We are really, really sorry to utilise your board for commercial advertising purposes, we lied, glibly.

Issue Two of Rawhide has just been published and features a long, illustrated article (6,600 plus words) on the 1964 Helston Grammar School spankings, from the viewpoint of ex-pupils.

For those who are not already aware, ‘Girl A’ referred to in the court case was seventeen-year-old (at the time of the spankings) Gillian Wells, a vicar’s daughter and Sunday school teacher. ‘Girl B’ was eighteen-year-old Mary Hales.

It was implied during the court case that this was a ‘one-off’ occasion and John Guise simply made a poor error of judgement at the end of a long and distinguished career by giving both of the girls a further spanking over his knee after Marjorie Smith had initially spanked them.

These ‘double spankings’ for errant girls were a regular occurrence at the school according to ex-pupils. In disciplinary matters Guise caned the boys on their buttocks and Smith spanked the girls over her knee in private. Smith was described by one pupil as a ‘real Tartar’, who ‘didn’t need a cane to make even the toughest girl howl’. It was her practice to have girls lower their underwear prior to spanking them. For the younger girls she would use her hand, but for more serious offences or older girls, she would use the wooden clothes brush. There was nothing in the Local Education Authority rules that prohibited baring girls’ buttocks.

Not only was Guise a child-molesting perv, he was also a spankophile, as was his soul-mate, Smith. Both were members of the Moral Rearmament Movement (MMR), as was the late Mrs Mary Whitehouse, the clean-up TV and anti-pornography campaigner. One of the main tenets of the MMR was that if a wrongdoer should admit their ‘sin’, they would not be punished. This was the reason why the odious little sneak grassed-up his mates on the assumption that the caretaker was going to report them.

The ritual described in the court case is confirmed as standard procedure by other ex-pupils who received ‘double spankings’, even to the extent of the required handshake afterwards. One female pupil states that this was to show that: “…there were no hard feelings.” She obviously seems to have overlooked those residing in the crotch of John’s trousers! After enduring one of these spankings another pupil (a farmer’s daughter) massaged her bottom with Wintergreen, a soothing ointment, as soon as she arrived home in an effort to try and ease away the pain. Unfortunately, we are not told whether this proved to be an efficacious treatment. There is a description, albeit second-hand and by a male pupil, of the state of Gillian’s bottom shortly after the spanking. This was gleaned from one of her girlfriends after she had inspected it, presumably in the school toilets. The required visits to Guise’s room on the following days for him to have an ogle and a grope were also part of the normal procedure.

We are also told that if a girl stopped looking Guise in the face whilst Mrs Smith was beating her, the spanking was suspended and Smith would slap the girl on her legs until she looked Guise back in the face again.

In the court case, Mrs Smith states that she did stop spanking Gillian twice during the punishment. She implies that this was due to concern for the girl’s welfare. According to the ex-pupils she did indeed stop twice, but not for any compassionate reason. On two occasions Gillian’s knickers (navy blue for those to whom it matters) worked their way out of her bottom cleft. Gillian is quoted as saying that she almost died of embarrassment when she felt old Marjorie Smith poking about in her bottom crack for a second time to make sure that the pants didn’t escape again!

The issue also includes: ‘Those Magnificent Men and Their Spanking Machines’; ‘Spanking Superhero’; ‘The Birching of Lady Jane Grey’, in colour, including the view from the other side of the punishment stool that was not in the film, but has been created using computer graphics and a stand-in professional ‘stunt’ bottom double; ‘Spanking Princess Di’ (only the extremely gullible will believe that she is the spankee!); The ‘Bendies for Spendies’ pictures of Emily Symons, including the rare one of her actually bending over in the Woolworth’s school uniform; part two of ‘Felons with Melons’; ‘Celebrity CP’, with a photo of Eamonn Holmes inspecting Fiona Phillips’ (of school slippering fame) curvaceous bottom, as she bends over the back of the GMTV sofa; ‘C.P. Correspondence Through the Ages’; plus loads of other pervy stuff.

Copies are available from the Janus shop in London, or by mail order from Daisy Publications, telephone +44 (0) 1424 220200, or at http://www.daisypublications.co.uk

Do you by chance have an account of a birching in a southern Irish convent school in the 1970s?

