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BDSM Dictionary : Cat o nine tails: history
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This entry is part of the BDSM Dictionary hosted
by Informed Consent.
Cat o nine tails
Traditionally, a "Cat o' nine tails" (with several variants on
punctuation) is a whip consisting of nine knotted
cords fastened to a handle.
These days, the term "cat o'nine tails" tends to be more liberally used
in BDSM to describe almost any kind of multi-tailed
whip, or flogger. These whips are usually made
of soft leather and have much less potential for injury than the
historical punishment tool that could flay a person's back within a
dozen strokes.
The "real world" "cat" is (occasionally still) used for severe
flogging.
The "Cat O' Nine Tails" is a type of multi-tailed whipping device that
originated as an implement for severe physical punishment as in the
British Royal Navy. Description and History
The naval "cat", also known as the captain's daughter (in principle it
was only used under his authority), was about 13 oz. in weight and
composed of a baton (handle) and nine thongs.
The instrument traditionally has nine thongs as a result of the manner
in which rope is braided. Thinner rope is made from three strands of
yarn braided together, and thicker rope from three strands of thinner
rope braided together. To make a cat o' nine tails, a rope would simply
be unraveled into three small ropes, and each of those would then be
unraveled in turn.
During the period of the Napoleonic wars, the naval cat's handle was
made of rope about two feet long and about an inch in diameter, and was
traditionally covered with red baize cloth. The "tails" or thongs were
made of cord about a quarter inch in diameter and typically two feet
long. When inflicting punishment for theft, which was considered a
particularly offensive crime on board ship, the thongs were each knotted
three times to cause additional pain. A new cat was made for each
flogging by a bosun's mate and kept in a red
baize bag until use. In Trafalgar time, it was made by the condemned
sailor during 24 in leg irons. The nine strongest falls were kept, and
extra lashes were administered if any of the selected falls were found
to be sub-standard. If several dozen lashes were awarded, each could be
administered by a fresh bosun's mate - a left-handed one could be
included to assure extra painful criss-crossing of the wounds. One dozen
was usually awarded as a highly sensitizing 'prelude' to running the
gauntlet.
In some cases a cat with a wooden handle was used, and steel balls or
barbs of wire were added to the tips of the thongs to maximize the
potential flogging injury.
All formal punishments - ordered by captain or court martial - were
given ceremoniously on deck, the crew being summoned to "witness
punishment" (though usually adults and boys separate) and drama enhanced
by drum roll and a whole routine. Informal 'daily' canings etc. were
often left unrecorded.
Contrary to popular belief, the standard cat was not the most feared
implement; being made of rope, it was rather less painful than a leather
whip or a wooden birch-rod, while the modes of application (number and
inensity of lashes, anatomical target, baring etc.) of any implement can
be more important than its intrinsic potential.
- For summary punishment of Royal Navy "boys", a lighter model was
made, the "reduced cat", also known as "boy's cat, boy's pussy" or just
"pussy", that had only five tails of smooth whip cord. If condemned by
court martial, however, even boys would suffer the claw of the 'adult' cat.
While adult sailors received their lashes on the back, they were
administered to boys on the bare posterior, usually while "kissing the
gunner's daughter" (i.e. bending over a gun), just as boys' lighter
'daily' chastisement was usually over their (often naked) rear-end
(mainly with a cane - this could be applied to the
hand, but captains generally refused such impractical disablement -, a
rope's end etc). Bare-bottom discipline was a tradition of the English
upper and middle classes, who frequented public schools, so midshipmen
(trainee officers, usually from "good families", getting a cheaper
equivalent education) were not spared, at best sometimes allowed to
receive their lashes inside a cabin. Still it is reported that the
"infantile" humiliation of bare stern punishment was believed essential
for optimal deterrence, cocky miscreants might brave the pain of the
adult cat in the macho spirit of "taking it like a man", even as a
"badge of honour".
