There have been many posts of anecdotal reports about school corporal punishment (together, perhaps inevitably, with a fine collection of fairy stories) but I wonder whether anyone has ever tried to estimate the actual numbers involved? Of course I recognise that many people switch off at the very thought of statistics and percentages, but perhaps I could grab your attention with the following question:

"Was Lynne Simmonds the only girl ever caned on the bottom in school (the famous Janet Dines case), or were there thousands of others that we simply don't know about?"

If we just ask about orders of magnitude (hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, ...) then a very little evidence goes a long way. I'm going to use evidence from my own schooldays as a guide. Of course this might not be typical, and I hope that others will offer their own reports to give us a clearer view.


The evidence from my two schools

To be definite, let's talk about English people who are now aged between 40 and 70 (I am 56, right in the middle of this age group). These are the people who were at school in the fifties, sixties and seventies, and a few years either side. They would normally have been liable to corporal punishment at school, and let's say there are 20 million of them in total, men and women. The true figure is probabIy rather lower, and I could look it up, but it really doesn't matter for a calculation involving orders of magnitude. For the same reason, it wouldn't make much difference if I'd included Welsh people who were in essentially the same educational system, or taken account of immigration, etc.

I attended a mixed primary school of about 400 (including infants) and a boys-only grammar school of about 600. This limits the evidence that I have regarding secondary-school girls, but there are still some deductions one can make from other information and by extrapolation.


Boys getting the cane

Over the period I was at school, perhaps two or three boys would get the cane each year, giving maybe 25 canings over the whole period. A few boys might have been caned more than once, so maybe 5% of the boys would have been caned at some time in their schooldays. It's a rough calculation, but a little over one per class feels about right. If we apply this proportion to the whole population then:

A few hundred thousand English men now aged between 40 and 70 were, as schoolboys, punished with a cane at least once.

Some of these schoolboys would have been caned on the hand, but the majority would, I believe, have been caned on the bottom. So, as we are dealing only with orders of magnitude, we can also say:

A few hundred thousand English men now aged between 40 and 70 were, as schoolboys, caned on the bottom at least once.


Boys getting the slipper

When I was at school, the cane was used only for serious offences. By contrast, the slipper was in frequent use by teachers as classroom punishment. It's hard to estimate how many of these punishments took place, as there was wide variation from teacher to teacher. It's also true that many boys were slippered on several different occasions. But I think it's a fair guess that around a quarter of the boys in my class would have been slippered at one time or another during their schooldays. If we apply this proportion of 25% to the whole population, and use the fact that the slipper was nearly always given on the bottom, then:

A couple of million English men now aged between 40 and 70 were, as schoolboys, slippered on the bottom at least once.


Girls getting the cane

The calculations for boys were fairly straightforward, because the cane tended to be used for serious offences and the slipper for classroom punishment. But in many schools, girls who committed serious offences would get the slipper rather than the cane. This would often be true in mixed schools, and nearly always so in primary schools where girls were hardly ever caned. As I have no direct knowledge of events at girls-only or mixed secondary schools, the calculations need to be carried out with extra caution.

One guide is that, over the past thirty years, I have met three women who, in the course of conversation, happened to mention that they had been caned in school. Of course memory plays tricks, but these three occasions stand out in my mind. I don't think that more than three men have made the same remark. This suggests that the number of girls who were caned at school wasn't as tiny as one might think. If we guess that this was a tenth of the number of boys who were caned (and I feel that this is an under-estimate) then the proportion of all girls who had been caned would be about 0.5%. In other words:

Some tens of thousands of English women now aged between 40 and 70 were, as schoolgirls, punished with a cane at least once.

There is, however, one major difference between boys and girls with regard to the cane. Most boys were caned on the bottom, whereas it’s commonly accepted that nearly all girls were caned on the hand. But not absolutely all of them: so we need to make another estimate.

Let's say that 99 out of every 100 girls who were caned were always punished on the hand. If that's the case then:

Several hundred English women now aged between 40 and 70 were, as schoolgirls, caned on the bottom at least once.

In percentage terms, we're talking of 0.005% of the female population in our age group: a very small percentage, but not completely negligible. Of course that 99 out of 100 is a guess, but I feel it's about right. If it had been 999 out of 1000, and only a few dozen girls had ever been caned on the bottom, then the rarity value would, perversely, have increased the publicity.


Girls getting the slipper

Here I can use the direct evidence of my mixed primary school, where at least two girls were slippered in the years I was there. Compare this with the 25 canings of boys over my whole time at school and this suggests that, in the population as a whole, the number of girls who were slippered was at least a tenth of the number of boys who were caned; if my primary school was typical then maybe this figure should be somewhat higher.

