If you thought sex clubs were something relatively new, you need to think again.  18Th century Scotland was home to a really peculiar bunch of guys who got together for sex parties, though women were hardly involved at all, though the parties were all about heterosexual sex.  It was just that,  in those days, while  young local girls were hired to be examined naked and to dance, there was a no-touching, no-talking rule for club members.

Beggar’s Benison was an all-male club, located initially at Anstruther in Fife. The central interest was sex, and the club badge was a phallus. Initiation candidates had to masturbate in front of other members, who sometimes masturbated together, though not each other, as they fantasised about sex. All fantasies were heterosexual, and the club condemned sodomy.

The Benison committed itself to ‘free sex’, which they saw as a ‘fair trade’. More often less than serious, members drank, read pornography, told jokes and anecdotes, recited poems and sang songs about sex and love. The free sex ideal was popular with the nobility, and even the Prince of Wales was an honorary member.

‘The Beggar’s Benison’, became a popular toast throughout Britain, yet the club was against the male pursuit of sexual pleasure, without any sense of responsibility. Contraception was important both inside and outside marriage, and sex education was vital, so that  members knew the anatomy and mechanics of sex.. Mainly, though, members were men fantasising about sex-lives they would never have.

A Scottish physician, Dr William Alexander, wrote in his 1779 History of Women that one of the prime functions of women was to civilise men, who wanted the freedom to get drunk and talk dirty. They needed to escape women so they could talk openly of their lust for them, and a huge number of clubs were founded in the eighteenth century, in which bawdiness and obscenity were common.

 Benison members would perform public sexual acts and watch local girls dance naked. King George IV and several aristocrats were said to have joined the club. According to an ancient legend that the club promoted as part of its ‘heritage’, the Beggar’s Benison was bestowed by a beggar girl who had just carried King James V across a stream.

On being rewarded with a gold coin for the service, she proclaimed the blessing: “May Prick nor Purse never fail you”. This was the club motto, used all their rituals,  and engraved on club articles like penis-shaped drinking vessels and trays engraved with vaginas and rampant penises

In the ‘initiation ceremony’ ‘The novice was ‘prepared’ in a closet by the recorder and two remembrancers ‘causing him to propel his Penis until full erection’. He then came out of the closet, a fanfare being provided by ‘four puffs of the Breath Horn,’ and placed ‘his Genitals on the Testing-Platter’, which was covered with a folded white napkin. ‘The Members and Knights two and two came round in a state of erection and touched the novice Penis to Penis.’ A special glass with the order’s insignia on it was then filled with port and a toast drunk to the new member, and, in a brief parody of a church service, he had to read aloud an ‘amorous’ passage from the Song of Solomon and comment on it. Investment with sash and medal followed, as the sovereign and other members intoned the benison or blessing: ‘May Prick and Purse never fail you.’”

The club was founded in 1732 by John McNachtane, a minor Highland chief who made a living as a crooked Customs officer in Fife. Members included the Earl of Elgin, the Earl of Lauderdale and the Duke of Gordon, as well as wealthy merchants and church elders.  Only in the last few years has the full nature of the club, which had regular meetings for almost a century, been understood.

These clubs did open all over England, though they died out again as the 19th century wore on, and newer forms of ‘adult’ male entertainment took their place.  All the same, it is good to know that the 21st century male fantasies about women are no different from those of all.  Though you’ll hardly want to have a men only night where all you do is exercise your right hand, the modern version of the benison motto still applies.  ‘May your cock and your wallet never let you down’.  Hear, hear.