How Women Were Flogged in Russian Prisons

I admit that the illustration above is a tad misleading (click on the drawing to see full size).  It came from a book published in Germany in the year 1898, two years before this letter was publish. Nevertheless, it accurately depicts the typical discipline dispensed in prisons ruled by autocratic regimes at that time. Now the letter itself is dated July 25, 1880, but was publish in a book written by a Frenchman named Jean de Villiot in 1900.  There exists a very old English translation, but I've only seen fragments of it. What's posted here is my translation and while not perfect, I believe I've captured the essence of the good doctor's letter.

Before we get to the letter describing the visit, there is another interesting facet to discuss.  The huge issue is authenticity. That is, did an English doctor actually visit a Siberian prison and document his visit or is this entire letter a figment of Jean de Villiot's imagination?  Given that over 120 years has passed since publication, we'll probably never know.  On the one hand, there is a fair amount of historical accuracy included in the letter.  Indeed, the description of the treatment of nihilists by the Russians is quite accurate.  (Rounding up - shipping to Siberia - keeping them separate and distinct from other prisoners, etc.) On the other hand, we'd expect a skilled storyteller, like Jean de Villiot would do everything he could to make his story believable. Then there is the obvious question of how he happened upon a twenty year old letter written by an English doctor? 

Any question about the actual treatment of the women prisoners is easily dispatched. After all, we must remember that at the time of the letter's writing AND the time of the actual publication (and almost 20 years after that!) Russia was ruled by a Czar and his aristocrats. Further there were other works published around this time indicating similar treatment of women prisoners in Prussia.

So, I only hope you enjoy this letter as much as I have and without further ado, I give you:

A VISIT TO A PRISON IN SIBERIA

Copy of a letter written by a young English doctor, traveling in Siberia, to a close friend in London.

Tomsk, Eastern Siberia
July 25, 1880
My dear friend,

I have been here for a week, resting from my long and tiring journey from Tobolsk. During the whole trip, the temperature was very hot, the mosquitoes bothered me a lot and the coaching inns in which I had to stay every night, were all disgustingly dirty and with a lack of comfort that you could not believe.

Tomsk where I am at the moment, district capital, is located on the Obi River. The very mixed population is about 15,000 inhabitants. It is a city built very irregularly, scattered houses, narrow streets. There are, however, quite large public buildings and beautiful shops. I was able to find a very suitable hotel where I made the day of my arrival an excellent meal which was, I can say, very welcome after all the troubles and all the fatigues I had endured along the way.

Near the city is a large prison that currently contains 500 convicts, 300 men and 200 women. These convicts are sent here from all corners of Russia and all have to serve a long period of detention for serious crimes.

There are also quite a large number of nihilists of both sexes, but they are separated from common criminals, although subject to the same discipline.

Having read many writings and heard a lot about the prisons of Siberia, I very much wanted to visit one, in order to compare their system with that of the prisons of England. You know, moreover, that I was a doctor in a prison for three years, and since I had the good fortune of possessing a letter of introduction to the governor, Colonel Boris, I added to that introduction a note indicating that I was an English doctor and was a former doctor in an English prison.  I explained that I would consider it a special favor to be allowed to make a visit to the prison he ruled, eager as I was to see first-hand the prison system in Siberia.

The same day in the afternoon, Colonel Boris sent me his reply, written in French, inviting me to visit the prison the next day, at 12:30 pm, the time of the prisoners' meal, during which I could see them in their cells.

The next day, at the appointed time, I was taken to the prison, which is about two miles from the city. A Cossack was waiting for me at the door to take me to meet the governor. He received me with great politeness. He is a man of about forty-five years, military appearance, and a very pleasant figure. The governor is married and lives with his wife in a very pretty house near the prison. I had dinner with them that evening and found Madame Boris to be the most charming hostesses one could imagine. She is much younger than her husband and has a very pleasant physique.

After the colonel and I had talked for some time and smoked several cigarettes, he sent for the prison doctor and handed me over to him, asking him to drive me everywhere and answer all my questions.

The doctor, Mr. Lazareff, is a man of about fifty years, in service in the houses of detention for twenty-five years, and as a result has a great of experience. He is a very kind fellow; he seemed quite happy to meet a fellow doctor. He speaks French very elegantly like almost all Russians of higher education, and as I speak his language with only modest fluency, we were immediately on good terms, especially when I had told him of my experience as a former prison doctor.

The Tomsk Detention House is a quadrangular stone building with three floors. The convicts, except in very rare cases, live together in large rooms where they typically number from thirty to forty.