I am told such birchings were common practice at that time but am unable to locate a single reference on the web.

Thank you, please.

The Company has an embarrassingly vast collection of pre-Internet CP archives and we have never come across an account of a birching in a southern Irish convent school in the 1970s, despite the fact that they were apparently common practice at the time.

However, we do have extremely gifted graphic artists in our employ who would easily be able to fake a fake birching in a southern Irish convent school in the 1970s.

The fact that your vast pre-Internet archive and the vast archive of the Internet itself contain no reference to birching in a southern Irish convent school in the 1970s leads me to believe I am the unfortunate victim of a hoax and that such events - far from being common practice - never took place in that era.

I am beginning to suspect there are people on the Internet who invent 'true' stories about CP.

This afternoon one of our illustrioso correspondentes sent us this picture of birching. She claims it was in  the ‘Argus’(WORTHING edtione)

done a edit to put picture back

thankyou

It's a typical Wigan girl in the preliminary stages of a bikini wax.

Picture will no stay on foro so we bunged it on pictures page at

 

http://www.geocities.com/carlandmats/Birch.html

 

Looks like a John Lennon drawing, in style at least.

Your advertisements are a delight to read, Lombard & Wallis Ltd.

Keep posting!

Keep advertising!

Thank you Gillian. As always, you are very kind.

I'm sure Wallis and Gromit's publications are wonderful but for a less masturbatory approach to Helston School, readers might be interested in "The Story of Helston Grammar School from 1550-1972" by Deirdre Dare.

(Kelynen Publications, 1996 ISBN 095294510X 164 pages with an index)

Our sincere apologies, but commercial good sense dictates that we should make this post.

As Lotta so recently pointed out, some of those who post as ‘Anonymous’ are imbeciles.

We note that the Company's collective IQ has now increased to 11.

Could ‘Mary Hales’ be the same person as Mary Hale who left Helston Grammar School in 1964, and on Friends Reunited wrote:


Writing out the Discipline Card was the form of punishment in those days; I think if you got 6 you got put on a Work Conduct (?)card! (I managed it!!)
It went something like this ‘Discipline is a means by which we are trained in honesty and straight dealing, clean living and clean thinking, and the habit of giving the best of ourselves, etc.’
It can't have worked too well if I got 6, but I think it was part of Mr Guise's attempt to morally re-arm the school. There was a book in the school library, called ‘When the kissing had to stop’ which was a kind of Bible for the movement. It always used to fall open at the only steamy bit in it!
On the whole, I don't think Moral Re-Armament worked too well!!


and


Mr Allen was my English teacher, and was regarded as a subversive influence by Mr Guise, the Headmaster then, but he certainly encouraged our writing talents. Does anyone remember The Manx Cat (we bear no tales) which got quickly surpressed [sic] by Mr Guise before it corrupted the whole school??

Thank you Research Assistant. The answer is 'yes'.

In the article and the original posting we incorrectly stated that her name was Hales. Having re-checked our sources, her correct name was Hale.

Apologies.

Here are her member notes from the ‘Friends Reunited’ site:


Taught for a few years, got married, had a child, never went back to teaching! Took early retirement from Carrick District Council. Now Secretary for Cornwall Area British Caravanners Club and unofficial Webmistress. I also write chidren's stories for my grandchildren, and am mad about hedgehogs. So much so that I have created an imaginary one called Henry Higgins, who even has his own web site at www.myweb..co.uk//

Married twice, have one son aged 30 by my first marriage, and six grandchildren from my second. Believe me, being a grandparent is definitely more fun than being a parent!!
______________________________________________________________________________
The web site she refers to is at:

http://www.cornwallbcc.co.uk/about.htm


From which there is a link to a delightful little hedgehog story showing that Mary has an interest in bottoms.

______________________________________________________________________________

There is something very strange about all of this. (q.v. her piece about the ‘Discipline Card’ and the title of the book she mentions.)

