The Spanking Writers

Thanks to the good folks of the “Old Thamensians Association” for publishing the an online history of their old school (variously known over the centuries as Lord Williams’s, Lord Williams’s Grammar School and Thame Grammar). It contains more than a few entries to keep the likes of us interested..

Take 1872:

The Grammar School closed following the disastrous Headmastership of Dr T.B Fookes, a man of ‘ungovernable temper.’ He had been appointed in 1841 and was a man of a violent manner, who seemed to spend most of his time thrashing and expelling boys, playing the violin, and growing potatoes in the School’s playground.

I’m guessing it was the potato-growing that proved to be the final straw.

Still, the school quickly re-opened. By 1881, a certain George Plummer was Headmaster, although in 1888: “Rumours at School suggested that Plummer might be Jack the Ripper.” I can imagine how the originators of said rumour were dealt with!

The 1901 population census returns for the school are fascinating. Alfred Shaw was by then Head; other residents included Sarah Davies, aged 25, the cook. The two housemaids were Alice Heath, 19, and May Webb (17). And then there was Maud, the 16-year-old kitchenmaid. Is it stretching my historical imagination too far to wonder whether servants were subject to the same disciplinary measures as the pupils?

I also loved the account of the school inspection regime, from 1919:

Occasionally, the Area Inspector visited. Dr Shaw merely introduced him to each master, and then marshalled him into his house for a quiet drink and a polite goodbye.’

In 1924, “Each form room had its ‘stars and stripes’ board: on this were recorded stars for outstanding work and stripes for bad work, and disorder stripes for bad behaviour. Those who got two of these were then rewarded with two strokes of the cane.”

More to follow!

I feel like addressing a conference. Not just any conference, you understand, but the ever-so-eminent-sounding 42nd International Congress on Medieval Studies, from 10-13 May 2007 at Western Michigan University.

The sub-title explains why: ‘Capital and Corporal Punishment in Anglo-Saxon England’. I could focus on the interesting stuff, and play truant for the other half of the sessions.

I’ve just missed the 15 September deadline for the call for papers, but perhaps I could sweet talk the organiser (who’s at Cornell) into letting me submit late:

We are looking for papers that deal with the various forms of, concerns with, and issues surrounding both corporal and capital punishment in the Anglo-Saxon period. Papers may address secular, ecclesiastical or combined interests. Legal, historical, and literary treatments are all welcome.

They want twenty-minute presentations, but I’d rather drag Haron along for a practical workshop. After-dinner entertainment, maybe?

I wonder if they’ll publish an anthology of the papers?

The Dallas Morning News reports that Principal Anthony Price has reinstated paddling in his junior high school, which has apparently helped to turn it around completely.

Paddles were hard to come by, so he ordered a load of them from a local cabinet maker. I wonder whether he’d first done any price checks at some of the Texan BDSM toy-making outfits. He might have got a bargain. Or maybe a wholesale paddle order from a furniture-maker is cheaper?

Though honestly, I wish he stopped beating kids, and came over to beat me instead. What a waste of a good-looking man with a great big board…

A fun cartoon from yesterday’s Times:

I was searching for some statistics on life expectancy of an average blog, when instead I came across this:

Discipline and Punish

Of all the new genres facilitated by digital technology, the blog is the one that brings the loudest calls for discipline and punishment.

Goodness, yes. I mean, there are whole blogs about discipline and punishment. Fancy somebody noticing.

OK, the author actually meant young people who get punished for what they write online:

One indicator of the impact that blogs are having on our communication practices is the growing number of bloggers who get in trouble for what they write. As the examples above suggest, many bloggers are teen-agers, and just as school principals have always tried to control what students write in the school paper or the literary magazine, administrators are starting to take action against bloggers who aren’t sufficiently true to their school.

I can just picture it. A high-school principal in an old jacked with leather elbow patches. A broad wooden paddle on the desk in front of him. In front of the desk, a nervous girl squirms, her hands instinctively stuck into the back pockets of her bluejeans for protection. “So, Miss Kelly, do you care to repeat in my presence the words you used to describe me in your LiveJournal?”

But it isn’t just schoolgirls for whom blogging and punishment are fused together:

At around the same time, a Singapore government agency threatened to sue a Singaporean student attending an American university for allegedly defaming the agency on his blog. Anxious to avoid an international incident, and perhaps a caning when he got back home, the student shut down his website.

I doubt Singapore canes people who lose civil law suits, but the notions caning and blog sort of belong together, don’t they?

Oh, wait… they punish students for blogging? Yikes, I’d better go.

Anyone wealthy readers fluent in French are advised to head straight across to The Philadelphia Rare Books & Manuscripts Company, who are selling a book concerning the “Affair of the Diamond Necklace“…

..an elaborate confidence game involving the countess de la Motte, her husband, Cardinal Rohan, the Parisian jewelry firm of Boehmer and Bassenge, possibly Marie Antoinette, and a diamond necklace valued at 1,600,000 livres.

The conspirators’ scheme to secure the necklace under the guise of Marie Antoinette’s acquiring it through intermediaries began in the summer of 1784, and came to fruition in January of the next year.

Arrests were made and an absolutely sensational trial was held in which the cardinal was acquitted, the countess was “condemned to be whipped, branded and shut up in the Salpetrière,” and her husband, who had fled to England with the necklace, “was condemned . . . to the galleys for life” (Encyclopaedia Britannica).