Accompanied by two guards carrying sets of keys, we went first to the side of the premises occupied by the men; there, a guard opened a heavy and massive iron door and shouted an order in a rough voice, and immediately all the prisoners lined up on one side of the room, stiff and fixed like soldiers. They were all uniformly dressed in brown canvas shirts with a belt of the same fabric and color matching the jacket. Their pants were tucked into tall boots, going up to their knees. The rooms were all very clean and well ventilated; on one side a wooden platform served as a bed, and rolled at the top were the straw mattresses and blankets. In the middle of the room is a long table on which are lined pewter bowls and spoons. The prisoners at the time we entered were having their meal consisting of cabbage soup, black bread and a piece of meat for each prisoner.

Prisoners can let their beards grow, but they shave half of their hair, which gives them a rather grotesque and in short quite repulsive appearance.

During the day, most of them are employed outside the prison making roads, cutting down trees, and sawing stones. Almost everything used in the prison is made by the convicts, both men and women, and they all have to work ten hours a day. But from what I have seen and heard, I have come to the conclusion that the Russian convicts enjoy a better lot and are better fed than their counterparts in England.

When we had finished the visit of the premises occupied by the men, we took a long corridor closed at each end by heavy and massive doors and entered the prison reserved for women. We were received by a female supervisor accompanied by two female guards. The men who had guided us thus far left us.

The rooms where the women were kept were of the same size as those we had just seen; the arrangement was the same, except for the sleeping equipment which consisted of small iron beds. All the women prisoners had kept their hair, rolled up in a thick braid that hung down their backs. They were dressed in blue and white striped cotton dresses that fell to their ankles; they also wore white aprons; their stockings were of dark blue wool and they wore small sandals.

There were women of all ages, from slight seventeen-year-old girls to decrepit old women of seventy. The majority seemed to belong to the lowest class of the people. Almost all of them had coarse features, many were ugly, but there were a few that seemed to be very delicate and refined and obviously belonged to a higher class than that of their companions. There were also some pretty girls.

I did not see any nihilistic prisoners, male or female.

In each room we entered, the guard who preceded us gave the usual word of command and the women immediately lined up and remained motionless as we had seen the prisoners do. It was rather a curious thing to see thirty or forty women standing like this, stiff, in a row, looking straight ahead, their heads raised, their arms hanging down, clasped along their bodies.

They all seemed happy to see the doctor, whom they were obviously fond of; as we passed through the rows, he spoke kindly to many of them, and no doubt said something pleasant to them from time to time, judging from the laughter that followed his words, but as he spoke in Russian, I could not understand what he was saying.

When he had shown the whole establishment, he took me to his house, gave me excellent cigarettes, uncorked a bottle of champagne and we began to talk.

We entered into a long and interesting conversation about the prison systems in use in the various parts of Europe. Being Russian, he naturally considered the best system to be the one established in the empire of the Czar and I regret to say that he considered the English system to be the most inhumane.

He informed me that in the prisons of Siberia, prisoners who are lazy or who violate discipline are punished by a diet with bread and water for a few days or by being placed in cells, while for serious misconduct corporal punishment is inflicted. And this applies to both women and men.

The governor can sentence the prisoners to receive up to one hundred lashes and the punishment is inflicted by a guard with a rod, according to the custom, on the bare buttocks of the offender in the presence of the governor and the surgeon.

Before the whip is applied, a medical examination of the offenders is carried out in order to establish whether they are fit to receive their punishment. In no case is less than twelve strokes ordered. But often when the culprit is a young girl under twenty years old and of weak temperament, or sick, she is spanked instead of whipped.

I had previously believed that corporal punishment of women had been abolished in the Russian Empire and I was surprised to learn that this was not the case. I then asked Lazareff whether the application of this sentence was frequent.

He replied that there were a large number of very unruly women among the two hundred prisoners and that the governor was often obliged to order the punishment of whipping. He added: “But you must not assume that one acts with great cruelty in the whipping of women. I am always present to see that the whipping is not pushed to a point that the inmate cannot bear and, in general, the women are fairly strong.”

It is necessary that they receive a good, sound of whipping, often to the point of blood and always have marks from it. You must understand, however, that a woman or girl is never condemned to receive the rods without proper justification. And in my experience, female prisoners misbehave far more than men, but they are terrified of corporal punishment and this fear of the rod makes them behave far better than any other punishment.

“I have no doubt of that,” I replied, laughing.

Lazareff lit another cigarette. “I suppose,” he remarked, “that you have never seen a woman whipped?”

“No,” I replied. “In our English prisons, young boys are often whipped and sometimes men, but in no case is this punishment applied to young girls or women.”

“Just as I suspected,” Lazareff countered, “and it always seemed absurd to me. To quote one of your proverbs, 'what's good for the goose is good for the gander'.”

I laughed and replied:  “It seemed to me also when I exercised my function as prison doctor, to find it was very regrettable that we did not apply the whip to those violent and refractory women with whom we were in constant contact.  Women of this type indulged in all kinds of excesses, tore their clothes to pieces, threw themselves on the floor while kicking the door, shouting, swearing and singing for hours, stopping only a few minutes to catch their breath. If the supervisor had been allowed to give them a few good strokes with the cane, it would have brought them to their senses.”

