The Spanking Writers

I was struck the other morning by a strange thing about judicial birchings. See, when I imagine or dream or write about these, they always take place either inside, in brightly-lit punishment rooms, or outdoors in the sunshine.

But this particluar morning was misty, cold. And suddenly it occured to me that it was just the sort of morning on which a lass might be led out into the prison courtyard for a birching. It’d be a dark place – overlooked by the barred windows of many of the cells, whose occupants would inevitably here the punishments taking place down below.

The guard would arrive early at the cell door in question, waking the girls inside. He’d call out a name, and the prisoner would realise that her time had come.

He’d march her down the corridors, lead her outside into the cold morning air, where a small group of official witnesses would be waiting. He’d recite details of the punishment that the court had imposed: that her jail sentence would include a birching, “to be carried out at the convenience of the prison govenor”.

She’d be ordered to strip – forced to strip, if she resisted – and tied, shivering, to the whipping frame.

And then they’d wait. Wait. Wait. Until the bell of the prison chapel struck seven.

As the echo of its peal faded away, a door to the side of the courtyard would open, and the governor would emerge into the cold. The group would salute.

He’d walk behind the girl. A guard would .read out her details: “Deborah Green. Aged eighteen. Convicted at Wandsworth Crown Court on the fourth of last month on three counts of shoplifting. Sentenced to ten weeks’ detention at Her Majesty’s pleasure, and thirty strokes of the birch rod.”

The govenor would hold out his hand, and the first birch would be passed across. He’d pause, measure it, and then commence the flogging…

Here’s an interesting nostalgic article about corporal punishment.

It opens with a fascinating quote from the author’s erstwhile prefect:

“A whack on the back administered hard enough, often enough and low enough promotes discipline”

Funny, that sounds exactly like something Abel would say, in his more pompous minutes.

After a few days away in London, the house was so cold when we returned home last night. I crept into bed first, shivering; Haron came upstairs a few minutes later.

Our conversation turned to a grand country house, on a similarly chill evening. The gentleman owner had been working late in his library; when he found that the fire in his bedroom was unlit – again – he rang for the butler.

“Fetch me the maid and a cane,” he instructed. Both appeared within minutes, and the butler was dismissed for the night.

It was little more than two weeks since the previous such incident. “And what did we agree then would happen were there to be a repetition?”

“That you would punish me, sir.”

“Indeed. Then light the fire. And then I will honour my word.”

He watched her as she arranged the wood. Her hands trembled – whether from the cold, or the fear of the punishment, he knew not. The flames crackled into bright life.

“It appears to be fine now, sir.”

“Well. Let’s be sure, shall we? You can stand in front of it for five minutes to make sure it’s burning well, and once you’re confident that it is, I shall cane you.”

She was crying by the time he chose to walk across to her, instructing her to touch her toes. He lifted her nightdress, baring her, and picked up the cane. He drew it back high into the air: the six strokes were administered hard, at full strength, each stripe vivid across her pale skin.

In last night’s dream I was sold into slavery. I was a victim of my father’s debt: he couldn’t pay, so there I was, dragged off to the slavemasters’ quarter in a Roman-looking town.

I can’t say there was much whipping happening there, but it was clearly a threat throughout the dream, evident in the whip hanging off the slavemaster’s belt, the marks on other slaves’ backs and buttocks.

I was terrified. I was behaving ever so well. And in the end, I didn’t think my good behaviour would matter.

In the first volume of his autobiography, “A Little Learning”, Evelyn Waugh recalls encountering corporal punishment as a new boy at his boarding school:

Almost all discipline in the House was in the hands of the prefects and House-captains; the head of the House alone could beat and three strokes was the regular punishment. Graver crimes were punished by the school prefects in their common-room. There was seldom any injustice. Indeed a code of sharp legality prevailed. The Housemaster beat for offences reported to him from the form-rooms by other masters. Most of the boys during their first two years got beaten at least once a term.

During my first term an Irish boy named Fitzgerald started an insurance company. The premium was a shilling and claims were paid at the rate of threepence a stroke… The enterprise was ruined in dramatic circumstances.

I had no intimation that the head of our dormitory was disliked or that he had committed any outrage, but one evening… there was a sudden concerted attack on him. Fulford and I stood by our beds uncomprehending and aghast while the rest flung themselves on the head, punching him and hitting him with belts and slippers. Eventually he fought his way clear of the melee… and down the turret stair that led to [Housemaster] Dick Harris’s quarters…

Within five minutes Dick arrived with some canes. No investigation was held. He simply said: “I’m going to beat the lot of you. Come into the changing room one at a time in House order.” One of the conspirators said: “The new men had nothing to do with it, sir.” “Can’t go into that now.”

