Casa Frederick Catherwood

She’s in the corner.  He’s in the corner.  Across the ages they remain invisible, but they are both present.  This is the House of the Sibling Suicides located at 144 Montague.

Their ghosts are believed to haunt this building, now used primarily for commercial purposes.  Back in the 1890s, however, this was the residence of the Coop family.  They were well-established and distinguished members of Brooklyn Heights. 

These merits, however, did not provide the family immunity from scandal and tragedy.  On the afternoon of February 5, 1893 something terrible happened.  Police records document that the authorities were summoned when the half-naked body of Sallie Coop was found in her third floor bedroom.  A pistol lay by her side.  Her twin sister, Elizabeth, had been married the week before. 

It is said that Sallie was distraught at her being separated from Elizabeth for the first time in her life. It is speculated that Elizabeth had falsely promised that she and her husband—the dashing Mr. George Perry Fisk—would move into the Coop family residence.  Marriage would not be reason for the twins to be separated by more than a flight of stairs.

This was not the case, however.  The young couple had settled on establishing their own residence.   When she learned of this, Sallie Coop was overcome and was hysterical.  Sallie collapsed and had to be revived with smelling salts.  (Elizabeth, it should be pointed out, was also distraught over the looming separation from her twin sister.)  But there was nothing to be done.  George Perry Fisk was adamant that they would never live at 144 Montague. 

Why?  Because of secrets revealed.  In the course of their courtship Elizabeth had confessed that she and her sister were followers of the Cult of the Menses.  This was the widespread belief that repudiated the centuries-old notion that women were “unclean” by virtue of menstruation.  The sisters believed that, to the contrary, menstrual blood was life-affirming and that it was a vital link to the Goddess Within.

The sisters, whose menstrual cycles were in sync with each other’s, would smear the blood on each other’s bodies and then wash themselves with wine.  They would lick the blood and wine off each other’s breasts and torsos.  George Perry Fisk was horrified.  He vowed that it was his love for Elizabeth that would allow her to transcend this unsound fascination with the morbid and distasteful distraction.

Elizabeth, not unlike Sallie, found nothing aberrant about their beliefs, however.  Sallie herself had pointed out to her future brother-in-law than none other than Edgar Allan Poe had written a story where menstrual blood was presented as a metaphor for death.  “If you were to read The Masque of the Red Death carefully,” Sallie explained to him, “you will see how we must transcend the irrational fear of women’s bodies and menstrual blood!”

First published in Graham’s Magazine in May 1842, The Masque of the Red Death, a gothic tale, is not as much about the inevitability of death as it is about the deadly fear of menstruation.  This was the interpretation that was popular among the women who adhered to the beliefs of the Cult of the Menses after the Civil War.

This is the passage from The Masque of the Red Death cited by followers of the Cult of the Menses for their belief:

In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may well be supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such sensation. In truth the masquerade license of the night was nearly unlimited; but the figure in question had out-Heroded Herod, and gone beyond the bounds of even the prince's indefinite decorum. There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made. The whole company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in the costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed. The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad revellers around. But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood—and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.

Enlightened women of that age believed The Mask of the Red Death was, in fact, a metaphor for menstruation and that this passage reflected men’s irrational fear of women’s bodies.  To complicate matters, unlike most men, George Perry Fisk found nothing arousing in the idea of his wife and her twin sister in a bathtub together, washing each other’s blood from their bodies with red wine, savoring the mixture of wine and blood.  Unlike most men, George Perry Fisk would have nothing to do with the erotic promise of a ménage a trois with twin sisters.  Not unlike most proper Victorians, he did not agree with Sallie Coop’s interpretation of Edgar Allan Poe’s writings.

George Perry Fisk believed his sister-in-law was unhinged and he wanted Elizabeth to establish a distance from her.  He wanted to remove her from what he believed to be unhealthy pursuits that bordered on adoration of the gothic. 

Nevertheless, no one was prepared for Sallie Coop’s decision to take her own life.  No one anticipated such a turn of events.  The Coop family was shattered over Sallie’s suicide.  George Perry Fisk found no joy in proof positive that his sister-in-law was emotionally unstable.

Elizabeth would mourn the death of her sister for the rest of her life.  Their other sibling, a brother, Herman, who had long championed women’s equality—and had encouraged his sisters’ worship of menstrual blood—was unable to come to terms with his grief.  In 1900 he committed suicide as well.