We now meet another difference between the cane and the slipper when it comes to comparing boys and girls. The cane could be used on the hands or the bottom, and girls were treated differently from boys. But the slipper was nearly always used on the bottom, and this would have applied to girls as well. So we can estimate that:

Some tens of thousands of English women now aged between 40 and 70 were, as schoolgirls, slippered on the bottom at least once.

At first sight this figure seems a bit high, so perhaps my school was unusual. But it's about the same as the number of girls who I've estimated were caned on the hand, and as these were commonly used as comparable punishments then maybe it really is about right.


Was my school unusual?

It's possible that the number of girls getting the slipper that I've calculated above is exaggerated; but the only reason would be that my primary school was unusually strict with girls. Well, maybe it was. Perhaps two punishments in four years was very high; and one of the cases was a classroom punishment, highly unusual for girls. There can't be many boys who have seen a (genuine, not fantasy) schoolgirl being slippered no more than fifteen feet away. Again memory plays tricks, but there's no way I'll ever forget that spectacular moment in autumn 1957 when Miss W*** ordered Barbara F***** to bend over a chair, and the usual target of grey cloth trousers was replaced by a tight pair of navy-blue knickers. Watching that single impact of a slipper on a neat schoolgirl bum kindled my life-long interest in the subject.

I know two American men - one called John and another called Richard.

Given that there are about 100 million men in America, this suggests that 50 million are called John the another 50 million are called Richard.

Also, did you know that the average American has one testicle and one ovary?

Aren't statistics wonderful!

Your statistics make very interesting reading. Can you tell us any more about the three women who mentioned they had been caned at school?

I feel that if 1 in every 100 aunties had bollocks, then the increase in the number of uncles who smoked pipes and did conjuring tricks at Christmas could be worked to three decimal places.

"Over the period I was at school, perhaps two or three boys would get the cane each year" says Einstein but that is no basis for any sort of extrapolation. At some schools, there were hundreds caned every year and, at other schools in the past, up to 80 every day .

"Let's say that 99 out of every 100 girls who were caned were always punished on the hand" says Einstein but WHY should we say 99 out of every 100?

Why not 50 out of every 100?

Why not 999 out of every 1000?

Why not any number you can think of out of any other number you can think of?

Statistics - don't you just love them?

And some, like the ones at SchoolCP are just so damn pretty to look at...

Suppose you have a big bag of sweets, all sorts of flavours, 1000 sweets altogether. You stick your hand in, and take out two. It turns out that you have one strawberry-flavoured sweet and one banana-flavoured sweet. This tells you very little about about the numbers of different flavours in the bag. So this is just like Lotta's rhetorical question about American names -- you really can't say very much.

But suppose, instead, that your bag of 1000 sweets contained only two different flavours, blackcurrant and lemon. Now stick your hand in, rummage around, and take out two sweets; suppose you get one of each flavour. What does that tell you?

Obviously it tells you that you have at least one of each flavour in the bag. That's for certain. But it's really unlikely that you had only one blackcurrant, and 999 lemons -- the chance is only about one in 500. It's quite unlikely that you had only 10 blackcurrants, and 990 lemons. And so on. The most likely possibility is 500 of each, of course, but there's a range of reasonable values, and there are established statistical techniques for calculating these things. (If you don't believe me, but feel in the mood, you could get hold of an introductory university statistics textbook -- look up "binomial distribution" and "confidence interval".)

This is exactly the type of reasoning which applies in the (admittedly rather special) case of women mentioning that they had been caned at school. Instead of 1000 sweets we have (about) 10 million women. Each woman was either "caned at school" or "not caned at school". Instead of selecting two, we have the number of different women I've had conversations with over 30 years; several hundred, but probably fewer than a thousand. At least three of those were caned at school. So that's at least 0.3%.

Now do the calculation (which is valid because the sample of a few hundred women was essentialy random). The most likely possibility is that 0.3% of the 10 million women, ie 30,000, were caned at school. The chance that only 3 were caned is microscopic. In fact, because of the larger sample size (several hundreds rather than just two) the range of likely values is pretty limited. I was careful to talk about "orders of magnitude", and "some tens of thousands" is by far the most likely. The ranges either side ("hundreds of thousands" and "a few thousand" are really quite unlikely, and anything else is nigh on impossible.

This type of reasoning doesn't work directly for the other cases, because the sample -- one or two schools' worth of children -- isn't random. But please don't imagine (as I feel that some of you do) that it tells you nothing at all. You can still get some information about orders of magnitude, and although there's a lot of leeway for variability either side, it does narrow things down quite a bit.