“There is no doubt about it,” said Lazareff. “We never have 'breakers' among our prisoners, because they know they would be whipped hard if they broke or deliberately damaged anything or caused trouble in the prison.”

“Oh!” I said with a laugh, “you certainly have more powerful methods of enforcing discipline among women in your prisons than we have in ours in England. But I suspect your prisoners are only whipped in the presence of their own sex.”

“My dear, Sir,” Lazareff replied with some emphasis, “I can tell you that while women do very well as schoolmistresses to spank children, they are not at all good at ordering or inflicting corporal punishment in a prison on adults. They are too emotionally involved, are not impartial and are further biased by their sympathy or dislike for this or that prisoner and are consequently, either absurdly lenient or revoltingly cruel.”

“The governor who was here before Colonel Sores experienced this. When he ordered that a woman was to be whipped, the sentence was carried out by a female overseer assisted by female guards. I, the doctor, was not even allowed to be present. The result was far from favorable. The number of ordered blows was still applied correctly, but in some cases with so little vigor that the woman's behind was virtually unmarked and she left the place where she had received her punishment laughing, while in other cases the flogging had been given with such severity that the inmate was carried to the infirmary, completely unconscious, with blood streaming down her thighs. This never happened when the executioner was a male guard, whipping in my presence and in the presence of the governor. So Colonel Sores soon returned to the old system, and now each delinquent receives her punishment with regularity and impartiality.

I was very surprised at what he told me, but I made no remarks. He continued:  “You have seen all the interior arrangements of our prison, and now you must see how we punish women who resist discipline. It's my understanding that you will be in Tomsk for a minimum of six days. Before you depart, there is a good chance that a whipping will be ordered. Would you like to attend?”

I wasn't exactly anxious to see a woman whipped, but I thought that since I was here, I should take the opportunity to see everything about the prison system in Russia. This was an opportunity that might not come again, and it also occurred to me that the description of the scene I was going to attend would amuse you, for I know that you are very interested in everything that has to do with the corporal punishment of women.

Thus, I told Lazareff that if a woman were sentenced to be whipped, before I left, I would like to attend the execution of this sentence.  Then I said goodbye to him and went back to the hotel.

Two days passed and since there was nothing to see and nothing to do in this city of Tomsk, time passed with incredibly slow. But on the third day, at ten o'clock, just as I was going to lunch, a Cossack appeared, carrying a note from Lazareff informing me that a woman had just been sentenced to receive fifty lashes of the birch rod, around noon. Lazareff added that the governor approved my presence. I then finished lunch and lighting a cigarette, I went for a stroll in the city for half an hour.

At precisely half past eleven I arrived at the prison gate where Lazareff was waiting for me. After the exchanging greetings, we walked together through this dark portal; the heavy door was closed behind us, with a solid thump and aftershock. We followed a long corridor and finally entered a room at the end. It was the punishment chamber, it was vaulted, oblong in shape, lighted by two long grilled windows overlooking a small courtyard, the floor was damp and the air was cool even though the day was quite warm.

At the far end of this room, seated in a sort of pulpit, a prison official held a register open before him; beside this pulpit stood two guards.

At the other end, on a platform about two feet high, was placed an oak chair.

In the middle of the room was a massive frame mounted on four legs. This was the whipping bench - and as I looked at the horrible object, I thought that if it could talk, it would speak volumes and give many details of the sufferings of the unfortunate victims, both men and women, who had been tied on it to receive their punishment.

So I examined this bench while we waited for the governor to arrive. It was seven feet long by two feet wide and two feet high; on the lower part, at one end, was a crosspiece. A similar crosspiece was attached to the upper part of the other end. These crosspieces were fitted with straps to secure the wrists and ankles of the inmates lying on the bench.

Near this bench there was a long narrow box, which one of the guards opened, and inside I saw a large quantity of birch rods of all lengths and thicknesses.

The guard took two of them and Lazareff told him to let me examine them.

“Look,” he said, “at these rods that we are going to use. You see that these are neither as long nor as thick as the others in the box. We always use such light rods when it comes to punishing women.”

I took one and waved it, whistling it in the air; this rod was about two and a half feet long and was made of six green branches of birch all full of twigs and covered with buds. These rods had never been used and would have caused severe pain if used with full force.

Lazareff informed me that the delinquent was Anna Petrowna, and that she was twenty-five-years-old. She was a farm girl from a village near Moscow and was serving a seven-year prison sentence. This sentence was due to Anna injuring a young girl in a jealous rage.

She had been in prison for a year and had always shown herself to be lacking discipline; often she had been put on bread and water for her misdeeds or locked up in a solitary cell, but until now she not received corporal punishment. The fault that had finally earned her this punishment was: serious insubordination, insulting conduct towards the governor; she had moreover struck him.

The doctor told me that he had examined her in the morning, that he had found her in perfect health and easily able to bear her punishment.