In the disinterested spirit of historical inquiry, I suggest that Lombard and Wallis should contact Mary Hale now, before it's too late, and try to talk to her directly about these events back in 1964. One of the obvious absences from any accounts of the Helston affair is the direct witness of the girls involved; they weren't named by newspapers of the time, nor were any photos available, and even the most recent story in "Rawhide" relies on vague, anecdotal evidence from people who attended the school around the same time rather than from the women itself. Since, thanks to Friends Reunited, it would appear that at least one of these girls is still alive, perhaps we should get the story straight from the horse's mouth, as it were, preferably with pictures from her photo album going back to 1964. It sounds as though this is Mary Hale's only claim to national fame, so she may perhaps not be so reluctant to talk about it now as she would have been previously; indeed, now she's in her dotage she might possibly be flattered by the attention.

The chances of Mary Hale's welcoming the attentions of Wallis and Gromit are slim indeed.

There's a very big difference between receiving School CP and being sexually abused by couple of perverts whose job it is to care for you.

There's a similarly big difference between reliving the experience for a publication whose intent is to provoke public outrage at the enormity of the headmaster's crime and reliving the experience as an aid to masturbation for those who would love to have been in the Headmaster's shoes.

Mr Guise should have been hanged and his accomplice transported to Australia.

…but nevertheless, dauntless as the task may be, we have tried.

Watch this space!

Correspondence on the corporal punishment of girls in the home in "The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine" for 1868-70 and in "Picture Post" for August-December 1939, the latter especially authentic and interesting, bound sets in any large library but usually with the relevant pages or volumes missing; Canberra Catholic Girls High School used pants-down caning 1958-72 - is there an Australian Friends Reunited? An enterprising publisher with an interest in this sort of thing could fill a volume ...

I think we can be fairly confident that Anonymous was not a pupil at Canberra Catholic Girls High School between 1958 and 1972.

May we therefore know the source of of his information?

The dates are those of a particular headmistress's tenure, the source one of her pupils in the late Sixties and early Seventies. There is not much point in merely affirming the source's reliablity, or in giving more details. My thought was, that at a rough guess there might be a couple of thousand women out there who had her as their head. Even allowing for probable Catholic omerta, it ought to be possible to obtain some verification.

My view remains that there was never a school at which the accepted common practice was to cane teenage girls on the bare bum.

It's well known that the correspondence in the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine is fantasy (see Ian Gibson's The English Vice , which I see is recently re-issued). However I had not heard about there having been lengthy correspondence in Picture Post in 1939. This would be interesting. Can Anonymous tell us if any Picture Post material is available on the Web?

There is a little on the "Hours in a Library" thread in the Chat Forum of "Spanking Facts and Research" but I'm not aware of any other.

Oh Lotta! I've seen so many of your postings as the voice of sanity in an insane world and now you start talking about hanging people. At best this might be evidence that you do not understand that irony does not work in this medium and I find that hard to believe. At worst it betrays a lack of respect for fundamental values and justice that even our late and unlamented Mr Home Secretary B did not match.

I've managed to find a small amount of the Picture Post material in libraries - most of the relevant volumes were missing. I've posted this elsewhere previously:

30th September, 1939

250 MOTHER'S PROTEST

This letter is sent to you from Two Hundred and Fifty Mothers, who have read PICTURE POST from the first. On September 9, you state the controversy on caning is closed. We are members of a Mother's Social Welfare, and the letters have been very interesting and helpful. We have daughters who have attained that age of thinking they can do just what they please. After giving them a good caning, there is a marked improvement in their behaviour. The majority of letters we read approved the use of the cane, and the readers admit it was given for their own good. PICTURE POST is a widely read and popular weekly, and you, the Edtior should give the readers a fair and square deal, and print all of the letters you received in reply to S. Meadowcroft. We have all agreed that if this request is not conceded, we shall no longer buy PICTURE POST.

Mrs. W.G. Lynford
Brondesbury Park, N.W.2.

BEHIND THE SCENES AT HIGH SCHOOL

I am a school caretaker at a girls' High School. There is no corporal punishment there, of course. But a more ill-mannered lot of hussies it would be hard to find. The indignities with which I have to put up! It makes my blood boil. If their parents could see them leaving their classrooms, they would be shocked. I would like to have them on my own for about one month. I would warm them where they have never been warmed in their lives. All these girls are between 14 and 17 years of age and are all spoiled snobs.

B.R.
Dagenham, Essex

BODY-BLOW TO LETTER WRITERS

Your readers will no doubt be sorry to hear that Dr. Goebbels is having several million copies of their letters on the subject of caning distributed in America, to prove we are a nation of sadists and that barbarism is not confined to the Third Reich.

