The Spanking Writers

We know many of you were interested in the case of the Swedish BDSM prosecution, that we discussed in a post and SpankingCast earlier in the year. Whilst this is a complex case in many ways, we’re rather relieved to hear that the accused man was found not guilty on Tuesday – click here for a report from a Swedish newspaper.

When I was a kid, Enid Blyton wasn’t part of my reading horizon. I caught up on Mallory Towers and other school stories when I learned enough English to enjoy them, but Noddy has completely passed me by.

Turns out, I missed out on some crucial spanking scenes, as this article explains:

[Noddy] was my childhood hero.

Yet, as an adult, I have heard him described as … a pervert because of his apparent obsession with spanking.

In my day, Noddy would say to Tessie Bear: “I’m driving my car to Mr Straw’s farm and I expect he’ll be doing a bit of spanking, so you can’t come.”

Come to mention it, that does sound a bit odd now, but the point is it didn’t when I was a child.

As we know, children take things at face value.

Tessie Bear, by the way, was a simpering moron of a girl who would not have been able to stomach the sight of her precious Noddy being beaten to a wooden pulp with a slipper.

That was why she wasn’t allowed to accompany Noddy – not, as you thought, because he was going to indulge in some sort of adult perversion.

No perversion? Damn!

Be it as it may, I’m not going to search the Noddy books for mentions of spanking. I just kind of wish I hadn’t missed them at the age when, not having any outlet for my obsession, I would have enjoyed them so much.

A quite wonderful column appeared in the New York Times back in May 1899, headlined: “VIRGINIA PEOPLE SLANDERED.; An Imaginary Picture of the Flogging of a Girl Published by a French Journal.”.

The story reports that a top French paper had published an illustration – sadly not reproduced – of a sheriff flogging an eighteen-year-old girl with a whip, whilst she was tied to the stocks in the main square of a Virginia town.

“The chastisement is witnessed with apparent enjoyment” by the bystanders, the journalist reports. (Surely not?!)

What makes the story all the more interesting is that it’s entirely fabricated: it’s claim that the Virginia state assembly had “voted a law permitting the application of corporal chastisement in public” was simply not true, and floggings weren’t legal in the state at the time! Still, it makes for an interesting diversion…

Continuing the country house theme from yesterday, I find myself picturing a house in which the housekeeper deals with all the female servants, and the butler deals with all the males. This is usually done discreetly, the punishments administered in the privacy of the pantry, with the door closed.

Except this one time, when the senior servants come downstairs one evening to discover that the maids and the footmen have been having a party in the kitchen. They didn’t stoop so far as to steal His Lordship’s food and wine, oh, no. One of the lads had run to the village to buy a few bottles and some cakes, and all the servants have proceeded to get drunk together.

The housekeeper and the butler are disgusted. They cannot dismiss the entire staff – this would be inconvenient, and would also cast a shadow over their management skills. Instead, they decide to punish all the culprits together, in front of each other.

The following evening, after the servants have sobered up, and all their duties for the day are finished, they are told to gather in the kitchen. There they find a bucket filled with brine, and a veritable forest of switches soaking there. The butler announces that they would go in reverse order of seniority – starting with the scullery maid, ending with His Lordship’s valet.

Skirts are raised, trousers are lowered. One by one, the disgraced servants bend over the end of the kitchen table. The housekeeper and the butler take turns, bringing down the switch onto increasingly marked buttocks.

The servants struggle to take their whipping in silence, ashamed of showing weakness in front of all their friends. Sometimes, a cry will escape clamped lips, as the switch bites into a particularly tender patch of skin. There are silent tears, and an occasional deep sob.

It’s a long hour. When it’s over, the kitchen is full of very downcast young people, none of them daring to raise their red-rimmed eyes.

“Clear up the kitchen, and let us say no more about this,” orders the housekeeper.

Moving painfully, careful not to brush their aching bottoms against the furniture, the kitchen maids set about clearing up the switch debris, while all the others file out to go to their beds.

Their own beds? Or will there be some comfort to be shared between friends in trouble? Perhaps, some cool cloths drawn over angry welts, some kisses on tear-stained cheeks? I hope so: being punished is a lonely business, even if your suffering is as public as it gets.

Yesterday ITV started its new Edwardian series, “Downton Abbey”. Set in a country house, it’s maids and footmen galore, and the first episode dangled some tantalising promises of juicy drama between the upstairs and the downstairs. Although I was quite bored by the actual plot, there was enough inspiration there to get some very nice fantasies out of it.

For instance, at one point an important guest was arriving at Downton, and the entire staff were required to line up at the door to greet him.

My imagination took me to a similar scene, where a maid is waiting in a line to greet her master’s guest; she doesn’t know who is arriving, only that it’s a duke and duchess of somewhere or other.