“But!” I said to him rather unimpressed, “don't you think that fifty strokes are too much for a woman?”

“Not in her case,” he replied coldly, “she is strong, of excellent health; she is a sturdy girl from the countryside and perfectly capable of supporting the punishment we are going to give her. Besides, you will soon see her, and you can examine her yourself, if you like.”

At this moment, the governor entered the punishment chamber and, after greeting us, he went to sit in the oak chair placed on the platform. Then turning to the doctor and speaking to him in French, so that I could understand, he asked him if Anna Petrowna was fit to bear her punishment.

The doctor greeted and answered in the affirmative. Then the governor lit a cigarette and ordered the condemned woman to be brought in.

The men on duty left the room and returned five minutes later with the inmate. The heavy door was closed. The room then contained the governor, the doctor, and me, the official sitting in the pulpit I told you about, the two guards and the culprit. I looked at the prisoner; she was a well-developed young woman, about five feet nine inches tall, powerfully built, and highly developed. She wore no corset, which left the contours of her robust breasts protruding freely under her cotton dress, while her hips stood out clearly under the folds of her narrow skirt. She was blonde and her long, fair hair, tied into a thick twist, hung down her back to her waist. Her complexion looked excellent and even though the woman was pretty, at this moment her face had a painful and worried expression. She squeezed her thick, red lips, tightly together. Very worried, she looked all around the room with an expression of terror in her big gray eyes and finally, she focused on the two rods lying on the table.

I saw her shivering; tears came to her eyes, her lips began to tremble, and her breasts rose and fell with increasing speed. She was dressed in the standard uniform of inmates, a dress of blue and white striped material whose sleeves stopped at her shoulders, exposing her tanned, muscular arms.

Lazareff approached her and felt her pulse; then he asked me to do the same. I approached and found that although her pulse beat faster than normal, because of her terror, it was full and strong. Her skin was fresh, the flesh of her arms very firm, her physique was splendid and there was no doubt that she was in a state of perfect health.

When I had finished my examination, the governor waved to the guards, who immediately seized the woman's arms and led her to the bench, making her lie face down on the wooden bench. She offered no resistance.

Her arms were then drawn to their full length and fastened firmly on each side of the bench to the crosspiece; the same was done to her feet, which were pulled back firmly to attach her ankles to the other crossbeam. One of the men then lifted the inmate's clothes over her shoulders; under the dress was a small petticoat of flannel that was also lifted, exposing a rough, white shirt, which the guard quickly raised. Since the woman was not wearing pants, she lay on the bench naked from waist to the knees.

Now, I'll provide my impression of what I saw. As a man and in the course of my career as a doctor, I have inspected for pleasure or as a result of my professional requirements the posteriors of a great many women, but never in my life did I see such a display of female flesh. It was a magnificent "field of operation" for the rod. This woman's rump was of moderate width, but frighteningly thick; it was quite curvaceous and full of dimples.

In short, it was beautifully shaped, with the large half-moons touching each other closely, thus forming a line curving gracefully from the loins to the joint of the thighs. The skin illuminated by the sun's rays falling through the windows was white and soft, though it appeared to be somewhat thin. While her thighs were massive and well in proportion to the size of her rump, her calves were huge and looked ready to burst the blue wool stockings that covered them. She had fairly slender ankles and for a woman of her build, small feet.

While she was being prepared for her punishment, she neither moved nor uttered a single word, but she did tremble, her chest was shaking, and big tears flowed from her eyes.

I was struck by the coldness and the methodical indifference which the guards showed in their work. It was obviously a fairly common undertaking for them. Soon everything was ready. One of the guards, rod in hand, placed himself on the inmate's left side, waiting for the governor's signal to begin and during this time he passed the fingers of his left hand through the strands of the rod, carefully spreading them evenly.

The woman turned her head and stared at the rod's strands; the pupils of her eyes were dilated, and I noticed that she was squeezing the muscles of her rump so much that the separation of the buttocks was only a very thin line and further, she had goosebumps. The governor made a sign; the official sitting in the pulpit made a mark on his book and at the same time said aloud: “One!” and the whipping began. The guard did not wave the rod above his head, but raised it perpendicularly and making it describe an arc of a circle and caused it to fall vertically with a sharp blow on the inmate's rump, the stiff branches whistled when contacting this very firm flesh. The blow did not seem too cruelly applied and yet it had hit the mark, for long red streaks immediately appeared on the woman's white skin, her flesh shivered, she twitched convulsively, making a dull moaning sound.

“Two!” shouted the man in the pulpit making another mark in his book. The second stroke fell right next to the first. More red lines immediately appeared, the woman stirred again, and her breathing became gasping, hissing through gritted teeth.

“Three! four! five! six!”

The rod hissed, tearing through the air and slamming with a thud against the flesh of the inmate, who moaned without stopping, but who did not utter a single word.

“Seven! eight! nine! ten!”