Two suicides in the same household in less than a decade stunned the residents of Brooklyn Heights.  What scandal!  What madness!  The Coop family residence became known as the House of the Sibling Suicides.

Soon after this second suicide, reports surfaced of ghosts in this building.  She’s in the corner.  He’s in the corner.  Sallie Coop is seen rubbing menstrual blood on her cheeks and forehead.  Herman Coop is seen carrying a jug of wine, dipping his fingers in it and licking them.

Is it wine?  Or is it wine laced with menstrual blood?  Do the Ghosts of the Sibling Suicides remain faithful followers of the Cult of the Menses?

Do you see their outlines as you stare upon 144 Montague?

Is it a ghoulish sight? 

Or is it a bold affirmation on behalf of the emancipation of womankind?

Along the streets of Park Slope, not far from Prospect Park, on 2^nd Street between 8^th Avenue and Prospect Park West, is a most intriguing haunting.  It is a haunting more of a sensory experience than of a spiritual essence.  It is one of energy, sensuality and life that is so thrilling that the current residents have requested that the exact street address not be published.  They do not want to be inundated—even more than they already are—by those seeking the titillation and exhilaration of the English vice.

What is the English vice you ask?

If you have to ask, then it probably is not one of your … sexual desires.  Then again, it might just be, but you just don’t know it yet. 

That’s often the case in life, isn’t it?  You don’t know you will like something until you try it.  Didn’t your mother use to say that?  Of course she was probably referring to eating broccoli and not … sexual fetishes. 

“Now dear, how do you know you don’t like broccoli unless you try it?” is more often heard coming out of the mouths of mothers than, “Now dear, how do you know you won’t achieve spontaneous orgasm during a round of vigorous bare-ass spanking until you try it.”

That’s the English vice!  Spanking for sexual pleasure!

Mrs. Maxwell is the name of the woman who satisfied the Victorian and Edwardian demand for discretion when indulging the English vice.

“He delicately edged her knickers down using the tips of his thumb and forefinger,” Jenny Diski wrote in her novel, Nothing Natural, published in 1986. 

There is something to be said for certain cravings, distinct desires, and longings that linger in the mind.  Silver screen images flickered with visions of a deeply pleasurable sense of exposure and humiliation at the prospect of a strong slap across an ass.  How many films portrayed John Wayne smacking some actress across the ass by way of establishing the terms of their relationship?  More than Netflix can keep on hand.

If you imagine these kinds of dreams … then you are on the right street in Brooklyn. 

“There is a deep arousing sensation that wells up inside my entire body when you firmly tell me you are going to spank me,” one man wrote to Mrs. Maxwell in 1905.  “It is as much sexual in origin, as it is emotional, I’m afraid.  Yes, my mistress, the sexual aspect of the encounter has as much to do with being naked before you, lying prostate over your knee, the scent of your perfumed dress filling my head as I await the pleasurable pain you are about to deliver.  I confess it is thrilling to know you are admiring my bare bottom and I am vulnerable before you, as it is about the anticipation of the spanking itself. There is also the knowledge that your firm hands will touch my bare-ass, that the back of your brush will smack my buttocks as you hold me firmly down.  I know that we shall share loving feelings towards each other when the session is over.”

In his book, Confessions, Jean-Jacques Rousseau similarly described his pleasure at being spanked.  In more recent times, Peter Lawford, the actor and brother-in-law of John F. Kennedy, shared similar fetishes.  Lawford regaled with his tales of the arousal he derived when he was spanked, and he boasted of the sexual habits of his Hollywood friends.  “The burning on my ass is pleasant when I am spanked properly,” he said.  “If it is tender the next day, then I will be happy.  If I see redness on my buttocks when I look in the mirror, that alone I find arousing. I enjoy looking at the redness, and I enjoy it when I am spanked again.  It seldom hurts the second time; my ass is numb to the touch but the second spanking keeps my ass warm.”  (Lawford recounted that, then-B-movie actress, Nancy Davis was renowned for giving among the best blowjobs in Hollywood after she was subjected to a vigorous round of bare-ass spanking.)  Andy Warhol claims that the sexual pleasure he most enjoyed was watching a man being spanked by a drag queen, while both were high on speed.  The English vice has many adherents.

