Real Historical Punishments 16-18

Real Punishments - 1663 Anne Coleman

16. One of the three Quaker women whipped in my last posting, Anne Coleman was caught preaching again the following winter in Salem, Massachusetts. This was not allowed for women OR Quakers. During the resulting whipping, the lash curled around and severely hurt her right nipple. All the Puritan constable had to do was stand a bit closer.


Question: Of the two characters on the right, which one is the bigger horse's ass?


Real Punishments - 1665 Mrs Tollman

17. Fact: At the Rhode Island colony in America, Peter Tollman sought divorce from his wife for her adultery. Found guilty, she was given 15 strokes of the cane at Portsmouth and 15 at Newport, to be delivered on the bare skin.

Speculation: Ships of the British Navy were well set up for flogging sailors and caning the young midshipmen (officer cadets). What if a ship was in port and offered its facilities to the local authorities for the purpose of correcting the adulteress? After all, the crew had never seen a woman punished before, and there's nothing like some good R&R. :)

This one was not suitable to be 'oilified':

Real Punishments - 1671 Skipping Joan

18. "Skipping" Joan was a nickname used for her by a cartoonist in London. She and other girls were the victims of "Whipping Tom", a phantom nuisance in 1671. He would jump out at young women, lift their dresses and, shouting "Spanko!", would proceed to do just that. This was before knickers were invented, and poor women had not many layers of skirts.

"Whipping Tom" occasionally used a strap, but mostly his hand. He was never caught. I sometimes wonder if he was an ancestor of mine - it would explain a lot!



Series blurb:
A history of the bondage and corporal punishment of females, using only incidents where a name and approximate date are known. I'm doing them in chronological order, covering from the first century to the nineteenth.

[Notes: (1) Some licence is taken with the positioning and state of dress of the victim, as this is usually unknown. (2) Most quotes in this series are from "Encyclopedia of Cruelty", Felicity Press, Islington Australia, 1995.]