The guard whipped with tempo and method, bringing the rod down each time on a fresh place. When the fifteenth stroke was called, the entire surface of her rump had turned pink and was covered with bruises caused by the buds on the strands. The woman's moans had turned into uninterrupted screams; she tossed convulsively, wiggling her rump and her thighs. The whipping continued, the pink colored skin changed to scarlet and long livid stripes were drawn in all directions. Now the right buttock, where the buds on the strands flew with greater velocity, was covered with more and more with bruises. The woman's screams increased in volume, and her wigglings increased in magnitude with each new blow.

When the twenty-fifth stroke had been applied, the guard stopped, moved away from the bench. Then the other guard, equipped with a new rod, came to the woman's right side.

This man was left-handed and could therefore whip from right side so that both sides of the delinquent's rump would receive an equal share of punishment. As the change of executioner took place, the woman turned her head to the governor's side and whispered to him in the midst of her tears and sobs, an appeal for mercy.  The governor did not even acknowledge and disdainfully lit a cigarette.

The doctor came to the delinquent, felt her pulse and unbuttoned the top of her bodice, put his hand on the chest at the place of the heart, but he made no remarks, so that the governor signaled to continue.

At which, the official shouted again: “One!” and the left-handed man, holding the rod in the same way as his predecessor, began to strike.

The woman was now screaming louder and more piercing, while the rod came down with a hissing sound on her now extremely sensitive rump; she struggled violently, pulling madly at her restraints; her face was crimson, and grimacing with pain; she gritted her teeth, her eyes seemed ready to pop out of their sockets, and the flesh of her rump quivered as she wiggled her hips to and fro.  At one point, she lifted her bottom, arching it high above the bench, and when the terrible rod came down, she collapsed on the bench with a loud howl. Her contortions even became so violent and disorderly that there was a moment when she parted her thighs wide.  Her screams became quite shrill, her skin was a dark purple, the welts that crisscrossed her became more and more livid, and drops of blood began to bead on the surface.

But the governor, calmly, lit another cigarette; the official continued to count the strokes, and the guard maneuvered the rod without the slightest sign of emotion on his stupid face, while in the vaulted room the resounding moans and screams of the woman mixed with the whistling of the birch rod.

I had thought that I would be revolted by this spectacle, and I also thought that pity would make it unbearable for me. I felt nothing. To tell you the truth, my only feeling was a violent sensual desire for the woman who was writhing before me. I soon found myself in a violent state of incredible excitement and it was with great difficulty that I kept the necessary composure throughout this spectacle. Moreover, I felt a curious and indefinable sensation of pleasure to see the woman twisting her rump and hearing her cries.

For the first time in my life, I felt an intense voluptuousness that I had been told was that of the man who sees the bare buttocks of a woman whipped. Until then, I had always been very skeptical about the aphrodisiac power attributed to the rod; I realized from my own experience that I had been mistaken.

When the second part of her punishment had begun, the woman, as I told you, had uttered piercing cries, but they diminished in intensity until they reduced to nothing more than a soft and continual groan. The girl, however, continued to writhe in pain. I am ashamed to admit it, I felt disappointed when I heard the official call “twenty-five!” and I saw the last stroke fall on the bloody rump of the unfortunate woman.

Now that the whipping was over, all the flesh of this woman, from the loins to the thighs was dark red and covered with a network of livid welts crossing and crisscrossing in every direction. Large drops of blood were running down her buttocks.

My feelings were confused. I still felt a violent sensual desire, and a feeling of pity was strangely mixed with the pleasure I would have felt to see her whipped again.

She lay on the bench, moaning, gasping for breath. The governor shook off the ashes of his cigarette, rose from his chair, saluted me, and walked out. One of the guards pulled down the victim's clothes, while another loosened her wrists and ankles. The doctor felt her pulse and I did the same. The beats were slow and weak, and, running my hand over her forehead, I found her covered in a cold sweat. She got up from the bench without help, and stood, twisting her loins and shaking on her legs, while sobs shook her all over.

Her face was pale and drawn, her eyes were glossed over, and for a moment I thought she was going to faint, but when she had drunk a full glass of water given to her by one of the guards, she recovered a little. Then with her apron she wiped her sweaty forehead, her tear-stained cheeks, and straightened the top of her bodice.

Then, with an unsteady step, she left the room slowly and with difficulty, between the two guards who had whipped her.

The official closed his book and also went out leaving Lazareff and me alone.

Meanwhile, I had completely regained my composure and looked at Lazareff, waiting for him to speak.

“Well!” he said, “what do you think of our way of punishing our female delinquents?”

If I had spoken my thoughts, I would have replied that this was a truly erotic spectacle, but since the doctor had posed his question with a very serious air, I replied that I found the punishment too severe.