Mrs. Maxwell, a proper Edwardian woman, whose given name was Mayyada, which in Arabic means a woman who walks with a proud strut, understood the nature of this fetish.  She understood the psychological desire that was self-evident when hand met the bare flesh of a grown man’s or grown woman’s buttocks.

“It cannot be denied that these desires are simply the stating and restating, in an adult arena, of the emotionally vulnerable condition of childhood,” she wrote one supplicant who stated she would pay any price for being brutalized the way her husband refused ever to do.  “It is a perfectly acceptable vanity, my dear.  It is the reality that, at times, under certain circumstances, the emotional condition of childhood is accepting conditional pain as the price for unconditional love.  I shall be delighted to indulge your wish to be loved through the pain of the English vice, and in the process I have no doubt you shall enjoy vigorous orgasms that approximate spiritual ecstasy.  Present yourself with this letter at my House of English Vices on the 30^th of June and expect to remain here until the 2^nd of July.”

These are the kinds of notes, letters and journal entries that were located in the attic of the residence in question in the 1960s. 

There was also an invitation that was sent to 35 individuals for a fete she hosted in 1910.  The engraved invitation reads: “Mrs. Maxwell’s House of English Vices: A Dispirited and Distasteful Diversion for Christmas.”  If this sounds familiar, it should: decades later Edward Gorey wrote a book, The Haunted Tea-Cosy: A Dispirited and Distasteful Diversion for Christmas, after he found one invitation (used as a bookmark) in a book he shoplifted from the Strand Book Store.

With this background, we can now proceed to the nature of this haunting.

For decades, some individuals have reported that, when lingering in front of the houses numbering between 630 and 640 of that block, they have felt a slight burning sensation on their buttocks.  Others note that, when returning home, they undress and, upon examination, see the slight outline of a handprint on their buttocks.  A few women report, usually aged between 24 and 35, spontaneous orgasms if they stand and linger on the sidewalk for more than a few minutes.

There are those who see the apparition of a woman who bears a striking resemblance to John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Madame X.  Everyone knows Madame X was, in fact, Madame Pierre Gautreau.  Psychics who have attempted to make contact with the ghost at Mrs. Maxwell’s House of English Vices insist that the apparition claims that she is Mayyada Maxwell.  She claims that it was none other Madame Pierre Gautreau who adopted her style as her own—after the latter traveled to New York to be spanked!  Madame Pierre Gautreau was Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, an American socialite born in New Orleans, whose family fled to France to escape the American Civil War.  (Her father, Anatole Placide Avegno, died in 1862 of wounds sustained during the Battle of Shiloh.)  Madame X grew to loathe the country of her birth for what it did to her father. 

Did Mrs. Maxwell spank Madame X?  There is no known record of her having traveled to New York to indulge in the English vice. 

Neighbors say that those who desire to indulge the English vice are drawn to the neighborhood.  There are those who claim that visitors to this street are disproportionately inclined to indulge in this fetish.  There are some who say that the street is filled with sexual fantasists.

One woman wrote Mrs. Maxwell the following letter after a summer-long retreat at Mrs. Maxwell’s House of English Vices, a summer that was characterized by nightly spankings.  The year was 1908.  “I need your touch,” the grateful woman wrote.  “I recognize total surrender leaves me vulnerable, but it is a vulnerability that leaves me tender.  I want you to hold me tightly, my precious Mrs. Maxwell.  I long for the embrace of your arms around me.  The thought of your hands on my waist brings me to tears, and I feel a spiritual connection to you.  After you spank me and I stand naked before you, I am at peace and I am calm and I am freed of the hysterics that otherwise overpower me.  It is only then that I experience calm and I can radiate a joyful existence.  I do not know if you have saved my soul, but you have indeed saved my life by giving me sanity.”

Is a sound spanking a cure for modern neurosis?

Are you prepared?  Are you willing to submit yourself to the hand that strikes a bare-ass?  Are you prepared to walk down this street and run the risk of a spontaneous orgasm that often accompanies one of Mrs. Maxwell’s vigorous spankings?

Look up! 

Is that her by the window?  Does she resemble a John Singer Sargent portrait?  Is she slowly moving the curtains to gaze upon you, spanking submissive?  Are you among those willing to submit to the pleasures contained within Mrs. Maxwell’s House of English Vices?

If not, then why are you walking down her street?