The above birching scene is a detail from the full plate, found here and reproduced below. The caption tells you all I know: “A school of mendicant monks: a birching (fifteenth century.)” Social context? I do not haz it.
"...the girls are prepared in the reformatory’s punishment room, naked, lying on their backs on special benches, bound with their legs spread above their heads, shamefully showing the two holes usually hidden..."
