Concerned Ladies (Continued)
Once outside the building, the bailiff drew her arms back and bound them above the elbows.
“Please, sir, there is no need for that!” Hettie cried.
“Hold your tongue, woman!” the bailiff said. “Another word and you’ll be wearing the brank!”
The bailiff levered Hettie’s arms up behind her, bending her far over, so that her head was at the level of his waist. She cried out in pain as arms were pulled up, and in this painful and humiliating posture the bailiff walked her to the pillory.
The yoke of the pillory was set at waist height, so the bailiff simply guided her to the center hole, lifted the upper half of the yoke, pushed her head over the cutout, and let the upper half drop, trapping her head. He secured her ankles in the foot stocks at the base of the pillory.
He did not bother to untie her arms and put her wrists in the yoke as well. She would be in the pillory only long enough to be skelped with the tawse. Then it would be the jougs for her.
“A man has not the time to wet his whistle any longer, for dealing with troublesome females!” the bailiff groused. “Well, madam, be assured I will repay you for the ale I could now be drinking!”
The bailiff lifted Hettie’s skirts, petticoats, and shift, rolling them up her legs and baring her buttocks and lower back. He slapped at her clenched hands.
“Open!” he ordered.
He thrust the roll of material into her hands.
“Now hold on to that. If you let go, it’ll earn you another dozen.”
So saying, he gave Hettie’s plush, pale rump a resounding smack.
“Oh! How dare you!” Hettie cried, with a deep, heartbroken sob and a wail of humiliation.
A tawse is a strap of leather with a split down the middle at the business end. It had many applications; from disciplining unruly school students to more serious judicial punishments. When used for school discipline it was typically lighter, and was applied to the upraised palm of the miscreant. When used in a judicial setting, however, the tawse was thicker and heavier, and applied to the bare buttocks. It left no permanent marks, and was considered less severe than either the birch or the whip. When applied with vigor on the bare, however, as the bailiff would apply it, it was an implement to be dreaded. The tawse the bailiff selected was as heavy and thick as a plow horse’s harness.
He had turned to leave when he remembered to pick up wrist and ankle cuffs as well.
When the bailiff returned to the punishment grounds he saw that the few idlers remaining had interested themselves in the woman at the pillory. Their interest had proceeded little further than mockery, jeers, and insults, but he saw that one of them had been bold enough to open the top of the woman’s gown and shift, and expose her breasts. They were larger and more pendulous than Mina’s, the bailiff noted, but a very nice set nonetheless.
The woman was fleshier than Mina as well, but the bailiff found that in her favor, thinking Mina too slender for his tastes. This woman’s features were not as fine, but then Mina Berkeley had the fairest face the bailiff had ever seen. But, though suffering by comparison, this woman was a pleasant enough looking creature. Her clothing alone bespoke the fact that she was more than a commoner. She was certainly not as socially elevated as Mina Berkeley, but she was a woman of some wealth and certainly well above him in social standing.
He saw that the woman had let go of her skirts, no doubt in response to the jeering of the men at her exposed behind, but it had done her no good. One jokester was tormenting her by pulling her skirts up and flashing her bottom at the others, while Hettie protested angrily, and waved her hands to try to sweep her skirts back down over her nakedness.
“Leave off!” the bailiff ordered the man. “And step lively. I have work to do.”
The bailiff rolled up Hettie’s skirts again and put them back in her hands.
“What did I tell you about letting go? What did I promise you if you did?”
“Oh sir, do not shame this way!” Hettie pleaded.
“Another dozen, I said, did I not? You shall count each stroke or you shall receive the same again, do you hear?”
He measured his distance, drew back his arm, and then struck Hettie with all his strength across the crown of her buttocks.
A resounding “
Crack!” echoed over the punishment grounds.
The impact of the blow caused a shock wave through the tender meat of Hettie’s backside, like a rock dropped into a small pond. It lasted only a split second, but set her flesh to wobbling and trembling. Hettie grunted in anguish at the force of the blow. Her knees buckled, putting all her weight on her neck, choking her. A blush began to well up on the surface of her butt where the blow had landed.
“Get your legs under you, you silly cow, and present your bum! You did not count that last!” the bailiff cried, “So I shan’t either!”
And when Hettie had straightened up, he struck her again.
The loud “
Crack!” rang out, and then Hettie’s gasp and hiss of pain. Once again, her knees buckled at the force of the blow, and she gagged and choked for a moment.
“Count it!” the bailiff cried.
“Two, sir, have mercy, I beg you!”
“The first did not count.”
Hettie groaned.
“What is the count, woman?” the bailiff demanded.
“One, damn you!”
“That earns you another stroke! You will address me as ‘Sir’! Stand up!”
He struck her again.
“Aaagh!” Hettie screamed. “Two, sir!”
“No!” the bailiff said, “That is but one! No more insolence from you!”