And, yes, I made an estimate of 1 in 100. Why not 1 in 1000? Well, that would mean that around 30 girls had been caned on the bottom in 30 years. And yet a significant proportion of these instances have been made public -- now that really does strain credibility for something which (in the period we're talking about) was legal and frequently permitted by local authority regulations when carried out by a female.

This is exactly the type of reasoning which applies in the (admittedly rather special) case of women mentioning that they had been caned at school. Instead of 1000 sweets we have (about) 10 million women. Each woman was either "caned at school" or "not caned at school". Instead of selecting two, we have the number of different women I've had conversations with over 30 years; several hundred, but probably fewer than a thousand. At least three of those were caned at school. So that's at least 0.3%.(Einstein)

But isn't the difference between these women and the sweets in the bag important? The sample of sweets in the bag is representative of the sweets you are talking about (2 different flavors.) What leads you to believe that the women with whom you have had these conversations are representative of all the women who attended such schools? These women you reference may certainly be a skewed sample that represents only the type of woman who attended that kind of school and who is willing or perhaps eager to discuss the use of CP. The context of these discussion, how they came to be, who these women are, if they attended various and representative schools, and a whole bunch of other variables would have to be known to know if they are representative of the whole and if their opinions and experiences are such that one can generalize to the whole. It's the difference between a scientific poll and voting on American Idol.

I might have O levels in Physics,Chemistry & Biology, I still say Bugger science!

I still maintain that many women beaten at school will be reluctant to admit to it even now, 30/40/50 years later.

I wonder what the reaction of Barbara F & the at least one other girl would be if Einstein met them at a Primary school reunion and he enlightened the entire company about the time they got spanked in front of the class? I doubt they'd readily confess to getting it!

Far more interesting is why you got a peek at her underwear;did Miss F make an example of the girl by taking down/lifting her skirt, or did boys occasionally get their trousers taken down? Was it the offence or the person or the sex of the offender that caused this?

Given this was 1957, I would assume Miss was making an example of and teaching a lesson to the offender in one fell swoop. Whether that teaching methodology actually taught anyone anything beyond life's a bitch is open to debate, but it sure wasn't exact science, with irritable teachers!!

I think the best evidence is, in fact, the FRU site. Most of those women do not know that there are spankophiles prowling around reading everything they write. As far as they know, they are only speaking to each other. They have no reason to be coy about what happened to them, because they know others were in the same boat. On that site they speak quite freely about slipperings on the bottom and canings on the hand, but only one that I know of speaks about a caning on the bottom - and that one example is doubtful, possibly a male fantasist.

More generally, you cannot use publicised cases as samples from which to project any estimates, simply because those cases were usually aberrations. The reason they reached the press was they weren't typical, and involved a teacher breaking local authority regulations and generally violating the norms that existed even in that school. The only place where I could definitely say that it happened within school norms was Northwich where Ms Dines ruled. But even there we don't know how often. It might only have happened to half a dozen girls a year.

As for Einstein's "sample" of women he's spoken to, that carries no more weight than any other anecdotal examples posted on this site - e.g. those of that dickhead who posted here a few weeks back claiming to have had a whole string of girlfriends eager to tell him all about their school canings.

I therefore conclude that canings on the bottom for girls were statistically non-existent. That is, they did happen, but in numbers too small to register as a statistic at all. Slipperings, yes, canings, no.

Most of those women do not know that there are spankophiles prowling around reading everything they write. As far as they know, they are only speaking to each other. They have no reason to be coy about what happened to them, because they know others were in the same boat. (Rangy Strider)

What would lead you to conclude that these women might not be spankophiles themselves speaking to each other as spankophiles do, seeking out others in the same boat for a bit of fun? Perhaps exaggerating a bit to make the discussion more interesting as spankos often do? I have no idea how many girls were actually caned or slippered or smacked in your schools. I know that far fewer girls are paddled in the U.S. than boys but I also know that girls are paddled.

I definitely don't think that the Internet is probably the best place to get dependable answers on this topic most of the time or the best place to do "research" that anyone could possibly take seriously.

It's a shame that the rubbish you sometimes see in the media gives statistics a bad name, because statistical methods are, when used properly, valuable scientific tools.For instance, environmentalists are interested in bird populations; they probably counted the half-dozen or so sea eagles in the north of Scotland, but you shouldn't imagine for one minute that they counted all the half-million sparrows individually -- they counted samples and used statistical inference. Their answers won't be exactly right, but they won't be too far out.

