The Spanking Writers

They were setting up the Christmas market in Stuttgart last Tuesday evening as I wandered around the city centre. Craft shops of every description mingled with stalls selling beautiful Christmas decorations; highly-decorated wooden booths offered bratwurst and beer.

Right in the middle of the central square was the most ornate of the structures, around which snaked a long line of young ladies. My German is a little rusty these days, but it’s still good enough for me to have deciphered the neatly written notice – as if the body language of those in the queue, and the pained looks on the faces of those emerging weren’t enough to give it away:

Girls! Been naughty this year? Worried that Father Frost won’t visit? Come inside and have your misbehaviour dealt with! You know you’ll be on the receiving end one way or the other this festive season. Paddle or presents? The choice is yours!

I’ve been collecting anecdotes about India lately, perhaps sub-consciously giving thanks for not having to go there to work with a particularly unreliable client. (Long story!) And I’ve discovered tales of thrashings galore…

First up, Devdutt Pattanaik’s “The man who was a woman and other queer tales of Hindu lore”, discussing an ancient Hindu text:

Manusmriti lays down punishments for women having sex with other women, which indicates that lesbianism did exist in ancient India and was perceived as a problem by male law makers.

According to the law-giver Manu (believed to be the first man and the harbinger of civilisation in orthodox traditons), if a woman was caught having sex with a maiden, the maiden would be fined and whipped.

Next, Judith Lynne Hanna’s “Dance, sex, and gender”:

In Jatkas (tales of previous births of the Buddha), unmarried women who offered sexual services were respected. Occasionally, they enjoyed a position of noble character and wealth.

At the court of Chandragupta, they were subject to strict rules and penalized for breaching them (e.g. a ganika, the most honorable of the nine classes of prostitutes, who refused her services to anyone the king might choose received one thousand lashes or else had to pay a high fine).

And then there’s Pringle Kennedy’s “A history of the great Moghuls” discusses Jahander Shah, a Moghul emperor from the early eighteenth century:

His short reign, which continued a little more than a year, seems to have been one in which debauchery gained universal sway in the Emperor’s Court. A Courtesan, Lal Kuar, obtained absolute ascendancy over him. Along with her, he was accustomed to make expeditions into the town of Delhi and get drunk there… Such conduct naturally disgusted the officers of the Great Court.

This woman put on the airs of a great grandee and her servants… were ont to be most offensive towards all whom they might meet. On one occasion her retinue met those of Chin Killich Khan… the future ruler of the Deccan. They roughly ordered this general’s men to get out of the way. This the general directed his men to do, but when the woman coming up on her elephant took to abusing him herself, Chin Killich Khan lost his temper and ordered to attack her servants. She herself was also soundly whipped by order of the great grandee.

On second thoughts, maybe it’s a shame that my trip didn’t happen. I’d have loved to browse a few bookstores for more interesting historical anecdotes!

The lovely Eliane, of “New(ish) to Spanking”, and I were swapping silly messages on Thursday. She proposed that I should set up a tour company visiting places of spanko interest; we debated a few possible locations; I pondered the idea of mapping them, and she – very cleverly – has set up such a scheme. So do head over to her post which introduces the concept – and to the Spanko Map itself.

Ideas very welcome for more places to add to it – either in comments here, or on Eliane’s blog. I’ve already noted at least one I didn’t know myself!

I wonder whether, before too long, we’re going to need a companion piece – the “Spanked Map”, where people can record the locations of places they’ve received or given spankings!

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PS for those of you who are wondering: Haron’s going to be abroad until towards the end of the coming week, so you’ll have to put up with me being the only one of us posting for at least a little longer. Normal service, with alternate posts from each of us, will hopefully be resumed before too long!

The article in the Daily Mail from which I’ve chosen the photos in my two previous posts contained one more fabulous image:

Lift attendants in 1928 at Selfridges in London’s Oxford Street, apparently.

Now, what a test of our collective kinky imaginations. For we need to work out how these young ladies have attracted punishment – given that I’m sure that at least one of them is quietly wiping away tears when no-one’s noticing.

I’m going with an irate – and very rich – customer complaining of having been taken to the wrong floor on two occasions by a particular girl. A hand-strapping by the supervisor (seen in the background of the photograph) would result.

But I’m sure there must be other scenarios, too. How and why would they have been dealt with. Any ideas?

Browsing for an image of factory girls for my previous post, I chose one from the Daily Mail. It wasn’t the only archive photograph there that, ahem, worked for me.

Let me introduce you to this group of young women, working in one of the first typing pools in London in 1909.

See the supervisor on the right-hand side? She’s checking a document that’s just been typed. Any errors will be circled in red ink; the girl will be called forward. The tawse is in the top left-hand drawer of the desk; a stroke on each hand is the going tariff, and then the document will be thrown into the wastebin and the typist sent to produce a fresh copy.

That, too, will be checked. Any errors this time will be punished with two strokes per hand. Should the girl have to re-type it a third time, she’ll know (as she types, hands trembling and sore) that any mistakes will result in a trip to the  manager’s office and the shame of a bare-bottomed caning.

Picture the scene – a factory, a hundred or more years ago, rows of workers huddled over sewing machines making garments.

Hold on – no need to imagine it; the internet’s a wonderful thing:

Yep, that’s pretty much the sort of place I’d had in mind (albeit I’d rather have more workers, with a hundred or more girls on each side of ten or so tables). See, I’d been thinking of myself as the factory owner and manager. I’d sit on a podium at the front of the room, doing the paperwork. A supervisor would roam the floor, checking quality and making sure the staff worked in silence.