The bailiff found himself becoming aroused, much as he had with Mina. He considered his response a sign of weakness. He was here to punish a law breaker, not lust after a bit of fluff. But the woman’s most intimate parts were exposed to him: the slight spread of her legs revealed the brown rose of her anus, and tucked beneath, the slit of her sex displayed just a hint of the pink of her inner lips. They beckoned to him; an inviting burrow hidden beneath the tangled bush of her pubic hair. The pale white flesh of Hettie’s buttocks and thighs trembled enticingly.
Oh! But she is a shameless trollop! he thought.
That she trembled with fear of the of the next stroke, and not to entice him, did not occur to the bailiff, nor would it have mattered to him. Her anguished grunts did not elicit any pity from him either, but only stirred him to greater effort. He wiped the sweat from his brow. And struggled to put his mind back on his business.
Show her what it is to break the law, he told himself. Show them all what it is to be skelped by Bailiff Tompkins!
He delivered the fourth stroke, swinging not just from his arms this time, but driving with his hips as well. The tawse smacked across Hettie’s buttocks with a force the bailiff felt all the way up his arm. He nearly lost his balance, having put all his effort into the blow.
“Aaaagh!” Hettie yelled. “God in heaven, have mercy!”
“Stop your blubbering woman, and count!”
“Ah, mercy sir, two!”
Another loud crack! rent the air.
“Mercy, for the love of God, sir!” the woman cried. “Please, someone fetch my husband!”
Crack!
“Three sir!” gasped Hettie. Her hands twisted into the roll of her skirts, clutching them tightly in her pale fingers.
“
Crack!”
“Aaah! God help me! Four, sir!” Hettie cried brokenly.
The bailiff side stepped a bit so the next blow would land fully on Hettie’s left butt cheek. Being right handed, he could see that the impact of the tawse was landing primarily on her right. He wanted both globes well and truly ruddied.
Crack!
“Aaah!” gasped Hettie, “Five sir!”
Her thighs and buttocks were trembling like plum pudding. Her knees flinched and buckled, almost in spasms, as she tried to anticipate the next stroke.
The bailiff struck her again on the left cheek, this time swinging upwards with the tawse. It was not as powerful as a downward stroke, but struck her on slightly different spot.
Hettie vented an anguished grunt and then let out a full throated scream.
She lunged against the pillory yoke, bucking her shoulders into the wood of the yoke as though trying to drive herself through it. As she pulled back, the bailiff heard her teeth clack as her lower jaw hit the yoke on the other side.
“Ah, God!” she cried. “Six sir! I beg you sir, as a Christian man, have pity!”
“And as a Christian woman,” he replied, “You must learn discipline and obedience!”
The bailiff stepped back, noting with satisfaction the deep red blush of her buttocks.
The color was shading into purple on the right cheek as bruising began to form, but the left was coming along nicely. Now she would start to feel it, he thought. He would make sure of that.
The onlookers thought that was perhaps the end.
“She’s just getting warm, sir!” cried one.
Others added their jibes. The bailiff ignored them all.
He walked around to the front of the pillory. He placed the tawse on the yoke of the pillory.
“Madam,” he said.
She was grunting and mewling with each breath. Tears and sweat had turned her face into a shimmering mess.
“Madam,” he said again, and pulled her head up by her hair and looked into her tear filled eyes.
“Thank me for the last six. And ask me very prettily for the next.”
Hettie stared in disbelief and outrage, and gave a broken sob.
““How can I thank you?” she gasped. “You are a cruel and heartless man! Have you no pity?”
The bailiff gripped Hettie’s nose between his thumb and forefinger. He gave it a slow, hard twist to the left and then to the right. She grunted in pain, and her eyes screwed nearly shut, squeezing more tears down her cheeks. She felt her nose would be twisted off her face.
“Thank me, or it will go very hard with you.”
He let go of her nose, and then pinched the inside and outside of her upper lip, getting a good purchase between thumb and forefinger, and twisting it even more tightly than he had her nose.
“Gah abob suh! Ank you! Ank you!”
“I cannot understand your gabble! Speak clear, woman!”
The bailiff released her lip.
“Thank you, sir, thank you!” Hettie gasped.
“And tell me you will never trouble his Lordship the judge, nor myself with your foolishness and insolence.”
“I promise it,” Hettie hissed between clenched teeth.
“I did not hear you, woman.”
“I promise!” Hettie cried.
The bailiff smiled grimly, but he was not satisfied. He had a cockstand that was poling out the front of his breeches. And he was uncomfortably aware that her face was at the level of his crotch. He thought for a moment about how pleasant it would be to have this woman bagpipe him right here and now. But such an act, even in private, even between man and wife, was unnatural and shameful, and the bailiff quickly suppressed the thought.
He picked up the tawse and smacked it against the palm of his hand.
“Beg me for another six,” he said.
Hettie heaved a sob.
“Please sir, another six,” she said.
The bailiff patted her on the cheek.
“As you wish. But I shall not pat you so gently on your nether cheeks.”
