WHAT 'it' IS REALLY LIKE IF...... 3 YOU ARE AN INVOLVED WITNESS TO THE BIRCHING OF A 17 YEAR OLD JUVENILE DELINQUENT - A SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCE
I have not being sitting as one of the County Justices of the Peace for very long, and have been handling criminal cases for an even shorter period, so my experience in matters of sentencing and crime prevention in general, is negligible and my knowledge of those subjects has, in the main, been gleaned from books.
In the result, when a teenaged thug called Craig Attwood came before me this morning, with no credible defence to a charge of straightforward mugging, I had no doubt but that he deserved a sound thrashing, promptly sentenced him to a dozen strokes of the birch and thought no more about it until, during the luncheon recess, one of my more senior colleagues asked me if I had any idea of what a judicial birching involved and, when I admitted that I did not, suggested that I should go along to the cells 'at about 4 this afternoon', just to see what a lad is put through when he is birched.
There was no suggestion that the boy did NOT deserve a flogging or that such a punishment was inappropriate, but merely that, as a pre- siding officer, I should be aware of the implications of ANY sentence that I passed.
This implied rebuke not only troubled me but also stirred my interest, among other things, with the result that I sent for Sergeant Halcott, who is in charge of the holding cells downstairs and asked him if I would be permitted to observe the outcome of my, largely anger-inspired, sentence that morning. He assured me that my presence would cause no problem and that there were 'always witnesses' when a boy was flogged. I was surprised to learn that all I had to do, was to 'come down to the cells at about a quarter to four, make myself comfortable and watch'. He added that, as there were 'usually' quite a few spectators, I should come a bit early so as to be able to pick a spot 'with a good view of what is being done to the lad's rear end'.
Such a matter of fact response rather deflated me but, nevertheless, I was at Halcott's office by 3.40 and was rewarded by his showing me the 'pony', which is the apparatus to which the boy would be bound while being flogged, and some of the rods that were to be used on his naked rump, which looked very different from and far more formidable than my mental picture of such instruments and then giving me an, in my ignorance, rather chilling summary of proceedings which bore little or no resemblance to what I had had in mind when I sentenced the child to corporal punishment.
The 'pony' is, in fact, merely a fairly long and quite high trestle, consisting of a rounded beam about a foot wide and mounted longways on four strong legs, of which the front pair are rather longer than those at the rear and are perhaps 2'6" from them. The front of the beam has a sliding extension, with which it can be lengthened to support the chests of tall 'riders' and at the other end there is a hinged flap which can be raised or lowered to any position between level with the main beam and at right angles down from it. This fitting will support the legs of the victim, if he is secured in a more or less horizontal position or will allow them to dangle free or for their feet to reach the ground, if he is being punished in a 'bent over' one. In either case, his upper legs are strapped to the flap just above the knees and both the beam and the flap are contoured so as to cradle his hips and thighs. The top of the beam, just before the flap, is also deeply grooved to accommodate and to avoid putting pressure on the 'rider's' genitals once he is strapped into position.
Both the beam and its extensions are padded and covered with leather- ette, the front legs are fitted with wrist cuffs and there is a broad strap at about lower back level, which serves both to keep the victim's buttocks within range of the rod and to protect his kidneys against accidental high strokes, although that precaution would be more applicable to canings than to birchings.
The rods are not of the bushy, innocuous type used at certain schools, but consist of bundles of between 8 and 12 thin, supple birch twigs, of varying lengths from about 2'9" to 3'6", stripped of all leaves and small twigs, but in full bud and are kept pliant by being stood upright in tall cans of brine.
The combination of the formidable, custom-made apparatus and the plentiful supply of fresh, tightly-bound rods, with their long, flexible 'sprays', made it obvious that any boy unfortunate enough to have to mount that 'pony', would 'dismount, in due course, with a very soundly whipped tail, which, I was told, was always bared for judicial chastisement.
Sgt. Halcott made no mention of the point, but it seemed to me that the sheer width of the beam which the boy would be straddling would ensure that his buttocks were well spread, giving the rod access to his tender inner cheeks and ensuring that his flogging would be an extremely pain- ful experience.