“It was harsh,” Lazareff replied, “but it could have been harsher. The governor could have ordered more strokes and she would have had to take them. All this seems barbaric to you because you are not used to seeing a woman whipped and I dare say that Anna's cries and the appearance of her sore rump moved you. But the pain from the whipping — severe as it was — will soon pass, and Anna will be fully recovered tomorrow.  Her welts, however, will remain with her longer. Now, if you want, we can go to the infirmary, and see how she is.”

We left the room and went first to the pharmacy where the doctor took a bottle of a soothing lotion and a large piece of linen.  Then we entered the room where Anna had been taken.

There were half a dozen convalescent women there, all dressed in loose blue flannel robes, and when they saw us, they lined up as I had seen the other prisoners do, at the foot of their beds. We had surprised them as they were looking at Anna's poor bottom.

We found her lying flat on her stomach on a bed, while a woman was applying cold water to her sore bottom.

I examined her cheeks; they were all bruised, dark red and furrowed with livid welts, the blood was still flowing in places and passing my hand over the delinquent's flesh, I found her burning. Then I felt her pulse and found it back to her normal state; the emotion of the punishment had partly disappeared, and her face had regained most of its color.

Lazareff moistened the cloth, which he had brought, with that soothing lotion, and applied this cloth to the woman's rump.  He then gently said a few words to her which brought a smile to her lips.

“You see that she is quite recovered,” he tells me, “She clearly received a sound spanking, but the guards did not hit her too hard. If they had, you would find her in a completely different state; the skin would have been torn and I would have to keep the inmate in the hospital for many days. While she will feel her pain only for a few hours and it will not have any untoward consequences, although her rump will be tender for a while and walking will hurt her a little.”

Leaving Anna to rest on the bed where she had been lying, placed on her side, we left the room and Lazareff drove me back to the prison gate wishing me good evening and invited me to come back the next day to see how Anna's condition progressed.

I returned to my hotel, replaying in my mind the scene I had witnessed, evoking with a strong sense of sensual pleasure, the various details of the flogging: The delinquent bound on the bench, the guards raising her clothes one by one, the revelation of her prodigious rump, her contortions, the squirming of her whole body under the bites of the rod while her white skin gradually passed from pink to scarlet and finally to the crimson that soon covers her entire bottom with ruby drops of blood.

Then I thought about Anna's girlish charms. What a tasty plumpness, what chubby, firm flesh and so delicately white. I imagined her in my arms and savored in my mind the treasures on which I had been able to feast my eyes. All kinds of lascivious thoughts went through my head, and I ended up not being able to resist the desire to possess a woman that evening. That hadn't happened to me in almost three months.

Arrived at the hotel, I had lunch and discreetly found the address of one of those hospitable houses where lovers of pleasure can knock whenever they please.

The day seemed to me to be of an exhausting length; I had no rest and remained in an incredible state of excitement until dinner time.

When I had finished my meal and smoked a cigar, I went out to stroll a little in the streets of the city and as soon as the night fell, I headed to the house which was recommended to me as being the best of its kind in the city of Tomsk.

I knocked on the door which was opened to me immediately by a young maid dressed in a very coquettish way and who without saying a word, ushered me into a large and comfortably furnished room, where she left me. Two minutes later, the lady of the house came in and we exchanged polite greetings. She was a very well-preserved woman, with a cheerful and pleasant appearance; she must have been about forty years old, and I was very happy to learn that she could speak French.

She asked me to sit down and we talked. I told her I was English and she told me that she was born in St. Petersburg, but had lived in Paris for several years. Then she added, smiling, “I suppose you came to see my daughters?”

“Yes, ma'am,” I replied.

“Very well, I will bring them to you.”

She went out and five minutes had not passed when she returned followed by a charming battalion of pretty women. There were ten of them. One after the other, they came to offer me their hands, bowing their heads gracefully, and then they went to sit on the chairs placed in a circle around the room, waiting for me to make my choice.

All were young, eighteen to twenty years old, twenty-six at most, some were very beautiful. Their arms were bare and their bodices were so low-cut that I could see the pink line separating their young breasts and their dresses came down barely below the knees, showing their legs molded in silk stockings of various colors and their feet laced into fine shoes. Not one of them could speak or understand a word of any language other than Russian.

“Now, Sir,” said the mistress, “what do you want to do? I think we will be able to give you whatever pleasure whatever your fantasy desires. Would you like two or three of these young women? They will be your servants.”

“Oh, one will be enough for me, ma'am,” I replied with a laugh.

“As you please. What do you prefer? A fat one or a thin one?”

“I would like her chubby, with a copious rump.”

She laughs and says, “That's good; I think I have what you want. I will show you all of them to you and you can choose.”

She said a few words to her 'daughters' who showed no surprise and getting up all went to stand in a row, close to each other turning their backs to us. Then they lifted their skirts to their belts and as they had no pants, I immediately viewed all of their bare bottoms.

These young women were all well-made, three or four of them especially.