The onlookers cheered as the bailiff returned to Hettie’s rear.
Once again he measured his distance, flung his arm back and came down hard with the tawse on Hettie’s buttocks.
“Aaaah! Dear Jesus, help me!” cried Hettie. “Seven!”
Hettie’s backside now had large red and purple swatches on each cheek. The bailiff knew that each stroke would be more painful than the previous ones, for the flesh was deeply bruised and far more tender.
He redoubled his efforts.
A ferocious swipe with the tawse on her left buttock cheek elicited a roar of pain from the woman. An even more forceful one on her right, quickly following, had her bucking in agony.
“Count!” he shouted at her.
“Eight and nine, sir, dear God!”
He took his time with the last three strokes, shaking his arm out after each, and catching his breath, before before winding up and fetching her a blow that was worthy of a winning serve in the game of royal tennis.
“Ten, eleven, twelve!” she screamed with each unbearable stroke, her chest heaving with effort.
She was well and truly warmed up now, he thought. He had an urge to continue and give her the extra twelve that he had promised for dropping her skirts; oh yes, she would feel it now, right enough, but a second thought made him look up at the Judge’s window. He saw Higgens standing there, watching, but could discern nothing from the man’s expression. The judge was a severe, inflexible man, the bailiff considered, and it might well arise his ire if the bailiff were to give the woman the extra dozen.
“What did I promise you for dropping your skirts?” the bailiff asked.
Hettie groaned.
“Please, sir, I beg of you, no more!”
“Count!” he ordered.
Hettie’s wail of despair rose in volume to a scream of shock and pain with the
“Crack!” of the tawse across her backside.
“Aaah! God! Thirteen, sir! I beg you, have pity!” Hettie cried.
“Have you learned your lesson, woman?”
“Yes sir!”
“Have you indeed? Another eleven, or have you learned it?”
“Yes sir! I have learned it, sir,” Hettie wept.
“Then we shall call it a dozen. A baker’s dozen,” the bailiff said. “But your lesson is not finished.”
Hettie groaned as the bailiff released her neck from the yoke of the pillory. She felt dizzy, and her buttocks burned like fire from the heavy blows of the tawse. Her shoulders ached from the strained position she had been bound in.
The bailiff untied Hettie’s arms.
“Aaah!” She whimpered in relief as the ache in her shoulders eased, until the pins and needles of returning circulation made her cry out in pain. The bailiff shackled Hettie’s wrists together, and opened the foot stocks.
“Now you will stand in the jougs,” the bailiff said. “As an example to insolent women.”
Hettie dropped her head in despair.
Once again he levered her arms up behind her, bending her torso and head down to waste level. He marched her in that humiliating posture, her naked breasts hanging down wobbling and jiggling, to the jail.
On an outside wall of the jail hung an iron collar suspended from a length of chain about seven or eight feet above the ground. A narrow stone pedestal, about two feet in height, stood against the wall below the collar. The top of the pedestal angled down and away from the wall.
The bailiff pulled off Hettie’s shoes, and had her step up on the pedestal.
He climbed up beside her on a short step ladder left for the purpose to lock the collar around her neck.
The jougs was not considered an especially severe punishment, since all the offender had to do was stand for the prescribed time, but it was made more uncomfortable by the fact that, since the surface of the platform was angled down, he or she must scrabble backwards with his or her feet to keep from choking on the collar.
“Someone will fetch you down when you have served your time,” the bailiff said, shackling Hettie’s ankles together. “And you will have learned your lesson.”
And so bailiff Tompkins, having completed his duty, left Hettie in the jougs. He left her bare breasted and bare footed, and softly weeping and lowing in her humiliation and pain.
The jougs. (Sister Dee of Infernal Restraints)
He hoped he would catch up to the warden and get that ale the man owed him.
Most of the women in Hettie’s group had dispersed quickly after giving their names to the secretary, and after having being sternly lectured to at some length by that pipsqueak of a man. Those who lived in Cape Coast hurried away to their various homes and husbands, and the few fellow passengers of Mina’s who had decided to stand up for her, resolved to address their concerns to a more sympathetic government officer or official when they had the opportunity. They eagerly looked forward to leaving this place and continuing their journey.
Hettie’s closest friends had clustered in a tight little group when they emerged from Government House. They had paused for a moment as the bailiff began his work, and flinched as one at the first
Crack! of the tawse.
“Ah! Poor Hettie! This is dreadful! How will she endure it?”
“Yes! Poor thing! She is learning her lesson, as we have learned ours. Did I not advise her against this? But she must have her head.”
“We all warned her, did we not? Did we not tell her this was far too rash?”
“My husband will beat me sure when he learns of this.”
“She will have to leave, poor dear. How can she show her face around here after this?”
Of course it went without saying—it was simply out of the question—that the Concerned Ladies of Cape Coast would associate any longer with a woman who had been exposed to such public ridicule and shame.