They get out of the carriage, and to her shock she realises that she knows the duchess very well – from the times before she was a duchess, but simply the oldest daughter at the house where the maid had worked before.

At this point the possibilities are rich. Did they get on, back in those old days? Perhaps, the maid had once comforted her mistress after a caned by her governess, and they bonded over the pain they both knew too well. Or perhaps it was the opposite: the maid had got the blame for something the young mistress had done, and got birched, or worse, dismissed?

Be that as it may, both young women recognise each other at once. They barely retain their composure, and although they proceed as though nothing happened, they won’t be able to avoid each other in this house, where the new duchess will be staying for a while. Soon they will need to confront each other – and their entangled past.

Hmm. I wouldn’t mind watching or reading that drama.

I stumbled across an antique drawing yesterday of a woman, her ankle chained, alone in a bare cell. My instinctive reaction was to think of myself as the gaoler, fetching her to her flogging – picturing the lass tied to the post in the prison courtyard, or bound and exposed over a birching bench.

But then I had a better idea. She’d be a girl in my keeping – one of inmates of my workhouse, say, or a maid in my employ.

Shocked by her arrest, I’d have hurried to speak to the authorities. The warder would lead me down long, cold corridors to the cell, keys jangling; her look of hope on recognising my familiar face would vanish into fear when I informed her that I had negotiated her release, subject to agreeing to whip her soundly immediately I’d taken her home.

Last night in my dreams I was a Head Girl, and, to be honest, I was a little evil.

I had a private study with a log fire, which was tended by my fags. On the mantelpiece I kept candle holders with a few candles in each; these I kept lit in the evenings. The fire and the candles created a flickering pond of light.

Whenever I was about to thrash somebody, I would turn off all the other lights in the room, and would place them in this circle of firelight. I would inform them that, as long as they stayed still and I could see them, the punishment was proceeding to my satisfaction. If they jumped about enough to step out of the light, I was going to be very cross, and the punishment would start again.

Then I would spend the entire allotted six or dozen strokes to make the culprit lose the balance and fall out of the light.

Often it didn’t work. But quite often it did: the trembling figure, naked from the waist down, disappearing into the shadow, to emerge again seconds later with a stricken expression: “Please, I didn’t mean to! I’m really trying!”

But they knew the rules, so I would start again, cracking my cane against the enticingly lit candle.

Picture the scene: it’s 7.45 last Thursday morning. I’m standing outside my French hotel waiting for my pre-booked taxi to take me on the five-minute trip to the course I’m running – which is due to start at 8.30.

Then picture another scene: it’s after 9am. I’m *still* standing outside my French hotel, along with about ten other people who, like me, have been waiting for over an hour for their transport.

Thank goodness for perverted friends sending supportive texts to keep me calm. In particular, one from Martha made me laugh aloud, commenting that it was a good thing it was a training course “not a spanking appointment, or the girl would be trembling with anticipation”.

Ooo, what a lovely thought: a young lady, knowing that she was to be punished, being kept waiting for her disciplinarian, knowing that he might arrive at any minute – her anticipation and dread growing all the time.

Of course, that set me off on all sorts of tracks. The reason for the delay, it seemed, was a major conference in the city for “educationalists” (I guess that’s what teachers call themselves when they want to sound grand). Several thousand of them were in the city – and the taxi companies simply couldn’t cope with the demand.

Three of their number – all delightful women from the States – were waiting with me for their transport to the convention centre. I couldn’t help but picture the scene as they arrived, late, for the opening session. They’d try to sneak in unnoticed, but would be caught by the headmaster who was in charge of the event. He’d lead them into a side room   and pick up his cane.

“Teachers should know better than to report late for class,” he’d explain. “Six strokes each. Now, which of you wants to go first?” They’d protest, but he’d stand firm: “Every girl has her excuses, but the rules were made very clear to you on the first day of the conference, as were the consequences…”

Even more enticing than that, of course, was the thought of turning up at the lecture as a guest speaker. “Next, please welcome Dr Abel Jenkins, renowned British educationalist, who’ll be speaking this morning on the topic of discipline.” If only I’d had my gown and cane with me…

The author of a book review I was reading didn’t think much of the book under review, Greg Baxter’s autobiography “A Preparation for Death”. He notes at one point that

“Baxter displays an alarming propensity towards kiss and tell, or shag and spill, and accounts of his many supposed conquests are provided in excruciating physical detail… Alas, it also tangentially includes an account of a spanking session with his companion on that weekend trip to Riga, followed by some fisting (all consensual, of course!).”

Alarming? Alas? Isn’t it what autobiographies are for – the occasional spanking scene you get out of them?

I’ll be sure to check out the book, and see how the spanking went.