William James
Westward, Marley, nr. Exmouth

I have one more from the 7th October issue but will need to type that in as I've just discovered I haven't got it in electronic form.

Picture Post 7th October 1939:

Germans Believe In It

Your correspondents who advocate corporal punishment for naughty maids would find widespread support in Germany. I know because I studied there and was acquainted with several German families. Not so long ago, university girls and boys were whipped by the "Blue Man" for their delinquencies. Strict discipline is still maintained in many homes, though a boy or girl may not be whipped when wearing the uniform of Nazi Youth.

The whipping of girls was re-introduced into Hamburg schools earlier this year. The official notice to teachers filled nearly half a column of a Hamburg paper. No age was fixed, so girls up to seventeen and eighteen years of age must now be subject to it. There was no suggestion of chastisement in private. The whipping must be inflicted at once and not postponed and a culprit can only be whipped twice on one day with the head teacher’s permission. Significantly, head teacher’s were warned that they must see there was always an "adequate supply" of canes in stock.

Joan S.B. Clapham

(It is important to realise that the above was published just over a month after the start of World War II - therefore in addition to normal concerns about the veracity of such material, deliberate attempts at anti-German propaganda must be considered possible as well).

Gervas d'Olbert, "Chastisement across the Ages", 1956.

"Chastisement and War"

'In the very first week of the 1939 war various English dailies and weeklies conducted a lively set of articles and letters on "The Caning of Girls".

[Extracts from correspondence published in "Picture Post":]

'One lady wrote: "I have daughters aged 17 and 15. Whenever any one of them stays out too late of an evening, she knows the cane is ready for her. Last Saturday my eldest girl, who is beginning to show signs of independence, arrived home at 10 p.m. She was immediately bent over the bed, with only a small protection of clothing, and got what she had asked for. The next morning she preferred to eat her breakfast standing up. I find it is the only way, and kinder in the long run."

Another contributed: "I always hang a cane on a prominent part of our living-room wall. My two daughters aged 15 and 16 know very well it will be used where necesary. And when they get it, it is without the protection of a pair of drawers. After it is over, they usually kiss me and burst into tears. Then I make the naughty one hang up the cane on the wall. When it is not being used, the cane is often a subject of fun among us. My girls do not object to it at all."

Some of the girls whose letters were published in this wartime correspondence related incidents of extreme severity. One had been punished on alternate days by her mother and her father with a leather strap, for the mere offence of displaying on her mantlepiece the photograph of a prepossessing young man. One soldier, returning on leave, was required to inflict considerable punishment on his younger sister for staying out after 10 p.m. at night, the father being dead and the mother an invalid. More often, however, it was an elder sister who wielded the cane or the back of a brush....

Another case of a boasting adolescent receiving a dose of the cane after repeated warnings was reported from a Midlands town. A daughter of sixteen, much cherished by her parents, was apt at that difficult age to get out of hand. Her mother was especially worried, as she was in ill health and had to depend on the girl. She would sit sulking or else in great amusement while the family prepared the evening meal. Her father warned her. At last her arrogance exceeded itself and quite quietly her father fetched a garden cane and gave her six strokes - the first and last in her life. After that a noticeable improvement occurred in her attitude towards her family. ...

There is a general tendency to use corporal punishment less frequently on the female sex. For the boys, perhaps, are reserved the heavier chastisements, while the slipper leaves its mark on their sisters.

Neither can we lay down a definite opinion as to the frequency of corporal infliction in different age-groups. It is probable that, in most homes, the curve of punishment rises to about the age of twelve or thirteen, after which the child is punished but rarely - and then severely - for really serious offences."

It would be hard to find any living witnesses if this did occur.
But taking into account all the other atrocities committed by The Third Reich, it's not too hard to believe.

Lotta,

I'm pasting below the text of a newspaper article from the late 1960s or 1970s. I've seen a scan of the original article, which appeared under the headline "Schoolgirl Caning Protest" together with a photograph of six or seven protestors (a couple of them partially obscured) holding up a placard which reads "No to the Cane."