The branding doesn’t do it for me, but I could dream about whipped countesses for days…

A “list of the personalities” provides further insights:

Comtesse de la Motte: the brilliantly evil genius behind “The Con of the Century.” Convicted and indeed whipped (“naked”), branded, etc.

“Naked”.

This particular 42-page volume (at $210) is the count’s spin on events: the “Réponse de m. le comte de Précourt…aux mémoires des sieurs d’Étienville, Vaucher & Loque”, to give it its full title. Published in 1786 in Paris.

The countess herself published her own version of events, and that’s for sale too at a mere $175. Whether she discusses the whipping isn’t clear.

The dawn of the blog era is great for spankos: not just for kink-specific blogs, but also for the glimpses of real-life discipline.

Take “OoFadedMemoriesoO”, for example. Her Xanga blog for Sunday, 30 October 2005 reflected on the week gone by…

Wellllll.

So I got paddled.. wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be, I got a nice welt. lol..

Or there’s “amberhoyt”, looking back on her school days:

I was waiting for the bus after school and realized I left my coat in my classroom. When I got into the classroom I remember the suckers my teacher had stashed in her bottom drawer, so I stuffed my coat pockets with them. Of course MY teacher was on duty that afternoon and found the suckers hanging out of my coat. I denied they were hers when asked about them, and I got a speech about taking advantage of her….I got a paddling that afternoon from my principal, my mom (who had to come pick me up from school because I was too busy stealing to realize I missed my bus) and from my dad.

Near-escapes are documented too. Sheanna’s writing style may in itself be grounds for punishment, but the following entry amused me nonetheless:

Hey yall it is me sry I have not updated and I have not been on I have been very very very busy lol well I got in trouble the other day and had 2 go 2 the office I almost got a paddling b/c I kept laughing I thought it was funny. I had 2 do a 10 page essay

I thnk Shna shld hv bn spnkd.

SophieHP also had a narrow escape (although what on earth is a ‘tar tie’ – some form of demerit?):

Speaking of Art I have three tar ties in that class and our Dean of Students told me that I could either take a paddling or go to I.S.S…. FUN LAND, here I come! So I get to miss a whole day of school, drink cokes, listen to music, and finish all of my assignments in a quiet atmosphere. That’s what I call heaven.

I just hope for her sake that the Dean wasn’t reading…

This is just so cute:

I found it on a science-fiction discussion board, would you believe. In the middle of an entirely unrelated conversation. It was startling enough that I jumped and squealed, as though my own bottom was under attack.

P.S. Please, if you want to use it, do not link directly to it, save it to your own server. Bandwidth is costly, and we’re broke enough.

Our new bitter brown ale… is our most complex beer to date. This ale is a wonderfully bitter, incredibly malty and nicely hoppy brew. Amber and Dark Crystal malts, and Willamette and Challenger hops are used in this 5.3 percent alcohol, 84 International Bittering Units (that’s right, 84 IBU) ale. A rich mahogany in colour, this ale blends flavours of fresh bitter coffee, dry caramel and nuttiness with light dry chocolate, woody hop and citric notes.

Pray, why so interesting? Because, dear readers, Scotch and Irish Brewing are describing their latest ale:

“Corporal Punishment”!!!

Further investigation uncovers a beer-aficionado’s review board, describing the characteristics of Corporal Punishment, including “bitterness that builds in intensity”, a “Bitter finish, with a woody aftertaste” and complains that it can be “a bit astringent”.

Quite.

I adore the twin sites “Overheard in New York” and “Overheard in the Office“. They’re vanilla sites, but a few of the snatched conversations are certainly…. interesting. Here are a few I’ve clipped in recent weeks:

Guy #1: Give me a break. I’ve been here since 6 AM!
Guy #2: Why would you do that to yourself?
Guy #1: Well, I’ve been a very bad boy, and I deserve a spanking. But that’s too expensive here in the city so instead I do this.
(14 August – 469 7th Avenue, New York, New York)

Teenage girl #1: Oh my God, I forgot to tell you! I lost my fake ID!
Teenage girl #2: Shit! Your mom’s gonna kill you!
(4 August – G train)

Employee #1: Dave*, you’re what, 27? You’re too young to get married. You need to wait until you’re 35 and then marry a 23 year old. Birthing is just “bam! bam! bam!”– brutal on them. So you need to marry young.
Employee #2: So I need to work here for 8 years and marry a girl who is just graduating from here?
Employee #3: Start looking, man. She’s in high school now.
Employee #2: She’d be what, 15? Hey, Jim*, how old are your daughters?
Employee #1: 13 and 15…Shut up!
(14 August – 3800 Victory Parkway, Cincinnati, Ohio)

Female co-worker: Yeah, these bruises on my legs? I wish I could say they were from S&M. Actually, I was just drunkenly stumbling around.
(11 August – 33 New Montgomery Street, San Francisco, California)

Teacher: You know, now that they are both 18, we can rape them, and it wouldn’t be considered statutory.
(2 August – 2 Stewart Place, Eastchester, New York)

Suit #1: I get turned on when the person I’m with is enjoying herself and I’m giving pleasure.
Suit #2: That’s the difference between you and a necrophiliac.
(10 August – Hatsuhana Park restaurant, 46th & Park)

Female customer: My sunglasses are broken. One of the screws fell out, and a guy in here yesterday said they would replace them with a new pair.
Woman behind counter: Oh, I remember you. You’re just looking for a screw, right?
Female customer, after entire store stops laughing: Aren’t we all, really?
(2 August – 1051 North Rush Street, Chicago, Illinois)