On board training ships, where most of the crew were boys, the cat was
never introduced, but their bare bottoms risked, as in other naval
establishments on land, the sting of the birch,
another favourite in public schools.
- The British army had a similar whip, though much lighter in
construction; made of a drumstick with attached strings. The flogger was
usually a drummer rather than a strong bosun's mate. Flogging with the
cat o' nine tails fell into disuse around 1870. Naturally it was also
used elsewhere in the Commonwealth, e.g in Canada (a dominion in 1867)
until 1881 (this
http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/200/301/ic/can_digi...
1812 drawing shows a drummer apparently lashing the buttocks of a naked
soldier who is tied with spread legs on an A-frame made from lances)
- The cat-o'-nine-tails was also notoriously used on adult convicts
in prisons; a 1951 memorandum
(http://www.corpun.com/ukprr1.htm
on CorPun- possibly confirming earlier practice) ordered all UK male
prisons to use only cats o' nine tails (and birches) from a national
stock at Wandsworth prison, where they were to be 'thorourgly' tested
before being supplied in triplicate to a prison whenever a procedure was
pending for use as prison discipline
- Especially harsh floggings were given with it in secondary penal
colonies of early colonial Australia, particularly at such places as
Norfolk Island (apparently this has 9 leather thongs each with a lead
weight, meant as the utter deterrent for hardened life-convicts), Port
Arthur and Moreton Bay (now Brisbane).
- Contrary to common belief, the cat is not entirely out of use is
post-colonial societies, not even in all modern non-Islamic Commonwealth
countries : in the Caribbean, Antigua and Barbuda reinstated flogging on
the bare back in 1990, the Bahamas in 1991, Barbados in 1993, Trinidad
in 1993 (as well as birching, an option for the
courts) and Jamaica in 1994 (flogging was banned again by the jamaican
Court of Appeal in 1998 http://www.nospank.net/n-d87.htm).
- Regardless if they are called cat (or cat of x tails) variations
exist, such as the 'whip' used on adult Egyptian prisoners (banned in
2001; boys were caned) having a cord on a cludgle branching into 7
tails, each with six nots
- Sometimes the term cat is used rather incorrectly to describe
various other punitive flogging devices with multiple tails in any
number (so it is better to call them just cat), even one made from 80
twigs (so rather a limp birch) to flog a sick Iranian (in stead of 80
lashes normally applicable under shariah).
In more recent years the term "cat o' nine tails" is -even more
imprecisely- used to describe almost any kind of multi-tailed whip,
particularly those found in modern BDSM. These whips
are usually made of soft leather and have much less potential for
injury; such miniature version is also known as ball
whip because it is used for male
genitorture (otherwise often performed with a
pencil)References in modern culture
Expressions
- The still-popular sailor's song "What shall we do with a drunken
sailor?" has a verse that goes "Give him a taste of the captain's
daughter" or "Throw him in bed with the captain's daughter". While this
doesn't sound a dire fate for the tipsy seaman, in actuality the term
"captain's daughter" refers to the cat o' nine tails or a similar whip.
The expression "to kiss the gunner's daughter" equally referred to a boy
bending over a field gun, usually tied down, the trousers lowered,
exposing the buttocks for a sound lashing.
- The common phrase, "not enough room to swing a cat," refers not
to the swinging of a feline, but of a cat o' nine tails.
- The phrase "letting the cat out of the bag" in the sense of
revealing a secret may derive from the cat o' nine tails being kept in a
red baize bag and being taken out when punishment is to be inflicted.
For a sailor being punished for the first time, the secret of what the
'cat' is was thereby revealed. There are other possible explanations for
this particular phrase.
Fiction
- In the "Known Space" series of science-fiction books, the alien
race called Outsiders are always described as resembling a "cat o' nine
tails with a fattened handle."
See also
Sources and References and further reading
(This entry in the BDSM Dictionary incorporates text from the
Cat
o' nine tails article in Wipipedia.)
This entry is published under the terms of the
GFDL. People with profiles on
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