Hi guys,
Just when I think I know nearly everything about butt-punishment through the ages, I have recently come across the origin of the slang term "putting someone in the hot seat". Now, it means to subject someone to intense and unrelenting questioning.
To the Barbary pirates, who invented the custom which gave rise to this bit of slang, the "hot seat" was a very real instrument of ass-torture. Men who refused to give up information to the pirates were strapped, naked from the waist down, into a chair whose seat consisted of thick rawhide which was first liberally doused with water, then slathered with seal oil or whale blubber.
Once the victim was bound in place, with his bare ass in firm contact with the rawhide seat (and his balls, too, if he was unlucky enough to have "low hangers"), a brazier of burning coal was placed beneath the seat. The water-soaked, oil-coated rawhide wouldn't burn -- but it would become blazingly hot, hot as the fire beneath it, and the victim got his bare ass simultaneously burned and fried and steam-scalded until he gave up the information demanded. Apparently, it was a technique which never failed. The pirates even kept handy a sponge soaked in strong vinegar to place under the victim's nose if he passed out from the horrible pain of his ass burning, to retore him to consciousness.
So, THAT is where the expression "putting someone in the hot seat" comes from. Gee -- compared with that, our paddles and canes and tawses and straps seem pretty tame!