A history of English sexual morals / by Ivan Bloch ; translated by William H. Forstern.

  • Iwan Bloch
Date:
1936
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A history of English sexual morals / by Ivan Bloch ; translated by William H. Forstern. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    35/700 (page 5)
    The Englishman was downright, thorough and logical in his brutality as he was in everything else. Macaulay gives countless instances of this, especially in his brilliant description of the manners of the seventeenth century. The most notorious example of this English brutality was Judge Jeffreys. Macaulay gives the following picture of him: ■ He was a man of quick and vigorous parts but consti- tutionally prone to insolence and to the angry passions. . . . Already might be remarked in him the most odious vice which is incident to human nature, a delight in misery merely as misery. There was a fiendish exultation in the way in which he pronounced sentence on offenders. Their weeping and imploring seemed to titillate him voluptuously; and he loved to scare them into fits by dilating with luxuriant amplification on all the details of what they were to suffer. Thus, when he had the opportunity of ordering an unlucky adventuress to be whipped at the cart's tail, Hangman, he would exclaim,1 charge you to pay particular attention to this lady! Scourge her soundly, man. Scourge her till the blood runs down! It is Christmas, a cold time for Madam to strip in! See that you warm her shoulders thoroughly! . . . To enter his court was to enter the den of a wild beast which none could tame and which was as likely to be roused to rage by caresses as by attacks. He frequently poured forth on plaintiffs and defendants, barristers and attorneys, witnesses and jurymen, torrents of frantic abuse, intermixed with oaths and curses. His looks and tones had inspired terror when he was merely a young advocate, struggling into practice. Now that he was the head of the most formidable tribunal in the world, there were few indeed who did not tremble before him1.' 1 Thomas Babington Macaulay, History of England from the Accession of James JI, Vol. I. [«]