Mob Movies

Chapter 30 Historical Research

        

     After listening to my wife’s confession and taking her home for an over the knee spanking followed by a punishing fuck, all of which she both needed and adored, I found my curiosity piqued by the club’s use of the rail as a form of punishment.  I googled the terms, ‘Riding the rail,’ and “Tarred and feathered and ridden on a rail’.  I found some interesting accounts written by those who had suffered through the experience.

      The Wikipedia Web site provided a reasonably complete history of the practice.  It actually began in Europe centuries before where the application of molten pitchblende often resulted in the death of the victim.  On the American side, there was a horrifying 1771 tale by a custom’s official in Boston whose dedication to collecting the correct tariff led to a mob of sailors and traders performing the ritual on him in Boston Commons.   Apparently, not only criminals were subjected to the punishment.

      However, the most intriguing document was located on the Web site of Mouth Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts.  Written in 1857 by Amanda Witherspoon, a local girl from abolitionist stock whose mother was one of the founders of the girl’s college.  Her tale combined historical value with pornographic impact.  Amanda, the daughter of ardent opponents of slavery, journeyed south in 1855 to establish a way station on the Underground Railway outside a small town named Webster Springs in what is now the state of West Virginia but was still part of Virginia in those pre Civil War days.

      The article included an old black and white photograph of a serious but pretty girl staring straight at the camera without smiling.  In those days, camera exposures required minutes not microseconds like today.  You can’t hold a smile for that long.  That’s why no one is smiling in those old pictures, an interesting factoid from one whose expertise is photography and imaging.

    Amanda purchased a run down farm with funds provided by the abolitionist’s movement known in historical parlance as the Underground Railway.  The movement was highly successful in spiriting slaves north to Canada and freedom.  It was much despised by slaveholders and they were ferocious in their efforts to wipe it of the map.

      Amanda was barely eighteen when she made the purchase.  I can’t imagine why her parents allowed her to undertake such a mission.  Somehow the idea of an eighteen-year-old girl buying and operating a farm strikes me as ludicrous but those were different times.  Women married at fourteen and died before they reached fifty.

      In Amanda’s brave words, she intended, “to help the Negroes walk as free men on God’s earth even if it cost her everything including her life.”  Based on what followed, it cost her dearly.

     While recovering at her parent’s home, Amanda wrote a detailed account of her ordeal at the hands of those she referred to as ‘godless holders with human slavery’.  The local abolitionist’s group who planned to publish it to show the cruelty and brutality of slavery encouraged her to tell her story.  Unfortunately, her account was considered too salacious for the Puritan tastes of the New England public although a sanitized version appeared in the local press.  It is a grim tale.

     Amanda’s farm had been functioning as a station on the Underground Railway for some months when disaster struck.  One warm July evening at dusk, a party of twenty heavily armed men appeared unexpectedly at the farm.  They were part slave owners and part slave bounty hunters who had been informed about Amanda’s station from a runaway caught several miles north of her station. 

     The runaway, Sarah Collingswood, had revealed everything after her backside had been horse whipped to the point the flesh was shredded and the bones were visible.  Apparently, Sarah was a tough one.  I would have given up Amanda at the mere sight of a mean looking Southerner with a horsewhip.

     The leader of the party was Captain Reginald Early Bellman, the owner of a large South Carolina sugar plantation.  I guess not everyone grew cotton.  A search quickly located two runaway sisters in the hidden room underneath the root cellar. 

     Amanda goes into surprising detail for that time about how Bellman ordered his men to strip her naked during which their rude hands repeatedly violated her person inserting their fingers inside her secret and vulnerable parts.  In other words, they finger fucked her.

     The two slave girls were also stripped and the three females tied to beds in the farmhouse.  Since I found this part cock hardening, I’ll reproduce an excerpt from Amanda’s story.  Rape and torture stories are always best when the victim provides her first hand account.

