The Spanking Writers

I wonder if the volume I discovered on Abebooks the other morning breaks any records for the highest price-per-page of a book on educational history.

It may be mere eight pages long, but “Regulations for the Catholic Girls’ School at Ugbrook” comes in at a staggering £201.25 – excluding postage, of course.

I need to win the lottery, as is sounds quite fascinating. Published in 1841, only three other copies are known to exist: one in the British Library, one in the Pitts Theology Library at Emory University, and the third at Georgetown University.

Within its “original pale green card covers” can be found:

A nice example of a privately-printed prospectus for a private girls’ school in early Victorian Devon. [Ugbrook itself was the Clifford seat (and hamlet) just outside Chudleigh roughly half way between Exeter and Newton Abbot in South Devon].

The school was being established by Lord Clifford of Chudleigh to be solely for the education of the female children of those who are or have been tenants, servants, or labourers on his estate, or tradesmen in the employ of his family at Ugbrook’. The school was to be free.

While religious education would be under the direction of Lord Clifford’s Catholic Chaplain, ‘all other instruction, and whatever relates to the order, discipline, and cleanliness of the school, will be under the sole direction of the schoolmistress’.

The Regulations include rules for corporal punishment (children must ‘submit willingly’). Of the 16 Regulations, no fewer than 7 are to do with punishments for faults, the emphasis being on ‘disgrace’, ‘obstinacy’, ‘penance’, ‘correction’, and so forth.

Orphan girls were each to be allocated to ‘a respectable married woman of known mild character in the neighbourhood’, who would act in loco parentis.

I rather fancy an Ugbrook-themed weekend!

The rather wonderful book “Schools of Hellas” that I mentioned earlier, appears to have been written especially for me.

Floggings were exceedingly common at Sparta. Any elder man might flog any boy. It was not etiquette for boys to complain to their parents in these cases; if they did so, they received a second thrashing.

But the triumph of the system was the flogging of the ‘epheboi’ yearly at the altar of Artemis Orthia, in substitute for human sacrifice. Entrance for the competition was quite voluntary, but the competitors seem always to have been forthcoming. They began by practice of some sort in the country. If the floggers were too lenient,.. the statue, according to legend, performed a miracle to show its displeasure.

I love that there was a statue with such specialised miracle powers. ‘The statue is not amused! Thrash them harder!’

Actually, I would be tempted to be lenient on the sacrificial boys just to see the statue do some cool tricks.

A certain frisson always results from photographs of whipping benches in judicial museums around the world – the one I took in Edinburgh’s police museum last year certainly provoked lots of comments!

But “Le Monde de la Fessee”, a French spanking blog, must win the prize for the best such photo in a recent post:

The birching table at Votinsk women’s prison”? How evocative is that? I can picture the prisoner trembling as she was tied down; pleading for mercy as they bared her; quivering as the guards stepped to the side of the room to pick up their birches. I can imagine the pause as they took their positions, measured the rods to make sure their aim would be true. The officer presiding would wait until he was satisfied that all was well, before giving the instruction: “Begin the flogging.”

It’s nice when a newspaper helpfully finds and prints spanking references in the literature for us. Thus, from a recent edition of the Standard we found that -

Eighteenth century lexicographer Dr Samuel Johnson enjoyed being thrashed by his mistress, Hester Thrale… says Jeffrey Meyers in his well received new volume, Samuel Johnson: The Struggle. Hester’s ‘ritualistic whippings’ gave Johnson ‘masochistic pleasure in pain and humiliation, which both satisfied and punished his sexual urges.’

It’s good to see another piece of proof that, in the C18th, it wasn’t just the Marquis de Sade who knew which end of the stick goes where…

I’m reading a rather wonderful book, “Schools of Hellas” by Kenneth J Foreman, published in 1907.

In this rather lengthy, juicy paragraph he describes the arrangements for the education of young Spartans:

At seven the boys were taken away from home, and organised in a most systematic ways into ‘packs’ and ‘divisions’… These packs fed together, slept together on bundles of reeds for bedding, and played together. The boys had to go barefoot always, and wore only a single garment summer and winter alike. They were all under the control of a ‘Paidonomos’ or ‘Superintendent of the boys’, a citizen of rank, repute, and position, who might at any moment call them together, and punish them severely if they had been idle: he had attendants who bore the ominous name of Floggers.