I was so disturbed by what I had heard and seen that I seriously considered not staying to watch the consummation of my sentence, but I cannot deny a mounting sense of curiosity and excitement at the prospect of watching errant young male flesh being soundly and quite legitimately whipped.
So, some 10 minutes later and having been introduced to the member of the District Surgeon's Staff who supervises these minor executions, I am standing, well out of the way and in the company of several members of my own staff, including two young female typists, [who all seem to be horribly embarrassed by my presence, probably because THEY, unlike me, have no good reasons, other than purely sadistic or voyeur- istic ones, for being there at all] to the right of the pony, from where I will have an unimpeded view of everything that befalls my young criminal.
At just before 4 o'clock, the boy is brought into the large room which contains the 'pony', the tall tins of liquid in which the rods are standing and where the Doctor, Sgt. Halcott, two constables and some 7 or 8 spectators, including me, are waiting for him.
Gone is all the insolent bravado and arrogance of the morning's appearance in Court. The boy and he is no more than that, has been reduced in the few hours since I saw him last, to a nervous, apprehensive child, fearfully awaiting a very unpleasant ordeal; he is still fully dressed, but looks far younger and more defenceless than when he was before me earlier and I cannot but feel a good deal of sympathy for him as he makes his way hesitantly into the room, eyes taking in every detail and face blushing furiously when he notices his 'audience' and, in particular, its female members and then blanching slightly as he takes in the 'pony' and the containers of birch rods, soaking in preparation for their use on his hindquarters.
In my irritation, I had not noticed, this morning, just what an attractive lad he is, although in a somewhat surly, aggressive way. Like many English boys from the more rural areas, he is dark-haired and has the olive skin and ruddy complexion associated with an outdoor lifestyle. Unfortunately, this is marred, in his case, by a certain furtiveness and a reluctance to meet anothers eyes, but that does not detract from his compact, well formed young body with its broad, square shoulders, narrow waist and hips and full, muscular buttocks and thighs, which seem to fill his tight grey worsted trousers to bursting point. He manages a rather nervous, embarrassed grin at no-one in particular and then seems to freeze, uncertain of what to do next.
One of the constables gives him an inaudible order, which is learly not unexpected, as he moves to the far side of the room and sets about shedding his trousers, an operation which would have been far easier had he left his boots and thick socks in the cell or toilet and come through to the punishment area barefoot. As it is, he first has to squat down to remove the obstructing footwear, which causes some delay and him a good deal of additional embarrassment.
As soon as his trousers are off they are followed by his underpants and, with a pleading glance at the constable, which is ignored, he stands up, realises that his shirt only reaches to just below his hips, makes a half-hearted attempt at covering himself with his hands, prob>ably concludes that it doesn't really matter any more and walks slowly over to the waiting doctor's table, where he stands, looking round him anxiously, as if he half expects someone to do something to him while he is there. He is then subjected to a brief but thorough 'physical', during which I have the opportunity to have a good look at his firm, round buttocks and sturdy bare thighs and, when he turns round, at his good-sized, circumcised penis, which, with his full, adult scrotum, is hanging limply in the groove between his legs. That changes very rapidly when the doctor gently cups his dangling balls in one palm and tells the startled youngster to 'cough'. He jerks away from the almost caressing touch, but is brought up by the doctor's other hand, which is resting restrainingly on his hip and obeys reluctantly, but his lusty young _c_o_c_k_ is already lengthening and stiffening and quickly snaps to a full, probably almost 7" erection, which rears upwards from the patch of curly black hair at the base of a flat, ribbed midriff, its rigid, blue-veined shaft curving slightly backward so that its shiny, distended, purple head nudges gently against the almost hairless stomach, just above the deep hollow of his navel.
Having developed an erection obviously embarrasses the boy intensely, but as it is far too big to cover with his hands, he doesn't even try, but turns, still blushing furiously, towards the pony, walks over to it and, having no doubt already worked out, or been told, what is required of him, disdains the mounting block provided and vaults on to its padded top, taking care, I notice, to settle his rampant equipment into the hollow provided in the upholstery, before lying fully forward and allowing his wrists and knees to be strapped to the pony.
