The Spanking Writers

Edward Coke served as Lord Chief Justice from 1613-1616. An excerpt from a book review demonstrates that he meted out ‘justice’ at home quite as forcefully as he did in court:

“Edward Coke, the father of English liberties in his struggle against the absolutist tendencies of the Stuarts, tied his daughter to the bedpost and whipped her until she agreed to the match he had arranged for her”

Not altogether surprisingly, “the marriage was a disaster.” I had to dig further into this intriguing tale. Project Gutenberg helped, as it so often does, recording an account from those who had:

“…heard it from a noble Peer, a near relation of the Danvers family, and Mr. Villiers, Brother to the person who now claims the Earldom of Buckingham, as his Brother assumed the Title, that the Lady Frances Viscountess Purbeck was tyed to the Bed-Poste and severely whipped into consent to marry with the Duke of Buckingham’s Brother, Sir John Villiers.. who was 2 years after created Viscount Purbeck…”

A man like Coke would have no difficulty in persuading himself that a marriage with Sir John Villiers would be for his daughter’s welfare, and, consequently, that a whipping to bring that marriage about would also be for her welfare.

Coke had often waited for the confessions of men who were in frightful agony on the rack, in the dungeons of the Tower; so it must have been a mere trifle to him to await his daughter’s consent to a marriage which she detested, while he whipped her, or watched her being whipped, reflecting upon the luxury of the bed-post in comparison with the agony of the rack, flattering himself that he was acting in obedience to Holy Scripture, and piously meditating upon the gratification he must be giving to the soul of Solomon by this exercise of domestic discipline.

Whippings seem to run in the family. Another relative, Lady Exeter, faced trial at around the same time.

She was found innocent, and her accusers, Sir Thomas and Lady Lake, were imprisoned and fined 10,000 to the King, and 5,000 to Lady Exeter as damages for the libel. A chambermaid who was one of the witnesses, was whipped at the cart’s tail for her perjury.

One presumes that a cart’s tail is rather less comfortable than a bedpost.

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Ever get those nights where your mind works away feverishly solving some problem or other, stopping you from sleeping? Last night was one such for me: I’ve been working on a presentation for a high-profile conference in the new year, and nothing has quite clicked. Give my subconscious time to work on it whilst asleep, though, and suddenly a wonderful concept and structure for the session fell into place.

Thus, still before five in the morning, I had to get up to scribble down my ideas, lest they be forgotten by morning. And after that, as you can guess, my mind was buzzing.

I climbed back into bed, tired but wide awake. Haron was still sleeping: naked, warm, soft, pretty. I curled myself around her, - and squeezed her backside, still sore from Sunday night’s scene. She protested, in a sleepy “ow - that hurts – do it again” kind of way.

An evil idea came into my mind as I cuddled my birched girl. The Reformatory officers would have held their early-morning meeting with the Governor. As ever, they would discuss any incidents of misconduct the previous day. Young Alice’s would be deemed to have been insolent to one of the staff: this would clearly need to be addressed. An officer would be despatched to her room: at 5 a.m. she would be woken roughly, the sheets pulled from her bed, the girl dragged to her feet.

She would be led through the corridors to the punishment room: she would be made to touch her toes, and thrashed with the heavy leather prison strap. And then, sobbing, she would be led back through to corridor to her bed, and left until the bell sounded some hours later to wake the other girls.

You might be pleased to know that I held Haron until she fell back asleep, then headed to my office to work on the presentation. Only I was distracted and started writing this instead…

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I was prepared to start this account with a pitiful description of how much I suffered during the birching Abel gave me yesterday, and how sore I was, and how I wasn’t sure how I’d survived this. I thought I would write this, because that had been my experience in all of my previous encounters with the birch.

Not this time. Well, I did suffer at first, and I’m still quite sore, but by the end I found myself riding the pain, and actually quite enjoying it, in a way I have rarely done before.

Yet, as I set up the punishment room in the afternoon, home alone, I was wobbly with apprehension. We have no whipping horse, so I dragged in the school desk. We are not big on rope, so we only own one length, but I laid it out nonetheless. I thought for a minute, and added some handcuffs.

As Abel gave me regular phone updates on how his drive home was going, I tried hard not to let him hear the trembling in my voice. He came up with the truly devious way of playing with my head: when he arrived, Alice Pierce (the delinquent, the girl I would become) would be sitting alone in the waiting area (the living room), waiting to be fetched by the punishment officer. I wouldn’t as much as say hello to my husband, before he arrived to take me to my doom.

I was supposed to have come straight from court, so I kicked off my usual jeans, and dug out a modest skirt, a nice shirt, some heels. When Abel phoned to say he was 15 minutes away, I was still drying my hair after a hasty shower. I grabbed a hairbrush, a bundle of my clothes and a pair of handcuffs, and scooted to the living room. My heart was in my mouth. I laddered a pair of stockings trying to get them on. Still, by the time he arrived, I had morphed into Alice, and even managed to handcuff myself (as she would have been, while the grim guard transported her from court to the reformatory).

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Owwwww…

More later.

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“Name someone who uses a whip.”