Of course, it might be possible to argue that the newspaper article was fake, the girls in the photo were paid actresses, etc.; but I think any neutral observer would agree that on the balance of evidence this is unlikely. I'm sure you're right, of course, that the vast majority of stories on this site (and others) about schoolgirls being beaten on their naked bottoms are pure fantasy. But given the wide variety of practices in different educational institutions and also the huge change in disciplinary procedures over the last thirty years, my own sense is that this kind of scenario is not so wildly implausible as it may seem to us at the beginning of the 21st century. The kind of paranoia which reads the whole universe in pornographic terms is, ultimately, only a mirror image of the kind of dogmatism which holds that no such thing can ever have existed. The truth, I suspect, is more contingent, inconsistent and historically variable.

Best wishes for the Xmas season,

Nero

---------------------------------------------------------------
SCHOOLGIRL CANING PROTEST

Pupils from a select private girls' school in Hampshire held a protest against the use of corporal punishment on Saturday at the local County Show which the Minister of Education attended.
Ten girls from the fourth, fifth and sixth years, waved placards and chanted 'No Cane'. Three sixth formers, none of whom were wearing school uniform handed out leaflets which read: "Girls aged 11-19 years at our school are subjected to corporal punishment each day for often trivial reasons. Masters and Mistresses regularly use the hand, the slipper, the strap and cane to beat girls on their behinds that they are often made to bare. This is extremely degrading and painful and unnecessary. It should stop ! Tell your MP it should stop now !"

The Minister did not see the protest that lasted nearly an hour before staff from the school arrived and took pupils away.

The protest comes at a time when the government has announced a review of corporal punishment in State schools. The review will not include private schools and will not report until next year.

One eighteen year old protester who wants to be known as Dawn, told how she had been caned earlier that week for appearing in class with a skirt shorter than the regulation length of two inches above the knee. "I was taken to the House Master by the Mistress. I was bent over a chair, my pants pulled down and given six strokes across my bare behind. It hurt so much I cried and I am still badly bruised. Just for wearing a skirt they don't like. It's inhuman."

The school at the centre of the protest has a long history and uses corporal punishment to maintain discipline and standards. Rules governing the use of corporal punishment in private schools are decided by the bodies controlling each school, usually a Trust that does not come under the State school regulations. The regime described in the protesting schoolgirls' leaflet can be found in several other private girls schools.

The chairman of the school's trust told this newspaper, "We have an excellent record of achievement and we turn out extremely well educated and well behaved girls. Our standards of discipline are extremely high and corporal punishment is a key factor in our success." He went on to say. "This whole fiasco came about because a group of middle and upper school girls wanted to wear skirts that were far too short. They were forbidden and when they continued to wear short skirts were threatened with sanctions. Unfortunately corporal punishment had to be administered in several instances and while most girls reverted to the standard length skirt, yesterday a very small number refused. They are the ones on this so-called protest. Such behaviour is not tolerated and I assure you the miscreants are going to be severely punished."

The protest by these schoolgirls seemed doomed to painful failure and obscurity.

I'm not sure what to believe - I find it a bit odd that the "select private school" is not actually named in the article, nor the chair of the school trust, nor the location of the fair, nor the name of the Minister of Education supposedly visiting.

And I think the stuff from Picture Post sounds a bit fantastic too - but thanks Dean for finding it - it is of historical interest to know how fantasies were different in 1939 with caning supposedly part of the domestic scene as well as at school.

Fair enough points, David, but I think the cutting is from a local Hampshire newspaper so a phrase such as "the local County show" would make sense on its own in this context.

Thanks - I've seen this elsewhere and was impressed by the dots: the picture had evidently been published.

However: what sort of newspaper / reporter doesn't make it the story, that the Minister was present, complete with photo of him, 'No comment', etc? There is a tendency in making things up to go over the top. How much more convincing, if it had been one or two, younger only, girls, punished in private, by someone of the same sex, rarely, etc etc! So I reached the conclusion that the item probably comes from a spanking mag.

A blind man on a galloping horse could see that the article is a work of fiction.

Speaking as an historian with a specific interest in this subject, I am fairly convinced that the 'Hampshire article' is a fake.