I now have a perfect view of a pair of smooth, bare, creamy and well developed young male buttocks, drawn taut by the slightly downward-slanting thighs below them and spread so well apart by the width of the pony's 'back' that I can see between them, right down to his small, puckered, brownish-pink anus and even watch the goose-bumps as they form on his naked cheeks and thighs, in anticipation of the stinging strokes to come. Once settled in as comfortable a position as is possible under the circumstances, he is further restrained by the passing of a broad strap over his bare back, just above his buttocks, whereafter his shirt-tail is rolled up to under his armpits, leaving him naked from his rib-cage down.
It occurred to me, as I dispassionately watch those concerned calmly getting ready to inflict and receive what all of them must know is going to be a barbarous act of violence on the helpless, naked haunches of one who is no more than a vulnerable male child, that, whereas a caning would no doubt do considerably more damage to the outer curves of those twin, round cheeks, the slender twigs of the birch rods will have no difficulty in wrapping round their inner crevice, biting into the lips of that tender, tightly clenched hole and fiercely nipping the back of his, now retracted, ball bag and pushing its owner to a level of torment far beyond the limits of the actual thrashing to which he had been sentenced.
The boy is lying with his face turned away from me, but must have realised that in that position, he would be able to see Sgt. Halcott administering the strokes, so he turns his head so that it is lying with his left ear pressed against the padded surface and I am looking straight into his frightened, anxious brown eyes. His arms are pulled forward and down and his straddling legs are firmly secured, just above the knees, leaving their lower halves free to thrash and flail in response to the pain of the flogging. The overall result is to thrust the boy's bare bottom provocatively up and out, as if defying the rods to do their worst and I feel a tug in my own groin which tells me that I am going to find the next few minutes very stimulating indeed and that a sentence of birching could easily become my punishment of choice in apropriate cases.
Although there is no apparent resistance in the almost naked body spreadeagled on the pony, I can see the tension in his bunched calves and braced, splayed toes, as he tries to anticipate and prepare for a foreign sensation about which he knows nothing, but has probably been led to believe will be extremely painful.
It must be borne in mind that, up to this moment, I have never witnessed a bare-tailed beating and that I am the victim of some extremely confused and confusing emotions. On the one hand, I have no real desire for this not unattractive boy to get hurt, but, on the other, looking at the bare, muscular backside, with its twin round, deeply divided cheeks, which is thrust slightly up and outwards, as if inviting a vsit from the birch, I conclude that justice must take its course and that it would be a great pity, from all points of view, if this particular youngster were to leave the cells that day without having his bare tail soundly thrashed.
Sgt. Halcott moves round in front of him, birch in hand, and formally quotes the boy's sentence: "Craig Atwood, for the crimes of assailt and attempted robbery, you have been sentenced to twelve strokes of the birch rod, to be administered with full force to your naked buttocks. Are you ready to undergo this punishment?"
I see the boy's lips form the affirmative and watch those already tightly braced buttocks clench yet further until both form deep dimples in their flanks and the crevice between them becomes no more than a thin line, dividing two almost angular, rock-hard mounds of flesh. I wonder if he will be able to keep them together like that, as doing so would certainly protect his arsehole and balls from the rod, but then Sgt. Halcott is in position and is trying out the balance of the rod in his hand with a few hissing practice swings, each of which makes the bound boy pull against his restraints in an agony of anticipation.
During those futile leaps, I can see that he is not so tightly secured as to pin his body to his mount and that he can 'buck' about 6 inches clear of it, creating a gap between his loins and its surface, in which I can see that his lusty young _c_o_c_k_ is still firmly erect, a state which confirms and strengthens my own similar one, as both of us await the actual commencement of his flogging, he, no doubt, with increasing dread and I with mounting excitement.
One of the constables has moved to the front of the apparatus and has placed his palms flat on the boy's shoulders, more, I think to comfort him than to hold him down and at a nod from that officer, Sgt. Halcott lays the broad spray of slim, straight twigs, each with its quota of hard, protruding, triangular buds, lightly across the waiting tail, which flinches visably at the touch, judges his distance from and angle to his target, lifts the rod, swings it in a flashing arc behind and round his head and brings it down with a piercing, whistling hiss, which increases in intensity as the rattling bundle of sticks approaches its target, to a siren-like shriek, which is cut off short by a sound which is neither a crack nor a snap, but is more like the noise which is made when a bucket of water is dashed out vigorously and from a height, on to a rough surface.