In order that the boys might not be left without control, even when the Paidonomos was absent, any citizen who might be passing might order them to do anything which he liked, and punish them for any fault they committed. The most sensible and plucky boy in each pack was made a Prefect over it, and called the Bouagor, or ‘Herd-leader’; the rest obeyed his orders and endured his punishments.

Over every school was set one of the young men over twenty who had a good reputation both for courage and morality. He was called the Eiren. …The boys dined with him in his house; they were supplied with a scanty meal by their parents to eat there, and were encouraged to make up the deficiency by stealing. When the Eiren had finished supper, he ordered one of the boys to sing, and to another he propounded some question which needed a thoughtful answer… The answer had to be accompanied by a concise reason; failure was punished by a bite on the hand. Elder men watched, saying nothing at the time, but rebuking the Eiren severely afterwards if he was too strict or too lenient.

I could have a very good time imagining myself as a Spartan boy, or even an unduly lenient Eiren who has to pay for unwanted kindness…

The Percy Anecdotes, published in monthly parts from 1840, contain a fascinating entry on the “Dutch Workhouse.”

The workhouse at Amsterdam is devoted to correctional, as well as charitable purposes. In one part of the building there were confined in 1807, ten young ladies, of very respectable, and some very high, families, sent there by their parents or friends for undutiful deportment, or some other domestic offence; they are compelled to wear a particular dress… obliged to work a stated number of hours a day, and are occasionally whipped.

Husbands may here, upon a complaint of extravagance, drunkenness, &c., duly proved, send their wives to be confined, and receive the discipline of the house…

The allowance of food is abundant and good; and each person is permitted to walk for a proper time in the courts within the building which are spacious. Every ward is kept locked, and no one can go in or out, without the special permission of the proper officer.

The role-playing potential in this is just incredible!

The edition of Time Magazine of 11 August, 1930 reported an incident of concern to all readers here:

When a governor visits a State institution for an official inspection he usually sees it at its best. Realizing this, canny Governor Charles W. Tobey of New Hampshire, when he decided last March to investigate conditions at the Manchester State Industrial School, asylum for 200 delinquent girls, picked a day when he knew that the superintendent and matron would be away.

And thus the Governor found out details of the whippings administered to the girls, aged up to 21, who were:

…laid on a bed, or made to lie across a large laundry basket in the attic of the girls’ building, and had physical punishment administered on their naked flesh by application of lashes…

“I have been criticized for having visited the School unexpectedly, without giving prior notice, and investigating as I did. As to this I believe that this is better than to go when plans have been made and the School is on dress parade.”

Quite right, Governor. We’re most grateful to you for your unorthodox approach, and for bringing the matter (admittedly somewhat belatedly) to our concern.

I was reading a promising-sounding book “English Girlhood at School” by Dorothy Gardiner, and wasn’t disappointed in my search for the historical spanking material:

Thomas More stressed the importance of ‘educating a girl to take her place worthily by her husband’s side in the making of a Christian home’… At the outset More’s picture of the ideal wife is drawn in firm lines; ‘may she be learned if possible… or at least capable of being so.’ Youth in a bride (is) an advantage, in so far as it afforded an opportunity to the husband of shaping tastes as yet unformed into harmony with his own. More’s first girl-wife had come but little educated from her country home, and owed to him her training in music and letters; even his second wife, a woman of mature years, learned after her marriage, in deference to his wishes, to sing and play the harp.

I hope the lucky women appreciated being able to play schoolgirl scenes with their husband.

Also, -

Erasmus and Vives also lay great stress upon the teaching office of the husband. … The reformers are much concerned with the question of education through the eye and the ear, with the need of surrounding a child from earliest years with influences with may give it a bent towards virtuous living. In particular Vives condemns parental over-indulgence. …He believes that the rod should never be off the boy’s back; ‘especially’, he adds, ‘the daughters should be handled without any cherishing.’