That was the question posed to contestants on Family Fortunes on Saturday night. With vanilla company, I scarcely batted an eyelid, depsite my astonishment.

Jockeys, lion tamers, circus ringmasters and “the wife” all got a look in. And the deciding answer - second in popularity on the overall list?

A dominatrix.

This, at 8.30pm on primetime Saturday night television. Sadly, the Ball team (including delectable TV/radio presenter Zoe, and her legendary kids’ TV star father Johnny) got it wrong and lost.

Still, I spent the rest of the evening contemplating a slightly different question - “Name someone who uses a belt” - and imagining Zoe blushing with remembered shame as she answered:

“Daddy.”

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I’ve just stumble on a phrase that’s plain wrong.

“Cheerleader caned.”

There, I’ve made you wince too. Oh, the incongruity of those two words.

Cheerleaders are, have to be, American. As American as… as… (the thought that came to mind was ‘George Bush’, but that might upset some of you). As Thanksgiving, perhaps, as the Empire State Building..

And the cane as a punishment implement? As English as Buckingham Palace, Yorkshire pudding, as “long shadows on cricket grounds and warm beer”.

The two just don’t belong together. But, with an evil grin, I imagine a public schoolmaster taking up his appointment as head of a distinguished girls’ academy in the States. When questioned by the school governors about his radical new disciplinary plans, he’d explain, “If you’d like to show me where the School Regulations specify that one should use the paddle, I will happily convert, but in the meantime the cane has served me to great effect over the years.”

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It’s well known that the smallest things can throw me into a fantasy mode, particularly when I start work when it’s still dark outside.

This morning, it was the sight of ink on my fingers. I have been writing long-hand (a fetish of mine), with a fountain pen I haven’t used for a while (also a fetish object - not that it hadn’t been used, but the pen itself, the sort my mother’s generation used at school).

When I took a break and saw the peacock-blue ink stains, I was a girl held back after school, to write an essay I hadn’t handed in on time. When I finish, I will have my hands strapped: two strokes on each. There will also be a note to take home.

I will carry it carefully in my inky fingers, praying that the first person to read it will be my older brother, who takes care of me if my parents work late. He may spank me with a hairbrush, but at least he never makes me go outside to cut a switch: that’s my mother’s prerogative.

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Applying arnica to a well-marked bottom earlier, I wondered how and when this particular lotion was first identified as a source of healing for punished girls.

More to the point, cruel as I am, I wondered what other alternatives had been tried whilst early spankos experimented.

“Come here, my darling, and let me rub in this nettle essence to see if it helps.” Maybe not.

“I wonder if this garlic paste might help”. Owwwww.

“Bring over the deep heat.”

Now there’s an interesting idea…

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I’ve been sentenced to a birching on Sunday, and this has been in my thoughts a lot this week.

I’m going to be a juvenile delinquent who had already had a court-ordered birching, and has now been caught for a second offence and sent to a reformatory. A 36-stroke birching is bundled into the sentence - twice what the girl got last time.

It is also, incidentally, twice the biggest number of strokes of the birch I’ve ever had. Abel mentioned something about fifty when we were first discussing the Sunday girl’s fate, but I chickened out of getting that many. Considering that 12 with the birch normally leaves me in tears, I think 36 will be plenty.

I would be more likely to want to step to the edge if I could count on screaming my head off to ease the pain, but even though our walls are thick and the neighbour is deaf(ish), there are limits to how loudly I can yell. Nothing like practical matters to limit your scene-playing…

The reason I’m fretting about this is that until the time of the punishment, Abel is actually away. It’s going to be up for me to choose and soak the birch, clear the space in the spare room, set up the school desk that serves as a whipping bench. It seems like a particularly cruel part of the ritual. I have mentally walked through it about three times today while I was on the bus into town.

I’m kinda concerned about that number of strokes… Not concerned enough to not do it, but just enough to worry and fidget days in advance.

Do you suppose this was Abel’s idea in sentencing me in the first place?

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A while ago, I downloaded a personal ad from Gumtree (a site somewhat akin to Craigslist) to share with you. I’d forgotten it, and sadly the link’s now broken. But it’s interesting enough to share anyway.

Entitled “Spank me”, its “plump, 28, attractive, educated” female author weaves a gorgeous scenario for the man of her dreams:

We meet in the lobby of your exclusive central London hotel. After a glass of champagne we head to your room. Once in the door you order me to strip to just my underwear and heels and stand in the corner facing the wall while you prepare the room. Sitting in an armchair you call me over and put me over your knee, my legs clamped between your thighs so I can’t move. You spank me. Hard.

(And then it started to get rude. Very nicely rude, but we’ll spare the blushes of our dear, innocent readers).

Hey, if that’s what she writes in a personal ad, I want her to start a blog. Or write stories. Now. Even if several thousand readers of this site have to bully Gumtree to resurrect her ad, then threaten her with a spanking if she doesn’t co-operate. Albeit she may choose the spanking.

Then again, she could be he. She could be twice her stated age, or half. But the paragraph’s so enticing that I’m not sure I care.

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