating to whipping in all ways, while he who has never yet tamed, his attention to any discription of this fascinating idiosyncracy, ivill be astonished, delighted, amused, and perhaps disgusted, as the case may be. Even the latter PREFACE. VII contingency will please us, for if our little ivork only saves one reader, out of the purchasers of the whole edition, from becoming an absolute slave to the rod, our labour will not have been in vain. We hold up our head, look the enlightened Public straight in the eye, and declare that flagellation is one of the passions inherent to the human race, and as such worthy of research, study, exposition, and dissertation. INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. lagellation spells cruelty ; it springs from tyranny, is founded upon hate, lust, and a tigerish thirst for blood and suffering. Because the tiger sleeps in the larger portion of humanity it is not impossible for the mildest and most inoffensive man to take an interest in deeds of violence. We once knew a friend who would read avidly all cases of prize-fighting, but shrink with fear from the slightest personal encounter. This book is not a book—it is nothing more than a brochure, an essay. The history of flagellation will never be written; no man will ever be found bold enough to compile it. It would be the history of humanity, of cruelty, of torture, of individual and collective violence across all the ages and countries of the world, since those primeval times when the brute first took the form of man. The pages of that history are starred with tears, with blood, with gore; they tell of scenes of fiendish lust, wrongdoing and suffering, they re-echo and reverberate the wails of woe-stricken women; the howls and curses of pain-torn men. We cannot write that history. In the present pages we seek only slightly to draw aside the veil, but only slightly, for were all the truth to be told, the Censure would condemn our book on — X PREFACE. the score of immodesty and the strong arm of the Law strike it down as a pestiferous thing. Oar aim has been to clear up a few curious historical cases of whipping that have come to our knowledge, either by reading or hearsay, giving where possible documentary evidence as to their authenticity. These facts and theories we have endeavoured to present in a decent, if amusing, form for that omnivorous and inquisitive animal, * the general reader." Things too scandalous, (and we know, alas! of too many of them), we have carefully refrained from including. The weakling sight of the intellectual babe must be respected ; and had we put in such details, the lurid light arising from the print would have scorched his unsteady vision. These matters exist already in too many works of a private character and we are not going to attempt to add to their number. We are glad to notice that flagellation, like most other things, has its humorous side as the following newspaper cutting shows: " Here is a speech that bangs Banagher. Two men in Ireland were recently punished for having assaulted the police with great violence. The fact that they were punished has excited the wrath of one of the new councillors, and the following is the speech, exactly as he delivered it at the monthly meeting of the Monaghan Urban Council on July 3: (*) " Anyone who treats a prisoner otherwise than with feelings of love and respect, which he would hold for his wife, a sweetheart, or sterling friends, is no man, is a criminal, and the blood of serfs flows in his veins, because why, on the authority of Holy Writ, we are told we all of us have sinned and come not into the Glory of God, he acts the part of a slave and not of a Man. My idea were, the punishment I would inflict if I had the power, would be to take these three saintly magistrates who call themselves men, and who passed such disgraceful sentences, would take them gentlemen to the outskirts of the town, and I would send six respectable married females, armed with long wands, who, having removed their small clothes, would punish them on the place their mothers would have done, and purge them of their crime. (Loud laughter.) The gentleman, opposite I, needn't laugh. I am speaking from my heart." (>) 1900. PREFACE. XI • There is more fun in the above speech than in all the rest of this paper. Any one, says this singularly Irish speaker, who treats a prisoner otherwise than with feelings of love and respect, which he would hold for his wife or sweetheart, is a criminal. As he goes on to say how, if he had the magistrates prisoners he would treat them, we take it that the proper thing to do to a wife or sweetheart who is a prisoner, in order to show them feelings of lore and respect, would be to have them smacked in the appointed place by members of the opposite sex!" The present essay is meant as merely tentative.