Some were corpulent, others thin, there were tall ones, small ones, and olive, pink, pink-tea, pink-white skin tones. All of them had beautiful legs and thighs as well as an exquisite rump. I had never in my life seen so many female posteriors at once. It was the most charming and exciting of shows. I could not keep my composure at the sight of these ten posteriors so beautifully spread out before me, all of different sizes and shapes, but all delicious.

“Are you decided, now?” said the mistress to me with a clever smile, and she started to walk behind her small pack by pinching each of their buttocks, so as to show me their firmness.”

I let my eyes wander several times over the charming display and finally stopped on the fattest and largest one. I pointed it out to the matron. She gave an order and all the young women pulled down their dresses and left the room, except for the one I had chosen. She came to me, smiling and seeming charmed by my preference.

She was a tall, beautiful, blonde girl about twenty-two years old whose height, plumpness, and body shape reminded me of Anna. The young lady had blue eyes, pretty white teeth, beautiful red lips. She was dressed in a white dress with a wide blue ribbon tied around her waist, her stockings were of pale blue silk, reaching to the middle of her thighs, and she had exquisite high-heeled boots.

She motioned for me to follow her and left the room. I followed her to an upper floor, and we entered a rather large bedroom, well-lit and elegantly furnished. The bed was wide and low, on the side wall was a large mirror whose reflections were repeated by another mirror placed on the opposite wall so that the couple who lay there could contemplate their lovemaking without effort. The young woman took off her clothes and in a few seconds was naked in front of me, having kept only her stockings and shoes. Her skin was exquisitely fine, as white as milk. Her breasts were quite full but very firm; her belly had no wrinkles. I will tell you nothing of the other treasures of this young lady; it is enough for you to know that she was indeed the most charming creature of love that one could dream and such I never thought I could find in this lost corner of Siberia.

I soon made myself comfortable as well and I began to wrestle my girlfriend. Then leading her to the bed, I made her lie on her stomach and thus contemplate at ease her exuberant rump. This sight had soon put me in a state of the greatest excitement, and I felt overcome by a violent desire to make this milk white skin blush under my blows.

In all my previous relationships with women, never had such a fantasy entered my mind, but the flogging I had witnessed that day had brought me into a new stream of lascivious ideas unknown to me before. I had come to think that a woman's rump was the most beautiful part of her body and that one of the most vivid pleasures one could enjoy was to either whip that lovely place or to see it whipped.

So, I caressed with my hand and passionately squeezed the soft and firm hemispheres of this chubby rump for a few minutes and then began to give it slight slaps, with a powerful desire to have a rod with which to hit her much harder. She probably guessed what was stirring me, for she jumped out of bed and went to a piece of furniture where she opened a drawer and she took out, to my great surprise and joy, a pretty little birch rod bound with scarlet ribbons. This rod although of a modest size was not a toy. She put the rod in my hands and placed herself on the bed in such a way that she most provocatively offered me her naked rump, and then looking at me, she indicated that I should whip her.

With an intense sensation of pleasure, I began to whip the rump so beautifully spread out in front of me; I struck first quite gently, then with a little more force, which brought pink colors on the white skin. Then seeing that she did not react, I applied blistering and severe rod strokes to her which made long red stripes emerge. The pain must have been quite sharp, for she reared up and began to writhe. Her flesh quivered involuntarily with each stroke, and she kicked her legs one after the other; she clenched her fists and hid her head in the covers.

I continued to whip her to such an extent that she could not bear my blows any longer and she jumped up with a small scream and brought her hands to her buttocks. Her eyes were full of tears, her face was all wracked with pain, and her lips were quivering. I thought she might begin crying, but she calmed down. Wiping away her tears with one hand and rubbing her bottom with the other, she tried to smile and uttered a few words in a trembling voice.

I had become quite excited while whipping the young woman, a sensation that was new to me and voluptuous as possible. If she had been bound and at my mercy, there is no doubt that I would have whipped her mercilessly until blood. However, I am far from cruel, and I cannot explain why I took such intense pleasure in seeing Anna whipped and why I was overcome with a desire to whip a woman myself. I guess there must be a strange and mysterious power in the rod since after having witnessed it used only once, I was immediately possessed by the demon of cruel lust and at the same time possessed by an intense sexual desire.

For the moment I was no longer in control and thought only of possessing my dear victim on the spot.

In a short time, we exhausted all the possible pleasures. When we had put our clothes back on, I gave a present to the young woman who made great gestures of gratitude to me — she probably had not expected to receive anything. I then went down to the reception room; I found the mistress alone and she laughingly asked me if I was satisfied.

“Yes,” I replied, “I liked the young woman very much, but I'm afraid I have marked her pretty behind with the rod she gave me.”

“Oh! Not to worry,” she replied. “All my 'daughters' are used to the rod. Many of the gentlemen who come here are very fond of this sport.”

