No spankings, per se, but I’m sure I won’t be alone in my fascination at my latest discovery – a “List of Certified Reformatory Schools with name of Manager – 1866”!
Let’s pick just a few. There was the Devon & Exeter Reformatory and Refuge for Girls, Exeter, established on 26th June 1858 and managed by one W. Townsend, Esq,, of Friar’s Walk.
Mr Chapman ran the Suffolk “Industrial Home for Girls” in Ipswich, and Mr Alison looked after the girls’ reformatory at 9 Church Row, Hampstead. Or maybe it’s Charles Wilson’s “Sunderland Reformatory for Girls”, established in Tatham Street in 1860, that catches your eye. “Allesley Farm Reformatory for Girls near Coventry”. Religion must have played a major part, too, in life at the “Catholic Reformatory for Girls, Dalbeth, Glasgow” (Supervisor, Miss E Lawson).
How many of these places still exist, I wonder, and in what modern guise? Can any of you locate your neighbouring establishment (photos welcome!)? And do any of the owners of such buildings still standing, on Googling their house details and finding themselves here, fancy hiring out their premises for a weekend’s role-play?
Most British industrial schools were closed down in the period leading up to the Second World War AFAIK, although some reformatories survived in the juvenile justice system. I’m not sure what – if anything – remains of most of them.
The situation is entirely different in Ireland proper, however; it missed out on the British reforms because they occurred after its independence. The network of Irish industrial schools and reformatories closed only in the early ’90s after the shocking (and I dare say despicable) abuse that was going on there finally came to light. Anyway, I imagine that a field trip to Ireland could be quite fruitful in this regard.
Maybe it’s inconsistent, but I can find the thought of long-shut reformatories very hot – whilst more recent events, such as those in Ireland, are merely sad and not in the least kinky for me. There’s a time lapse, for one thing – and a difference between the very real abuse that happened in the Irish situation versus the British reformatories, where there’s less actual evidence of girls being whacked – and hence I can let my imagination run wild.
Regarding the recent events in Ireland, that just makes you human (a very good thing). The Irish reports could under other, very different, circumstances make for very stimulating reading for a spanko; however, as the events are all too real, as you say, they are not. I would go as far as to say that they are unbearably horrifying instead.
On a cheerier note, this page has more of the same kinds of information: http://www.missing-ancestors.com/ALPHABETICAL%20LIST%20OF%20ALL%20SCHOOLS.htm
I agree with Abel – the modern situations are too atrocious to be kinky but sparse Victorian reformatories lit only by a candle…worn punishment benches…archaic records in curly script are very hot.
iwasrobert is more on-topic today…
One can certainly imagine that Victorian reformatories, industrial schools, and the like would be reliably strict on their inmates. Certainly the Victorians believed that if you were poor it was really your fault, and also most definitely believed in the need to be Very Strict when managing convicts and juvenile delinquents.
The most interesting example of public opinion on the management of adult convicts was when the governor of the Norfolk Island penal settlement gave the convicts the day off to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Silver Jubilee in 1852. There was such a hue and cry back in England about this seemingly innocuous decision that the governor was immediately recalled.
Although attitudes started to change in the second half of the century, one still sees many references to people stuck in the old ways – e.g. the actions of Agnes Cotton, who was investigated by the authorities for allegedly using excessive force against girls under her care. Cotton was exonerated because it was felt that the “difficult” girls needed a “stricter regime”. However, the Salvation Army began to lead public opinion (it was completely against corporal punishment from its inception), and by 1908 when the Children’s Act was passed into law the worst excesses of the Victorian age started to wind down, at least in the UK and Northern Ireland.