     

     Captain Bellman looked down on my nakedness without a speck of God’s mercy in his eyes.  I pleaded with him to respect my person and to treat me as a Christian woman.  He sneered at my claim to be a follower of Christ, saying I was a Godless whore who conjugated with Negroes.  He accused me of being worse than any Jezebel saying I had pleasured myself with the runaways who in his view were less than human.

     “You are the worst sort of whore, one who breeds with nigras like a dirty animal,” spat the Captain before delivering a slap to the side of my face that made my ears ring.

     I denied his horrid accusations saying I was an unmarried lady of sound virtue who attended the Holiness Church located right on the town square in the center of Webster Springs.

     “You’re nothing but a fucking whore who sleeps with niggers,” said the Captain employing the profane language of those who hold with the ownership of their fellow human beings.  “So what my men and I do to you should mean nothing.”

     At the Captain’s command, his ruffians bound my wrists with crude hemp they secured to the bedposts.  They stretched my arms most cruelly until I cried out in pain.  Ignoring my protests, they passed their callused hands over my bosom, touching my most private places.   

     The Captain instructed his brutish sons, Wyche and Tillman to hold my ankles, separating them most cruelly.  I cried out for mercy as the Captain exposed his manhood, holding it in his fist and taunting me with names such as strumpet, slut, and woman of easy virtue.  I denied his taunts as he took position I had hoped none but my future husband would occupy.

    I screamed as I felt him press into me.  Nearby I heard the pitiful cries of Kathy and Lee Anne as the Captain’s men ravaged their honor.  Those poor unfortunate Africans who I hoped to transport to a life of freedom were suffering the same horrible fate as myself.

    The agony of the Captain’s entry caused me near to faint; however, his brutish hands crushed my womanly bosom bringing me to full awareness of my pitiful state.  Anxious to increase my agony, his powerful fingers grasped my teats and lifted me by that flesh intended by the Lord to succor my offspring.

     My struggles were fruitless and my tears of no avail as he repeatedly pummeled my sex.  Finally, he reared up, his face a mask of lust, as he filled me with his horrible seed.

     When he withdrew, I lay weeping for the shame of the wrong done to my person.   My violated sex was covered in the product of his manhood.  I had been shamed and could never again consider myself an honest woman able to hold her head high in God’s house.

     But my sorry was quickly interrupted when Wyche, the youngest of his brood, a brawny lad, who much resembled his father, took his place and entered my sex with as much brutality as he could muster.   His animal cries joined with those raping those two unfortunate girls filling the room with the sounds of lust and rapine.  I cried out to the Lord to save me from their depravity.  I can only believe his failure to come to my assistance was the result of some horrible sin of omission on my part.

     That night I experienced the total depravity of those who hold with slavery.  After Wyche seeded me, Tillman replaced his brother.  When he had finished my rape, the Captain invited the others to add to my shame.

     And thus it continued throughout the night.  Whiskey and snuff were shared among the Captain’s men adding to their already bestial nature.  They untied my arms, forced me to assume the position favored by the beasts of the field and took their pleasure as if I were a dog or a cow.   Their lust knew no satisfaction as each one of these savage men sought to prove his appetite for my flesh greater than the one before.

     While my rape progressed, Captain Bellman under the influence of Satan’s whiskey and the foul smelling cheroot clenched in his teeth enjoyed a game of whist with his men.  At some point, this purveyor of evil announced he was going to use me in the fashion preferred by Negroes when they lay with white women.

    “Tillman, you and your brother hold the whore’s butt apart so I can fuck her nigger loving ass,” bellowed the Captain as he drunkenly staggered to the side of my bed.

     I had thought it impossible to add to my disgrace; but, as I lay helpless in his sons’ grasp, the Captain applied swine fat to my nether region invading my most private place with his fingers.  I recoiled in horror at the thought men reared in a God fearing nation would use me thus.   I screamed in agony as his blunt fingers entered me in an act of depravity worthy of Satan himself.