I’d look up at the sound of a commotion, to see one of the girls being led towards me. She’d only produced three dresses all day, the supervisor explained, and the quality of those was poor. The others had made at least eight each.

“What’s your name?” I asked her.

“Mary, sir.”

“Is there something the matter, Mary? Something that’s distracting you from your work?”

“No, sir.”

“Then why aren’t you working properly?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“I don’t like idlers, Mary.” I cleared space on my desk, and stood up. “It seems to me that you need to be taught a lesson about the need for hard work.”

She’d be brought up onto the podium, bent over the desk, bared, and given twelve searing stripes. The other girls would glance up from their work in terrified fascination, and concentrate still harder on their work for the remainder of the day.

To a Victorian workhouse as I slept last night. A benefactor was visiting – a youngish gentleman, who’d recently inherited his father’s title and estate and was therefore on the lookout for new staff.

Six of the best girls were lined up for him to inspect; they’d been scrubbed and dressed in clean clothes before his arrival, and ordered to be on their very best behaviour. He talked kindly to them – asking how long they’d been in the establishment, whether they’d been well-treated, what they wanted to do with their lives.

Each girl answered politely, save for the last. She initially refused to answer, then – when pressed – spoke up vehemently. “What do you care? You know nothing of what life’s really like. You swan in here in your fine clothes, looking for cheap labour to exploit. And in return you expect us to bow down and worship you?”

The governor, of course, sent an underling to fetch a birch; the girl was tied over a chair, and six smart strokes applied. After she’d been punished, she was told apologise to the visitor – but refused.

“It appears, governor, that you may not have punished her with sufficient vigour. May I?” And the young gentleman removed his jacket, rolled up the sleeve of his shirt and took the birch. The girl was tied down once more; her second flogging, incomparably harder, soon had her pleading for forgiveness and mercy.

Afterwards, she stood before him, attempting not to let him see her cry, trying to avoid his eyes. “I’ll take this one, governor, if I may,” the gentleman requested. “I like a girl with spirit – and she can be taught good manners.”

(The dream then degenerated into a Mills and Boon romance: master and servant became close; a check through the workhouse paperwork revealed that she’d been abandoned as a baby by a rich family fallen on hard times; they were therefore able to marry. All extremely improbable – whereas the birching scene, of course, was entirely realistic!)

It was an awkward gathering late that evening in drawing room of the grand London townhouse: the gentleman, his niece, the police inspector.

The girl, aged seventeen, had been missing all day. Panic had ensued; her absence had been reported, searches undertaken. They’d found her, eventually – in the cell of a police station, amidst the other protestors they’d arrested earlier.

“Wilful vandalism”, the inspector called it – daubing messages demanding equality on the walls of public buildings across the capital. “They want equality?” he continued: “They should be birched, then.” But, thanks to the gentleman’s friends in high places, no charges would be brought against this particular young lady – this time.

The gentleman raised his hand to silence the officer: “Thank you for your help, inspector, and for your advice. I shall take matters into my own hands from here.” He rang a bell; the butler appeared. “Thomson here will show you the way out.”

When they were alone, he turned to the girl. “I shall see you in your bedroom in twenty minutes’ time,” he told her. “Go and get ready for bed.”

She mounted the stairs, half in anger (“I was doing what was right”), half in dread. He was a kind man: he’d been good to her since he’d taken her in. But she knew what happened when he sent her upstairs like this. And, she had to admit, she’d deserved the two whippings he’d had have to give her.. But her righteous fury made the thought of bending over, of taking the harsh strokes with his crop, even worse.

She was washed and in her nightdress by the time he arrived. She started to protest: “It’s not fair. We should have the vote. You can’t punish me for trying to change the system when it’s wrong.”

And he listened, and sat next to her on the bed, and agree. He confided in her: he knew the ringleaders, was active behind the scenes lobbying on their behalf. If she wanted to protest, he was proud of her.

“But,” he added, “that doesn’t excuse you leaving the house without permission today, or the worry you’ve caused us. We’ve been beside ourselves dreading what might have become of you.”

She nodded sadly. And when he told her that he was going to put her over his knee and spank her, she was almost grateful for the chance to make amends – not for her protest, but for hurting those who cared about her.

I’m all for the freedom of the press. But a conversation with a friend about the mafia recently provoked the most bizarre dream – and one that, on waking and remembering, is probably on the boundaries of “hot or not”.

See, a brave young woman journalist had just written a story exposing mafia corruption. It had attracted plenty of attention; the local mafia don was most displeased and demanded that she be taught a lesson in discretion. So his henchmen snatched her from the street. They took her to a disused warehouse, stripped her, tied her naked with her arms suspended from the ceiling, and whipped her soundly.

On being freed, she naturally wrote another article, this time describing her ordeal. And that evening, there were three naked girls tied in a line being flogged – the journalist’s sister, her closest work colleague, and her best friend.

Sometimes I think my subconscious might be a tad perverted…

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s latest novel, “Memories of My Melancholy Whores”, has produced a fair amount of controversy. (Opening line: “The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin.”)

They’re filming it in Hollywood at the moment, and I’m wondering whether they’ll transfer the whole story onto the big screen – specifically, page 14:

“I began teaching classes in Spanish and Latin at three different public secondary schools at the same time. I was a poor teacher, with no training, no vocation, and no pity at all for those poor children who attended school as the easiest way to escape the tyranny of their parents. The only thing I could do for them was to keep them subject to the terror of my wooden ruler.”

Nobel-prize winning spanking literature! See, only the classiest stuff round here…