Anonymous - Frank and I

“Come along a me,” he said briefly.

I got into the chair; he gave the coolies some directions and we started off; Ah Wan walking beside the chair. In about half-an-hour we reached the court house which was a large wooden building, to which the public appeared to have free access. The Mandarin sat at a sort of high desk, surrounded by soldiers and other officials; and there were a number of people of all sorts and conditions in the court.

Ah Wan interpreted, as well as he could, all the proceedings, end I saw several prisoners sentenced to various punishments by the Mandarin; but not one received the bamboo, and I was beginning to think of going away, when a woman was brought in to receive her sentence.

Ah Wan informed me that she was a boatwoman who had been detected setting fire to a boat A very serious crime in Canton where thousands of families live in boats on the river.

The culprit being a working woman, was not “small-footed.” she was a stout, strong-looking wench about twenty-five years old, and not bad-looking for a Chinawoman of the lower orders.

She was neatly dressed in the usual loose, blue cotton jacket, coming down over her hips; with wide trousers of the same colour and material; and her long, coarse, black hair was twisted in elaborate coils, and secured with four long, broad, brass hairpins which stuck out a couple of inches on each side of her head.

The Mandarin sternly addressed the culprit, who stood stolidly gazing at him; but after he had spoken a short time, a look of intense fear came to the woman’s face; she burst out crying, and stretching out her hands, made what I supposed to be a piteous appeal for mercy.

Ah Wan whispered to me: That piecey woman catchee plenty bamboo.”

The Mandarin made a sign, and three of the soldiers seized the wailing culprit and laid her face downwards on the floor, with her arms stretched out at right angles to her body. Two of the men squatted down, each holding one of the woman’s arms; the third man, also squatting down, held her ankles tightly together.

A fourth man drew her loose jacket up to her shoulders; then putting his hands under her belly, be untied the strings of her trousers, and pulled them down to her heels; thus laying bare the lower half of the woman’s person to the gaze of the people in the Court.

The pig-tailed spectators looked on stolidly. To them it was no uncommon sight. Women were often flogged publicly in Canton.

The culprit had a broad bottom, with large fleshy cheeks, her thighs were very big, and her legs were thick. Her skin was smooth, and of a yellow tint which was not pretty to a European’s eye.

But after all, it was a feminine bottom; and it was going to be flogged; that was enough for me; and as I gazed at the naked, fat, albeit yellow posteriors, my cock stiffened slightly.

Two men, holding in their hands the bamboos, now knelt down, one on each side of the culprit. The instruments of punishment were pieces of split bamboo about two feet long, and three inches broad; and the strokes were administered with the rounded side. At a signal from the Mandarin, the punishment commenced, one man beginning at the upper part of the woman’s bottom and flogging downwards; while the other man began at the middle part of her thighs and dogged upwards. The strokes were inflicted with considerable force; each one, as it fell on the woman’s plump flesh, making a resounding smack, and marking her yellow skin with a broad red stripe. She wept and screamed, and struggled violently; but the men who were holding her, kept her in position; and the men who were flogging her, laid on the strokes in rapid succession; so that the two bamboos soon met in the middle of her bottom, and by that time the whole surface of her skin had become crimson.

Then they again began to go over the woman’s writhing posteriors in the same way as before; one man flogging down, and the other man flogging up. The bamboos cracked like pistol shots on the victim’s quivering bottom; the big cheeks opening and shutting, as she alternately contracted and relaxed the muscles in agony; while as the punishment went on, her shrieks became loader and more piercing. When the bamboos again met, the Mandarin made a sign; then the two men ceased flogging, and the other men let go their hold of the woman’s limbs; bat she remained lying on the floor, squealing and twisting herself about in anguish.

She had received, in all, fifty severe strokes-I had counted them-and her bottom looked like a huge piece of liver; but not a drop of blood had been drawn. No one took any notice of her; and after a time her crying subsided to choking sobs which shook her whole body and made her fat buttocks quiver like jelly.

Straggling to her feet, she palled up her trousers; and with some difficulty, for she was trembling all over, she tied the strings round her waist. Then two soldiers took her by the arms, and led her oat of the court, sobbing, moaning, and hardly able to put one foot before the other. She was taken to prison; for in addition to the flogging, she had been sentenced to a year’s imprisonment. I left the court, got into my chair, and was carried back to the hotel Then I gave Ah Wan a good “cumshaw,”-a present-and he departed, his face looking as inscrutable as ever.

Two days afterwards, I left Canton for Hong Kong, where I caught the mail steamer, and in due course arrived in London.

Since my return to England, three months had passed; during which period I had been living quietly at Oakhurst; but I could always get a poke whenever I felt inclined, as I had at my disposal one of the parlourmaids named Mary.

This girl had not been in the house at the rime I went away; but she had been engaged by the housekeeper during my absence.

Mary was about twenty-three years old, a tall, good-looking, well-made girl, with dark brown hair and neat feet and ankles. I had taken a fancy to her, a few days after my return home; and had managed to get hold of her without the least difficulty, as she had often been fucked before she entered my service. However, she was a fairly good poke, and she had a nice, white, smooth skin, firm bubbles, and a big plump bottom; moreover she was particularly clean in dress and person, so that I was never afraid of turning up her petticoats at any moment. I cannot touch a girl if she has on dirty underlinen.

Mary was also well versed in the “arts of love,” and she would let me do anything I liked to her except in one respect. She would never allow me to whip her in any way.

One day, after I had given her a good poke; I asked her why she was so afraid of a little whipping. She told me the reason; and she also gave me a short account of her life.

She had been left an orphan, at the age of six years; and had been brought up in a charity institution where corporal punishment was freely applied to the girls whenever they committed an offence of any sort; the little girls being spanked, and the big girls being birched. She herself had been so often soundly spanked when she was a little girl, and so often severely birched when she was a big girl, that now the very idea of a whipping made her flesh creep.

When she was at the institution, it had contained upwards of fifty girls, who were kept until they were sixteen years of age; then they were put out to service; and every girl was liable to be birched, up to the day she left the establishment

There was a regular “punishment parade” every morning in the schoolroom at nine o’clock, when all the culprits of the previous twenty-four hours were flogged in succession, from the youngest to the oldest, in the presence of all the other girls. Everything was carried out in a methodical manner, but the preparations for punishment did not take long, as no drawers were worn by the girls at the institution. The little culprits were, one after the other, stretched at full length on a bench, and well spanked by one of the assistant mistresses. Then the big culprits were, each in turn, held over a high desk by two of the assistants. The matron, who was the only person authorized to use the rod, would then apply the birch; never giving less than six cuts, and sometimes giving as many as eighteen, for serious offences, such as stealing, or indecent conduce. She always flogged severely, and sometimes drew blood. Nearly every morning there was a culprit to be punished, and sometimes there were two or more; and she had seen as many as eight big girls birched one after the other.