anoint (with birchen salve), v. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

anoint (with birchen salve) v.

[ironic use of SE]

to beat, to thrash.

1575		Appius and Virginia in Farmer (1908) 13: You shall have your anointing.
c.1678		‘Dumb Maid’ in Ebsworth Roxburghe Ballads IV (1883) 349: And take you the Oyl of Hazel strong, With it anoint her Body round .
1703		W. Fuller Trip to Bridewell in Massingham London Anthology 110: My Hands were put in the Stocks, and then Mr Hemmings the Whipper began to noint me with his Instrument, that had [...] about a dozen Strings notted at the end, and with that I had Thirty Nine Stripes.
1748		Smollett Roderick Random (1979) 17: I’ll bring him to the gang-way, and anoint him with a cat-and-nine-tails.
1772		Bridges Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 24: Then there was cineus, a queer bitch / As e’er was ’nointed for the itch: / I’ve often seen that rogue for fun, / Make constables and watchmen run. [Ibid.] 138: The arms his ragamuffins bore / Were broomsticks daub’d with brimstone o’er, / With which themselves they us’d to switch, / And call’d it ’nointing for the itch.
1824		‘Geoffrey Crayon’ Tales of a Traveller (1850) 396: He would but seize a trusty staff [...] and anoint the back of the aggressor, whether pig or urchin.
1830		Sydney Monitor 14 Aug. 2/1: It [i.e a ttending sick parade] is considered then to have been an attempt to skulk; and such sickly skulkers, previously to falling to work, are regularly anointed with fifty [lashes] each!
1859		Matsell Vocabulum.
1866		Skeat N&Q Ser. 3 IX 422: In a French MS [...] is an account of a man who had received a thorough and severe beating: Qui anoit este si bien oignt. The English version [Early English Text Society] translates this, ‘which so well was anoynted indeed.’ From this it is clear that to anoint a man was to give him a sound drubbing, and that the word was so used in the fifteenth century. Thus, an anointed rogue means either one who has been well thrashed or one who has deserved to be.
1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1895		C. Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict 4: Annointed, flogged.
1927		‘Jargon of the Und.’ in DN V 437: Anoint, To flog.
1931		Irwin Amer. Tramp and Und. Sl. 19: Anoint. — To flog or whip, especially as part of prison discipline.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).
1962		Ragen & Finston World’s Toughest Prison 789: anoint – To flog or whip.
1999		(con. late 19C) G. Seal Lingo 44: Words like [...] anointed (flogged), bluebottle (policemen) [...] reflected the larrikin’s uneasy existence along the fuzzy line between working class life and criminality.