Yes, the photograph certainly looks like it comes from a newspaper, and it's possible that it is entirely genuine - although I think it's more likely that the placard originally said something different and has been doctored. There were numerous school protests in the 1970s in Britain and the photo looks very much like other photos I have seen from such genuine protests that concerned a range of educational issues (including sometimes

The only copies of the Hampshire article that I have seen are fairly small. I'd love to see a decent sized scan (especially of the photo) if anyone knows where I can see it.

I'd love to be able to compare a decent sized image to some of the photos I have (of known provenance) to be able to compare details such as uniform, etc. It might be possible to even work out precisely where this photo comes from - and that could give some indication of its likely veracity - for example if the same girl could be seen in another photo of known veracity.

Dean,

The article appeared in 2001 on the www.members.tripod.com/Mystique website, though it does not seem to be available now. I've got a printout of which I'd be happy to send you a copy, if we could work out a way for safe transmission. Although in general I share your sense of scepticism, this doesn't seem to me sufficiently salacious enough for a spanking mag--it doesn't go into much details about the girls, for example, preferring to focus, as would any stuffy provincial newspaper, on "the chairman of the school's trust"--and the photo itself seems lifelike rather than posed (look, for example, at that plastic bag the girl on the left is carrying). The fact that the girls are wearing short skirts would also fit in with the text of the story. Indeed, given that it's all about mini-skirts, I would guess this took place slightly earlier than I had originally thought--around 1965-67, perhaps--when cultural norms and expectations were, of course, very different.

The article simply screams its non-genuineness but I shan't waste my time trying to educate the terminally gullible element of this forum's readership.

However, I shall ask a question of all readers bright enough to have experience of reading newspapers - do you seriously imagine that any newspaper in the UK would have printed that article without naming the school?

RE Dean and Nero. The article you talk about is an obvious fantasy.

The 'No to the cane' protest picture that is used is genuine enough (obviously set up by the photographer though), but it was taken in Hyde Park, London on Wednesday 17th May 1972. This was a day of action organised by the National Union of School Students. The NUSS was an organisation for secondary school pupils set up and supported by the National Union Students in the early 1970s and enjoyed some support in its time. Its main campaign aims were: the abolition of corporal punishment (not surprisingly!), abolition of school uniform and the payment of student grants to school students aged 16-18.

I think a report of the protest and the pic may have appeared in the London Evening Standard and maybe other newspapers at the time if anyone wants to check.

Re the Picture Post thread.

Isn't this supposed to be the oldest newspaper editors trick in the book. When he doesn't have much to put in the paper he used to write a bogus letter to himself claiming to be a mother who still spanks her wayward teenage daughter. This immediately provokes a sackful of mail discussing the pros and cons of the subject.

Thanks, Radio Listener, you're obviously a real scholar of the subject!

Quite true - though in this case the correspondence got going more gradually, with Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells writing in about girls wearing bicylce shorts. Those were more leisurely times, even if war was imminent.

Thank goodness for the sane scepticism of one or two contributors to this site!

I should still like to see the whole sequence of letters, though, beginning with the bicycle shorts controversy. We could then see how the 'unnecessary detail' about knickers up or down started to make its appearance.

Thank you for that information - it makes a lot of sense. The photos I have that I thought might have been in the same sequence are in fact from a similar protest a week earlier. I will now see if I can track down articles and photos from that later protest as well (if anyone else has access, they might be able to do it faster - my main sources for most British papers are closed down over Christmas).

Actually yes I do think that a lot of newspapers wouldn't name the school - why do I think that? Because I have in my collection articles I know to be genuine concerning schoolchildren's protests against issues such as corporal punishment that occurred in the early 1970s and the newspapers do not mention the names of the schools involved. For some reason that I can't explain, they rarely do.

RL seems to have provided actual solid evidence (in the form of a date and location for the picture - which I can say matches other historical information I have quite closely) that the article is fake. I've always thought it probably was, but there is a big difference probably and definitely.

The photo of the girls was indeed from the 1972 protest in Hyde Park and is credited to the Evening Standard. The picture can be seen on the Getty Images site in the archive - search for "school AND caning" along with another picture from the protest of kids running along Victoria Embankment.

The "alleged" Hampshire tale is self-evidently false as has been mentioned before there are no names at all, including that of the Minister!!

To resume idle musings ... Figures posted on this thread establish that one class of girls was sent to boarding schools where the cane was not just used, but just about guaranteed! Is there an Old Lags Reunited site? Otherwise, libraries are the best bet, for more reports and studies, the internet being in my experience just about devoid of content.

