Spanking machine

Cartoon of a spanking machine.

A spanking machine is a machine for automatically administering a spanking. Many such machines have been portrayed in stories and spanking drawings. Recently a few such machines have been built and offered for sale, largely to a very specialized BDSM market.

The idea seems to be an enduring one, although unlike such mechanical devices for capital punishment as the Guillotine, the electric chair, and the gas chamber, it has never entered mainstream use.

Most conceptions of a spanking machine involved rotating wheels with paddles, flexible paddles, straps, or switches attached. Other versions involved spring-loaded arms or levers, with a paddle or strap attached, that are drawn back against the pull of the spring, and then released to strike the target, usually the buttocks of the delinquent. Some versions combined these two approaches, with a peg on a rotating wheel serving to draw back a spring-loaded arm, as in the image on the right.

Most imagined spanking machines are completely automatic devices, comparable to a windmill. Some have been more or less robotic in nature, with some degree of computerized intelligence. One of the more extreme versions of this was the "Spankmaster", a machine appearing in Lurking Dragon's story "Diaspora" (part of the Rejuve Universe series).

History

In The Rationale of Punishment, philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) wrote:

"Of all these different modes of punishment, whipping is the most frequently in use; but in whipping not even the qualities of the instrument are ascertained by written law: while the quantity of force to be employed in its application is altogether intrusted to the caprice of the executioner. He may make the punishment as trifling or as severe as he pleases. He may derive from this power a source of revenue, so that the offender will be punished, not in proportion to his offense, but to his poverty. If he has been unfortunate, and not able to secure his plunder, or honest, and has voluntarily given it up, and thus has nothing left to make a sop for Cerberus, he suffers the rigor ---perhaps more than the rigor ---of the law. Good fortune and perseverance, in dishonesty, would have enabled him to buy an indulgence.

"The following contrivance would, in a measure, obviate this inconvenience:---A machine might be made, which should put in motion certain elastic rods of cane or whalebone, the number and size of which might be determined by the law: the body of the delinquent might be subjected to the strokes of these rods, and the force and rapidity with which they should be applied, might be prescribed by the Judge: thus everything which is arbitrary might be removed. A public officer, of more responsible character than the common executioner, might preside over the infliction of the punishment; and when there were many delinquents to be punished, his time might be saved, and the terror of the scene heightened, without increasing the actual suffering, by increasing the number of the machines, and subjecting all the offenders to punishment at the same time."

In Mistress Masham's Repose, T. H. White speculated on a similar device to apply bastinado automatically. Since that book is a parody of (as well as the sequel to) Gulliver's Travels, the same spirit of the early Age of Reason as in the Bentham quote is plausibly invoked.

Gallery 1: Vintage spanking machine drawings

The following gallery features vintage illustrations and cartoons of spanking machines. In those days, an often featured aspect of the spanking machine concept was that such a machine could be built to chastise not just one delinquent but a whole row of offenders simultaneously.

A Russian conception of a spanking machine.
A German conception of a spanking machine.
A French conception of a spanking machine, driven by a steam engine, for little boys (left) and little girls (right).
"The Gentle Persuader", cartoon illustration of another steam-driven whipping machine, c. 1900.
The "Automatic Castigator" by P.V. Bradshaw (1902).
Little Nemo comic strip from February 7, 1909
Atkinson's Comedy Co.: "The Urchin Chastiser"
"Electric birches" (United Kingdom, possibly 1920s).

Gallery 2: Contemporary spanking machine drawings

The following gallery features contemporary spanking machine drawings and rendered art. These examples illustrate that sometimes spanking machines can have an erotic component as well.

Example of Machine/M spanker with leather paddlewheel, by Franco, figure model by Taco.
Newer version of the same concept.