A history of the rod

The line between pain and pleasure is as thin as the tail of a whip, and this classic work is the definitive history of flagellation through the ages. As it shows, flagellation is much more than a punishment - it is also intimately tied to discipline and eroticism, has a romantic and even comic side, and has also been used for medical purposes. No one is above the bite of the birch or rod - convent nuns were chastised severely, queens have been flogged, and even favorites of the sultan have had to endure the whip in the great seraglios. The author deals in great detail with whipping in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, the favorite parts of the body for whipping, flagellation and discipline in monasteries and convents, whipping in prisons, the rod in Russia, flagellation in America, whipping in Europe and the Far East, the flogging of slaves, military flogging, school punishments, and the birch in the boudoir, all enlivened with colorful anecdotes. There is a chapter on the instruments of whipping, a selection of ribald and erotic poems on whipping, a section on eccentric forms of whipping such as that practiced on prostitutes, many detailed line drawings, descriptive accounts, and a full index. The work shows the fundamental place whipping has always played in human history, both publicly and in private, and continues to play today.

The late Reverend William M. Cooper was an expert on the history of flagellation and discipline. His real name was James Glass Bertram (1824 – 3 March 1892). He was a British author.

He was apprenticed to Tait's Edinburgh Magazine and became managing clerk, before joining a company of strolling players. He returned to Edinburgh and set up as a bookseller and newsagent. In 1855 he was appointed the editor of the North Briton and in 1872 of the Glasgow News, leaving to become a freelance journalist two years later. Bertram's output included pornography on the theme of flagellation, such as Flagellation and the Flagellants: A History of the Rod published in 1868 under the pseudonym of "Revd William Cooper" and Personal Recollections of the Use of the Rod as "Margaret Anson", published by John Camden Hotten. He also wrote works on sport under the pseudonym Ellangowan (named after a location in Walter Scott's novel Guy Mannering), notably Sporting anecdotes: being anecdotal annals, descriptions, tales and incidents of horse-racing, betting, card-playing, pugilism, gambling, cock-fighting, pedestrianism, fox-hunting, angling, shooting, and other sports, collected and edited by him and published in London, 1889.

A history of the rod in all countries. - read online

A history of the rod in all countries. - read pdf-file