The effect of that first stroke on the boy himself, is remarkable. No sound passes his lips, but his entire body rears up off its supporting beam, to the utmost limit allowed by the restraining straps, his bare feet flail futilely in space, the muscles of his back and legs stand out in cords and, as the livid imprint of the stroke appears across his bare buttocks, his mouth stretches into a ghastly grimace of pure agony, and I see his formerly solid erection wilt under his collapsing body and vanish limply into the waiting groove.
My immediate reaction to my first sight of a boy's bare bottom being whipped, is neither one of horror nor delight, but a sense of amazement at the fact that, in spite of the tremendous speed at which the rod had approached the quivering tail, the stroke itself seems to be inflicted in slow motion; I see the body of the rod, still forming a single column of sticks from the tightly bound handle, land well round on the outer curve of the boy's left buttock, denting it and forcing the blood away, so that the struck area turns a deathly white against the creamy skin around it. Then, quite deliberately, each of the thin twig forming the 'spray' of the rod, seems to lengthen and reach out across the deeply curved cleft, as if searching for meat to bite into on the far side and, on reaching it, sinking into naked skin to a point at which even the buds appear to vanish, momentarily, into the whipped flesh, before being sharply expelled and followed by a stark white, but rapidly turning bright red, weal, which stands out in sharp relief across the bare cheek on which it has fallen.
Slowly and methodically, Sgt. Halcott applies the birch to the increasingly restless pair of haunches before him, the strokes being placed, with pinpoint accuracy, alternately above and below that, by now rich purple, set of weals which mark the site of the first cut, until, by the fourth, the entire surface of the lad's right buttock, from high up on his hip down to an inch or so below the tender crease where tail meets leg, is uniformly covered with innumerable fine and no doubt blazingly hot and intensely painful, although not, generally speaking, open, stripes and he is showing signs of suffering from his flogging, which is, at that point, not even half completed.
So, as the twigs make their separate and repeated contacts with bare, yielding buttocks, a pattern of eerily white dents appears, as if by magic, in the clear, creamy skin, each one rapidly turning first pink and then a dark, angry red, as the hot young blood which had been forced away by the impact, rushes back into the strip of whipped flesh, each individual stripe forming the characteristic narrow 'tramline' which is always left when a stick comes into sharp contact with naked human hide. Because of the design of the rod, these weals quickly form wide, fan-shaped belts of raised, inflamed ridges, which extend from the fairly compact, broad stripes on the outer curve of the lad's left cheek. bridging his cleft and continuing as a pattern of thin, separate weals across the centre of the right one, each ending in a vicious, purple welt where the flexible tips of the twigs, travelling at tremendous speed, had sunk into the tender flesh of the boy's flank.
So uniform is the effect of a birching, that it can honestly be said that, by the sixth stroke, there was not a strip of unwhipped skin on the youngster's right buttock and I begin to wonder if there will be any skin left there at all after another six strokes.
Clearly, the clenching of his buttocks has, that first time, pro- tected their inner parts from the rod, but it would be too much to hope that he could maintain that level of control of his whipped hind- quarters and, after the second cut, his bare cheeks are writhing and squirming virtually independently of each other, at times bracing together, as before, but, at others, parting so widely that the shorter twigs of the descending rod has a clear path to the boy's fully exposed hole, balls and the distended root of his again very stiff _c_o_c_k_.
To my surprise, the youngster makes no sound in response to the first cut, although, once the sting and burn register, they must be acute. After the initial convulsion passes, I see his midriff tense and seem to flatten itself against the support of the pony, while the strong young knees brace into a yet firmer grip on its sides, the effort, unfortunately for the young man, forcing his cheeks still further apart and his bottom even more upwards, as if to meet the next cut and it is in that position that it is when the birch comes whistling down for the second time, landing, on that occasion, a handsbreadth lower down, so that the spray not only punishes the soft crease between buttocks and thighs, but visits the tender inner thigh area as well as the recess around the perineum and, while missing both his hole and genitals, sets what may be called his 'underbum' on fire with several thin red stripes on each side of his bottom.
