Spanking machines and electrical shock footwear — welcome to the world of America’s fraternal societies

Let’s speak about spanking.

Not the sort that went out of vogue amongst exasperated dad and mom many years in the past. Moderately, the sort involving totally grown, consenting adults — principally males — pillars of their varied communities, sporting starched collars, fits, wingtips.

Veiled in secrecy, America’s fraternal societies have lengthy had a taint of weirdness — at the least amongst these on the surface. Their enigmatic rituals fostered rumors of secret cabals and plans for world domination.

The gathering of some 361 curiosities — together with a 1909 “lifting and spanking machine” — now on show on the Northwest Aspect’s Potter & Potter Auctions home will do little to snuff out the myths.

As of Friday morning, there was already a bid of $325 for the system, which initially got here with a 32-caliber clean cartridge that exploded when the paddle struck the buttocks. The precise public sale begins at 10 a.m. Oct. 9; that’s when the pre-auction highest (on-line or cellphone) bid turns into the public sale’s opening bid. Register at potterauctions.com.

Gadgets just like the “Lifting and Spanking” machine had been generally utilized in initiation rituals.

Anthony Vazquez, Solar-Instances.

A lot of the assortment belongs to Bruce Lee Webb, a Texas people artist and gallery proprietor. Webb belongs to a number of fraternal organizations: the Freemasons, The Impartial Order of Odd Fellows and the Knights of Pythias. He started gathering fraternal order regalia and different gadgets at flea markets within the Nineteen Eighties after which afterward eBay, at a time when lodges throughout the US had been closing.

“A lot of the fabric has been thrown away. Early on I spotted there was a way of urgency to get out and protect what I may,” Webb, 59, stated throughout a current chat with the Chicago Solar-Instances.

Now, he and his spouse Julie are downsizing and don’t have sufficient house of their transformed Masonic lodge in Fort Davis in Texas, he stated.

“In small cities previously, that is the place individuals bought collectively to be taught the information, bought to know one another earlier than the period of individuals assembly on-line,” Webb stated of the early recognition of American fraternal life.

Spanking machines, sandals that delivered an electrical shock and a journey on a mechanical goat had been all a part of the “excessive jinks” or the typically over-the-top initiation rituals, Webb stated. Most of the gadgets got here from DeMoulin Bros. and Co., a downstate firm maybe finest identified nowadays for making marching band uniforms.

Odd Fellows Costume Visor Helmets at Potter & Potter Public sale home at 5001 W Belmont Ave in Belmont Cragin, Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025. The public sale home will current “Belonging: Secrets and techniques, Goats, and Indicators – The Artwork of American Fraternal Societies” which can public sale artwork, ritual objects, and pictures from varied organizations.