     Wyche and Tillman held me for their father as he took position over my posterior.  The Captain laughed at my desperate pleas to avoid the sin of sodomy.  He announced to his men who had gathered to watch my utter humiliation that after tonight, I would be the same as the whores who work in the fancy houses in Charleston where all the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah are practiced.

     I had thought the agony of my earlier travails couldn’t be surpassed.  However, the insertion of his manhood in an orifice intended only for the elimination of excrement more than overmatched my earlier experience.  Screams of sheer agony were wrenched from my body as his evil manhood entered my bowels.

      “I don’t think any of her nigger lovers have plowed the cunt’s ass,” said Captain Bellman as he savagely thrust in me.

      The assemblage’s laughter joined my screams as the Captain mounted on my posterior performed this unnatural act of intercourse.   The sons followed the father in his perversion of my body; then the others took their turn.

     My two Colored sisters and I were repeatedly assaulted over that seemingly endless night.  I had hoped the morn would bring me respite but the Captain had other plans.

    He approached my bed where I lay hurting in my person and sobbing in shame.  He was holding my hair shears.  Without a word, he straddled my chest and began to cut off my hair.  Too exhausted to struggle or even protest, I lay quietly as he shorn me of that which marked me as a woman.   Tillman, at his father’s direction, scraped my scalp with a razor until I resembled a newborn.

    My punishment deemed insufficient, Captain Bellman and his evil progeny pinned me to my bed.

    “I’m going to mark you for life,” said the Captain holding a skinning knife. 

    My struggles were useless as they pressed the side of my face into the mattress.  I felt a sharp pain and then wetness as blood flowed from my wound.

    “Turn her so I can cut the other ear off,” said the Captain to his progeny.  

    An agonizing moment later, I was disfigured for life.

    “I’ll keep these as a souvenir,” said the Captain showing me my severed flesh.  

    I was loaded, bleeding, bound and naked, into the back of a wagon.  Bounty hunters took Kathy and Lee Anne away.  I was never to see them again or learn their fate.  Doubtlessly, they were returned to their owners who may well have punished them further.

     The Captain instructed his men to set fire to my farm.  I wept at the sight of my home being consumed in flame.   As we traveled toward town, I pleaded with the Captain saying I had already suffered horribly and as a Christian he should show me mercy.

     However, Captain Bellman was a cold heartless man as are all slavers.  The ownership of slaves turns man into a beast.  He was in no way finished with the horrible depredation of my person.

     When we reached the center of Webster Springs, Captain Bellman sent his men to ring the church bell drawing the townspeople to witness my punishment. 

     A crowd gathered quickly at the sound of the unexpected tocsin.  I saw Sherif Turner and cried out for him to help me but he just looked away.  The townspeople of Webster Springs lacked the courage to come to my aid as I was tied naked and bleeding to the wheel of my wagon.  My state was such it was several minutes before people who I had attended Sunday services with for almost a year recognized me.

     When Captain Bellman deemed the crowd was sufficient, he made a speech I will do my best to recall.

     “Webster Springs has become a haven for those who aid the escape of runaway slaves.  This woman, Miss Amanda Witherspoon, is an abolitionist.  She is an adulteress who fornicated with the Negroes she gave food and rest at her farm before they were spirited north to escape their owners.  She bestowed her favors not only on the male slaves but also the female in what the Bible declares the worst sin possible.  My men and I will meet out just punishment for such wickedness.  But I warn the good people of Webster Springs to be more vigilant about those who steal the property of others.   Next time, the entire town may suffer for harboring such malefactors.”

     After the Captain spoke his filthy lies, Tillman proceeded to deliver thirty lashes to my backside, the scars of which I will carry to my grave.  Each lash opened my flesh.  By the time I had received the last blow, the white of my bones was visible.

     None of the citizens made entreaty to end my misery.  In fact, several of the men encouraged Tillman to lay it harder onto the nigger-loving whore.  They called me horrible names as I was whipped insensible.  Each time I fainted, I was revived with a bucket of water drawn from a nearby horse trough.