Next day Fitzgerald paid out nearly 3 pounds and declared himself bankrupt.

Queuing in a Costa Coffee in a student-dominated town the other day, I found myself behind the cutest young lass crying into her boyfriend’s arms. He whispered   consolation; she broke from her tears to kiss him and smiled, for a brief moment, before the tears returned.

“I’ll take care of you,” I’m sure he’d said.

“I know you will,” she’d doubtless replied. Only she knew, deep down, that he couldn’t be there for her when they tied her to the birching bench for the twenty strokes to which the magistrate had just sentenced her.

At least, I think that’s what was upsetting her.

Last night the news were full of protesters that had been swarming over London. One of the items concerned a girl who had committed criminal damage by throwing a rock at a window of a bank.

The newsreader announced: “She was taken to court today to be given a…”

Abel and I looked at each other and loudly said: “Public flogging.”

But it was only a custodial sentence.

For some reason, criminal justice refuses to pander to our twisted imagination.

Last edition of Private Eye picked up on a story that broke in Serbia in January. Here’s the gist of it, from a Belgrade-based media site:

The Interior Ministry and Serbia’s police, known as MUP, came up with a new price list for rental and usage of their services, personnel and equipment.

The new decree was published in the Official Gazette, and, among other items, lists the price of renting a police horse at RSD 2,880 per day, while the company of a police dog costs RSD 2,160, also for a period of 24 hours. Renting a police uniform comes at RSD 1,440 per hour. MUP officers engaged to secure sports venues and other public gatherings will cost those hiring them RSD 360 per hour…. MUP has also determined the price tags for other services.

Of course, I’ve been wondering quite what they might be able to offer. Something like this, maybe?

An anonymous reader, who has previously allowed us to publish his spanking poem “The Brush”, has kindly sent us his new verses. We thought you might enjoy them!

The Wait

Rebecca sat nervously in the hall
Outside the Head’s office. A high-pitched squall
Of girlish distress reached her through the door
And she raised her teary gaze from the floor
For an instant. She knew too well the cause,
Which, after a tense, agonising pause,
Was repeated: the sudden whizz and whump
Of a long, springy cane against the plump
Proffered rounds of her friend Amanda’s rump.
Another yelp that tailed off in a sob…
Rebecca felt a sympathetic throb
In her tender flesh where it pressed the chair.
Had old Higgins, she wondered, made her bare
Her bum? It didn’t really make much odds.
Whichever he chose of his wicked rods
(And he’d quite an array) would truly sear
His wrath on a wayward young lady’s rear
And knickers wouldn’t dim those lines of flame,
Though they’d somewhat lessen the sense of shame.
Once more the thin lawgiver clearly spoke -
That awful crack resounding through the oak -
And again the miscreant testified
To its rule applied across her backside.
But now that the sentence was halfway served,
Rebecca’s fearful meditations swerved
Away from the pangs of her sorry chum
And were focused more on her own poor bum.
For once the last of the six was delivered,
It was her turn, and she visibly shivered.
In too little time her friend would be sent
Off weeping and she instead would be bent
Across the desk, while the Head raised her skirt
And explained how much her thrashing would hurt
And how he felt it was thoroughly earned.
So strokes four and five she scarcely discerned
(Though Amanda, of course, was sure she got ‘em!)
While thinking so hard of her own soft bottom.
But soon came the sixth, and the post-whack wail,
And after a minute, tearful and pale,
There stood Amanda, too shaken to speak,
A hand firmly clutched to each fire-filled cheek,
And there stood the Head, that horrid thing flexed
In his hands, quietly commanding, “Next.”
Rebecca was moving as in a dream,
Limbs weak as jelly and chilled as ice-cream,
Following orders and playing her part
While the hot tears started to well and smart
As she laid her face on the polished wood
And promised herself she’d always be good
In future, and the cool air touched her bum
(The last of cool for a long time to come),
And she felt she’d gone from eighteen to eight
In the course of her endless, too-brief wait.

-   Anon, 21st century

So, Roy of the Rovers is back! The Guardian informed us last week that the children’s cartoon strip – a staple of my boyhood reading – would reappear in newsagents today in a special edition.

They added that collectors’ editions of Battle, Buster and “girls’ horror comic Misty” will also hit the shelves in coming months, together with a return for “The Egmont Girls”.

This latter lost classic featured “weekly comic strips of the escapades of the pupils in an exclusive girls’ boarding school, forever up to mischief. It was banned in 1986, when the government objected to its ‘excessive focus on the corporal punishment of the pupils’, including ‘regular depictions of canings administered by Headmaster Mr. Race.’”