I don’t think I agree with that last bit. I believe firmly in being cherished; I positively insist on it from any Daddy of mine. This usually does involve spanking, the rod never being off my bottom and so on, but a little cherishing is surely not too much to ask for…

In his memoir (quote earlier) Charlie Chaplin speaks about the first time he received corporal punishment at school.

On Thursdays, a bugle sounded in the playground and we would all stop playing, taking a frozen position like statues, while Captain Hindrum, through a megaphone, announced the names of those who were to report for punishment on Friday.

One Thursday, to my astonishment I heard my name called. I could not imagine what I had done. Yet for some unaccountable reason I was thrilled – perhaps because I was the centre of a drama. On the day of the trial, I stepped forward. Said the headmaster: “You are charged with setting fire to the dykes” (the lavatory). This was not true. Some boys had lit a few bits of paper on the stone floor and while they were burning I came in to use the lavatory, but I had played no part in that fire.

“Are you guilty or not guilty?” he asked.

Nervous and impelled by a force beyond my control, I blurted out: “Guilty.” I felt neither resentment nor injustice but a sense of frightening adventure as they led me to the desk and administered three strokes across my bottom. The pain was so excruciating that it took my breath away; but I did not cry out, and, although paralysed with pain and carried to the mattress to recover, I felt valiantly triumphant.

I’m sure thrill was not the emotion the authorities were trying to excite in the young man, but I understand it completely. I believe, you can spot an artistic nature coming through in this. Pain and unpleasantness are incidental for him; what takes over is the inherent sense of drama in such a highly ritualised event.

In his head, he is a hero of his own story, the main character in a play, a protagonist in an adventure tale.

No wonder he grew up to be an actor, really.

It was approaching closing time in the library when I happened to pick up the journal that was sitting in the rack directly in front of my nose. “Past and Present”, published by the Oxford University Press, turned out to cover an eclectic range of historical topics. Such as “Wife beating and manliness in late antiquity”.

Now the idea of a beating is rather disturbing: it implies a level of violence and degree of non-consent that’s not at all kinky. LOL I far prefer spanking. But some of the anecdotes in the article could certainly spark the pervy imagination.

Take something as simple as the law passed in 449AD in the eastern Roman empire by Theodosius II:

A wife could divorce her husband with full return of her dowry ‘if she could prove that he has inflicted flogging (verbera) on her’… The term ‘verbera’ imples that the type of beating imagined was with whips or canes, long associated with slaves.

Wannabe slave girls form an orderly queue, please!

But in the next century, Justinian’s legislation…

…rescinded a wife’s right to repudiation, but gave her the recourse of a heavy fine on an abusive husband. Wives whose husbands beat them with ‘whips or sticks” (‘flagellis aut fustibus’) could demand compensation equivalent to a third of their bride gift.

The fine was only to be paid if the beating took place ‘without any of the reasons which we have ordered would suffice for the dissolution of a marriage against wives’. The implication here is that husbands were within their rights to whip or beat wives who had given them serious grounds to suspect infidelity, such as dining or bathing with other men, or spending the night away from home without the husband’s permission.

Spending the night away with the husband’s permission was presumably fine. (Hey, perhaps the Romans tolerated poly relationships!)

Meanwhile, in the western empire, the law was a little stricter. Augustine of Hippo describes how a husband was supposed to deal with misbehaviour:

If he found his wife…looking through the window excessively, he would correct her not only with words but with blows. Yet if she should say to him, “why are you beating me”… then he should consider… how he might deliver just floggings for the correction of his own family.

The wife in this anecdote commits two faults – looking out of her window too often (behaviour associated with prostitutes) and talking back to her husband when he tries to correct her. Here, as elsewhere, Augustine considers such corporal discipline of a wife to be perfectly acceptable, a necessary part of men’s oversight of their households…

Apparently, “Augustine considered corporal discipline, when motivated by the desire for correction, to be a sign of affection”, and quite right too!

OK, hands up who else found the Latin phrases hot!