     As I hung in my bonds in abject misery, my blood dripping on the earth at my feet, I felt the presence of some awful compound burning the ravaged flesh of my back.  The burning escalated into the most horrible pain imaginable and I began once more to scream.

     The Captain had seen fit to purchase a container of sea salt from Mr. McCray’s Emporium and ordered Wyche to apply it to my open wounds.  Mrs. Emma Tisdale, the Minister’s wife said my screams could be heard throughout the town and she felt her heart almost break at my agonized cries.  The crystals burrowed into my lesions scaring me for life. 

         I had collapsed hanging by my wrists when I felt the presence of something hot on my newly exposed scalp.  I lay helpless as Bellman’s men covered me in hot pitch.  I screamed as the odious substance burned my flesh blinding me.  When there was not an inch of skin free from tar, they dumped a sack of feathers over me.  I was rolled in the dirt causing the feathers to form a thick coating on my person.

     I begged for the Lord to come and take me, such was my pain.  The tar covering my eyes prevented me from seeing the men who carried me to a nearby fence and placed me astride the top rail.  Ropes held me in place as pieces of iron taken from the blacksmith were secured to my legs.  The Captain made an announcement that I was to remain there until the town hall clock struck noon.  He threatened to burn down Webster Springs if I was removed before my sentence ended.  He and his men departed leaving me to my suffering.

     According to the kind people who helped me, it was barely ten when Captain Bellman and his men rode off.  Such was the fear of the populace, no one moved until my sentence was fully served. 

     The pain associated with the sharp edge cutting into my most tender flesh was unbearable almost from the start.  After the night’s deprivations, my womanly parts were agonizingly painful without the application of the sharp wood.  My muffled cries for mercy were ignored by the town folk. 

     I screamed until I could scream no more.  Many of the onlookers could not bear to listen and covered their ears or moved out of hearing.  The agony was like no other.   It increased each minute until it consumed my entire being.  I tried to sing my favorite hymn but could not recall the words.  I called fruitlessly on the Lord to take me to his bosom.

     Finally, the town hall clock struck noon.  Some of the churchwomen removed me from that horrible railing and took me to a nearby house where I hovered between life and death for a week.  It was two months before I recovered enough strength to journey north to my parent’s home.

     There was an odd twist to the story.  The Web site included a folder of information gathered by a graduate research assistant in 1979.   The researcher had collected data about Amanda’s life after she returned to South Hadley. Perhaps the assistant intended to publish her biography.  However, no biography was ever published that I could find in the Library of Congress catalog.

     The folder contained any number of documents including newspaper accounts of Amanda’s rather uneventful later life and that of her friends and relatives.  She remained active in the abolitionist’s movement until the Emancipation Proclamation then transferred her political allegiance to the suffragist cause.  She eventually married a pharmacist and bore him two sons.

     But I did find something very interesting.  Apparently, Amanda gave birth to an infant son seven months after her ordeal.  The birth certificate, reproduced on a Web page, contained the phrase, Bastard Child of Rape, where the name of the father was supposed to be.    I suppose folks in those days were not inclined to cut a rape victim a break and just write Unknown.   The boy was named Alvin Taylor Witherspoon.  He grew up to attend Harvard and become a prominent Boston physician.

      As I looked through the Web pages, I came upon several pictures of Alvin who lived to the age of sixty-eight succumbing to influenza in 1924.  He had decidedly Negro features.   In fact, he looked more Afro-American than Caucasian.

     Amanda’s writing did not indicate her encounter with Captain Bellman and his sons resulted in a baby.  Nor was it probable, Bellman’s posse included any one who was not one hundred percent a red neck white man.  Further, and this is the kicker, the baby was born seven months after she took her ride on the rail which means she was already two months pregnant with a black man’s baby.

     So when Captain Bellman claimed Amanda was providing more than food and shelter to fleeing slaves, he was right.  Perhaps that was the reason the graduate researcher decided not to write her biography.