“Besides,” she added with a laugh, “the rod is an institution in Russia. It is used throughout the empire, in the army, in the navy, in schools, in families, in prisons and in police stations, and everyone, regardless of gender, is more or less at risk to its blows. Twice I was very severely whipped in police stations, once in St. Petersburg and once in Moscow. Here, I severely whip my 'daughters' whenever they commit a serious offence. Oh! I can assure you that whipping is almost as common in Russia as eating and drinking.”

“That is consistent with my experience,” I observed with a smile.

We settled the financial question; I found her prices very modest. Including a bottle of champagne, the whole thing cost me only ten rubles, a little over thirty shillings in English currency. It seems that love and whipping are cheap in Siberia.

I returned to my hotel, telling myself that I had spent a very eventful and pleasant day.

The next morning, I went to the prison and was taken by a guard to the pharmacy where I found Lazareff preparing a remedy for one of his patients. After shaking my hands, he said, “I haven't seen Anna yet today, but I'll send for her and we can examine her together.” He gave an order to a guard who saluted and left.

Five minutes later Anna returned to the pharmacy, accompanied by a guard who on a sign of Lazareff left the room leaving us alone with the inmate.

Anna greeted us with a deep bow and stood straight in front of us. I noticed that she was walking with difficulty, but her face was good. She had lost her pallor and that dark, terrified look. She had regained her bright colors and her gray eyes their brilliance. Really, she was a beautiful woman, and I could not restrain myself from staring at her, thinking it would be an unparalleled sensual joy to be able to possess her.

She noticed my staring at her, looked down, and began to blush; something she had not done all the time she had been whipped, her pain and terror were simply too great then.

“Her face looks good,” says the doctor while patting her cheek, “let's see if the other side is as well.”   

He said two or three words to her. She turned at once and raising her skirts as high as possible presenting us her superb bottom.

The entire surface, from the lower back to the thighs, was still very red, although the swelling had gone down a lot. The long welts that I had noticed after her flogging were no longer protruding on the red and slightly inflamed skin. Similarly bruises made by buds on the birch rods were still visible. Scars were beginning to form where the flesh had been torn. I counted them and found thirty; some were nearly two inches long.

Putting my hand on her rump, I found the skin still hot and quite rough to the touch; the flesh must still be very tender. Anna struggled and stepped back as much as she could, as I touched her, and let my hand wander without objection from her upper cheeks to her thighs. I dare to confess that I touched that chubby flesh longer than was necessary for a medical examination.

The inmate's pulse was firm and steady, her temperature was normal, and in short, with the exception of the marks, she no longer felt the severe whipping she had undergone twenty-four hours ago.

When we had finished the exam in question, the doctor told her to pull down her petticoats. She obeyed and stood as before straight in front of us, but she seemed ashamed and cast shy glances my way. As I was rather cruel at that time, I could not contain the strong desire I had to see her whipped again in front of me.

I was quite demoralized, and the sight of poor "disfigured" Anna's rather frightening buttocks, furrowed with livid welts, instead of arousing my pity, gave me strong desires. I believe that the young woman noticed my frenzy and guessed my motives, but I don't think Lazareff noticed anything. He spoke a few words to Anna and she replied with great animation, clapping her hands and shaking her head briskly. He then recalled the guard who took the inmate away.

Lazareff then told me that Anna had said that it was the first time she had been whipped and that it had caused her so much pain that she would be careful not to do anything to incur such a punishment again. He added: “You can see for yourself that she is completely recovered. A whipping of fifty lashes, properly applied, like yesterday's, can do no harm to the health of a vigorous young woman like Anna. She will not be able to sit for two or three days without experiencing some discomfort and in a fortnight, at most, the last marks will have disappeared. I will keep her in the infirmary today, but she will go back to work tomorrow.”

Together we talked for some time about the discipline in force in the prison and he told me some curious anecdotes concerning the rod and its use.  He told me that during his twenty-five years of service, he had witnessed the flogging of more than a thousand condemned delinquents, of which more than three hundred were women and young girls.

He also told me that a month earlier, one of the nihilist prisoners, a charming young woman who before her detention had held a rank in the high society of St. Petersburg, had been bound on the whipping bench and given twenty-five strokes for insubordination, exactly the same reason as Anna.

I thought to myself that if I had been present, I could not help but find this spectacle very exciting.

As there was nothing more for me to see, I left the prison and Lazareff accompanied me to the hotel where he kept me company for the rest of the day and had dinner with me. We spent a very pleasant evening together and parted with a thousand good wishes.

At the moment I am preparing for my departure to Irkutsk and think I should leave Tomsk in a day or two.

There is a prison in Irkutsk and Lazareff gave me a letter of introduction to the doctor.

Perhaps I will have the chance to see a woman whipped again. As you can see, I have become an “enthusiast of the rod”.

I end this long letter here: I hope you find my notations amusing! When I have reached Irkutsk, I will write to you again and if I witness any more whippings, especially of women, you will have all the details.

And now see you soon.
Sincerely to you.