Apologies!

For "figures posted in this thread" please read "figures posted in the thread titled 'CP in books'".

The reference is to a study of approved schools (reformatories) which states that, during a six-month period in 1949, 71% of the senior girls at a sample girls' approved school were caned.

The Approved School Rules limited caning to girls under 15, who could receive up to six strokes on the hand.

Readers may, however, be familiar with Noele Arden's memories of approved school from this period, published in "Child of a System" - also an academic study, I think, based on her story. Miss Arden says she was caned on both her hands and her bottom at remand home and approved school, and for absconding from approved school she was caned on her bare bottom.

The study estimates that about one-third of girls at approved schools absconded.

If we might be permitted to put two and two together just a little - and recalling that people were usually sent to approved school for rather longer than six months - that is a lot of pants-down caning at one class of (compulsory) boarding school at least.

Unfortunately, juvenile deliquents are not the most likely sort of people to go on to write books.

We should bear in mind that Noele Arden was 11 years old at the time of the alleged bare-bum caning.

It has long been accepted on this forum that girls of primary school age were sometimes punished in that way but I doubt that older girls were punished in the same manner - even at 'approved' schools.

In the interests of clarity, I should say that I don't doubt that Noele might have been punished in that way for, at 11, she was still of primary school age.

I do doubt that the school authorities would have been quite so quick to inflict such a punishment on a teenager.

In a school where the cane is rarely used, and is the ultimate deterrent, merely to get the cane is enough.

In a school such as the girls' approved school sampled, where the cane is used so commonly that everyone could expect to get it, it is obviously given for a wide range of offences. One would therefore expect to find a wide range of canings.

Where two or three on the hand is the punishment for a minor offence - say cheek -, if six on the hand, the maximum allowed under the Approved School Rules, were to be given for something as serious as absconding, the result would be anticlimax rather than deterrent.

And as a final idle muse -

The only first-hand account I have heard of caning at a girls' school, the Canberra Catholic Girls High School, was expressed in the following terms:

"The nuns were really awful. They whacked you across the backside. Pulled your pants down, and whacked you across the backside."

The implement was the cane handle of a feather duster - that is, a light cane about two feet long.

It didn't sound much like the floggings posed by models on myriad cp websites ad nauseam. It sounded more like when you were naughty and your mother took the stick to you, carried into high school years, the bare bum having more to do with the nuns showing that they would stand no nonsense than with pain.

All things considered, I don't find it implausible that the Approved School Rules would have been broken to that extent, at least.

Cheerio!

The ladies who received corporal punishment at home or at school are now getting on a bit. They are also, many of them, sitting at home wondering what to do with their computers. Shouldn't we be doing what we can to save their memories for posterity? A discretely worded advert in, say, The Lady - or Woman's Realm or Woman or Woman's Own - could potentially bring enough in for a book on how girls were brought up.

Imagine 2 x 18 year old girls agreeing to be spanked as a punishment nowadays !, I well recall this being in the papers when I was only a young lad, but it could have been the thing that started a lifelong interest in corporal punishment.

Its also amazing to find this forum after so many years, I have spent much of the last day reading various threads on it, and its fair to say that I shall be a regular reader at least, and hopefully add a few contributions from time to time myself.

Sad to say my school did'nt use CP on girls, but I was lucky enough to grow up when a few girl friends were subject to it at home.

Glad to have found the site, hope to interact with you in the future.


George

Welcome to our happy, Happy Circle, George.

Press reports of the doings at Helston in 1964 can be found on the encyclopaedic site:

http://www.corpun.com/uksc6407.htm

Some interesting ideas concerning the Helston case are put forward at

http://www.network54.com/Forum/209127/thread/1219098648/last-1219239901/A+reply+to+6th+form+punishments+%28UK%29

For clarification and the avoidance of doubt ^{© Sarajane 2002} I would like to stress to those habitués of this estimable Forum who have followed the link in Research Assistant 2's posting above and made the trek to the rather overheated and racy world of The Spanking Facts & Research Chat Forum for the first time that the Anonymous Lurker to be found there is definitely not the same individual as the Another_Lurker to be found here!