I am fascinated by the effect of the rod on a pair of bare haunches and watch, in awe, as both round, fleshy cheeks become progressively covered with thin, overlapping and criss-crossing red welts. As stroke follows stroke, drops of bright red young blood begin to form where the weals cross each other. It is not a case of the boy's tail being cut to ribbons by his flogging, but merely isolated spots where even the elastic young hide ceases to be proof against the bite of wet, supple wood. By the fourth stroke, the bound boy's almost naked body is pounding furiously, almost coitally, against the pony. I can see that he is still fully erect and wonder that he is not hurting himself with his contortions. His lower legs are, by now, threshing wildly as he attempts to dissipate the blinding sting of the birch by constant movement but, because of the position of his knee restraints, his bare, furiously kicking feet cannot interfere with the whipping at all and probably have no effect other than to afford him an illusory relief from the sting and burn which is mounting in a pair of very soundly whipped lower cheeks.
On receiving the fifth stroke, the boy gives up any attempt at stoicism and gives full-throated vent to the agony which has been building up in his loins, his wide open mouth emitting a high-pitched yell of pure agony, which continues, unabated between the strokes. However, immed- iately after the next stroke, my concern for his hide is resolved; the flogging ceases for a few moments, while Sgt. Halcott moves to his victim's other side, selecting a fresh rod as he goes. I see the taut, by now very well-whipped tail clench afresh in anticipation of the renewed assault, but also notice that, in addition to the now fam- iliar tensing of the buttocks themselves, the boy's previously mobile lower limbs are locked vertically to the floor, while his toes are spread out in the rigid, fanned way which can be caused by either an ordinary muscular cramp or the onset of a violent orgasm and I watch, with intense interest to see how he will respond to the imminent resumption of his flogging.
I need not have wondered; as the fresh rod hisses down and lands on the firm, if somewhat blood-flecked right cheek and its tips flex round to search out the increasingly tender groove between the two, the lad gasps, his entire body becomes almost catyleptic and is shaken by violent convulsions, which again lift the mobile young loins off the beam, and give me, for one, a good, if brief, view of the rigid, curved shaft and its spurting, distended knob, before he subsides and lies draped, spent and exhausted, over the pony, while Sgt. Halcott, who is probably so accustomed to this response as to hardly notice it, simply carries on with the flogging, although he must know very well that none of the strokes that fall while the boy is in the throes of an orgasm will even be felt until much later on. He completes the flogging with a final, sizzling cut across the centre of the by now very swollen, comprehensively cut, welted and, probably, intolerably stinging, smarting and burning tail of a boy who will certainly have something by which to remember this day's events for quite a while, as well as an incentive, notwithstanding the latest development, not to return for another dose.
The boy is released from his shackles and is assisted off the pony, before leaning, still half naked and with a face as red from the em- barrassment of not only having been publicly flogged on his naked bottom, but having ejaculated, not generally visibly, but still, as far as he is concerned, very noticeably, during the operation, across a chair while the doctor gently swabs the blood off his slightly-flayed rump and applies a disinfectant to the, by now many, open cuts and wales on the red, sore-looking young buttocks. These ministrations are perhaps not altogether welcome, as the boy leaps and writhes as the antiseptic stings his raw flesh, affording me yet another glance at his _c_o_c_k_, which, I see, has returned to its normal limp, if still somewhat enlarged, state, confirming my observations on the subject of his having had an orgasm while being thrashed.
Soon afterwards the boy, now fully dressed, leaves the precincts in the company of a very big and angry-looking man and I trust, sincerely, that he does not have to contend with yet another thrashing on arriving home, as the expression on the man's face seems to me to bode no good for somebody.
All in all, an extremely interesting late afternoon, which has shown me something of which I was formerly unaware, namely that judicial corporal punishment, when applied to the bare backsides of juvenile offenders, has the double advantage of providing the miscreant with a salutory lesson and any spectators with a highly stimulating and entertaining view of the way in which young flesh responds to thorough chastisement.