That's just the sort of thing I've done with the women who were caned as schoolgirls -- used a sample, and made an inference. In fact I've now done the calculations. Statisticians typically use 90%, 95% and 99% confidence intervals, with the interval getting wider as the confidence increases. Given my data (3 out of a sample of 1000, with a total population of ten million) the 90% confidence interval is 14,000 -- 77,000; the 95% confidence interval is 11,000 -- 109,000; and the 99% confidence interval is 6,700 -- 140,000. The most likely value is 30,000, the same proportion as in the sample.

Now I'd say that 99% was "beyond reasonable doubt", the sort of confidence that you'd need for a criminal trial. But of course, in a real trial the opposing counsel would want to test my hypotheses. And there are some challenges in the posts above, for instance about whether my sample was biased. So let's look at that.

First, the population size. I've already said that ten million isprobably a bit high, so that would reduce the figures, but not by very much.

Then, the sample size. I really don't think I've been in conversation with more than a thousand different women in thirty years (I should be so lucky!), and if the sample were smaller then the figures would be increased a little.

Next, the number of women in the sample who had been caned at school. Perhaps the ones who mentioned it were telling fibs? I'll go through the circumstances and you can judge for yourselves.

1. In the late seventies I was in conversation one evening with a group of seven or eight people; one was a woman of about my age (late twenties) or perhaps a little younger. She got round to talking about the tyrannical power that schoolteachers had over their pupils and, as an example, said that she'd been caned on her first day at secondary school. She'd been inking in an already-carved name on her desk, was sure that the teacher was looking to make an example of someone on that first day, and that she was the unlucky one. She hadn't told her mother that she'd been caned (though apparently, after some years, she didn't mind mentioning it to comparative strangers). And then the conversation moved on.

2. Aaround eleven or twelve years ago I was at an evening event and a dozen or so of us, men and women, met for coffee afterwards. For some reason there was a general conversation about corporal punishment in schools -- I don't know why, I arrived a little after the others and they'd already started. We were in Scotland, and one woman who was a teacher in her early thirties said that she'd used the belt on a few boys in her time, but the first occasion she was so nervous that she missed the boy's hand completely. Another Scottish woman of about the same age offered the opinion "It's not so terrible, it just stings for a while", presumably indicating that she'd received the belt at school. (Incidentally this second woman was wearing tight blue jeans and filled them deliciously well. It would have been tempting to relate the events of a certain Cheshire school and ask whether she'd change her opinion if she'd been made to suffer that ordeal; but it really wasn't that kind of discussion.) It was a woman in her late fifties who'd been caned, twice. She told us in a very matter-of-fact way: "I did such-and-such, and got the cane; a couple of years later I did something else and got the cane for that, too." No more details, and no-one asked.

3. About five years ago I was talking to a woman I know who was in her late fifties. She was talking about something that happened when she was at school which made her late for class: "Got the cane for that", she said, with obvious resentment that it wasn't her fault.

So there they are, the three women who mentioned that they'd been caned. All the information was volunteered in the course of casual conversation, no details (salacious or otherwise), and I've no reason at all to doubt what they said. So I believe that at least three women in the sample had been caned at school. It might be more, of course; if exactly three had been caned, it would be unusual for all three to have mentioned it. But I'll give my opponent the benefit of the doubt on that one.

So now there are only two technical points left which might be challenged. Was my sample random? I believe it was; there's no reason to think that the women that I've met were liable to the cane more than average (I don't move in those kind of circles). And, secondly, were the three events that I've mentioned statistically independent? Again, yes they were; the three women have nothing in common, apart from having had at least one conversation with me, and having been caned at school.

I rest my case, and the court would find in my favour. We can be extremely confident that over six thousand women now aged between 40 and 70 were, as schoolgirls, punished with the cane; and it is most likely that a few tens of thousands of them were punished in that way.

Small samples will always give odd results.

Also the selection can change the result.

I only know one girl who was caned.

It took place at the secondary school in Woodbridge Suffolk early 1960's.

I do not know how she was canned althogh she was punished across her bottom by her father when she came home.

She told me herself in front of her husband who also went to school with her.

Now that is one case but the incident involved a group of students in a place they shold not have been.

So we know it was more than one but we don't know how many nor what sex they were.

Because it was a group we must assume there was more than one girl because single girls did not join male groups. In any case knowing the girl in question she would not have done so.

I have also heard of the stoy quite separately from her sister.

It was also spoken about with younger siblings when her parents were present.

There is no mention of caning at that school on Friends Reunited.

So where does that leave us statistically?

See the post "girls slippered in front of boys", June 24, 2004 from John (it didn't seem appropriate to call myself Einstein on that occasion). It's currently on page 11.

Rangy Strider says "The only place where I could definitely say that it happened within school norms was Northwich where Ms Dines ruled. But even there we don't know how often. It might only have happened to half a dozen girls a year."

Well, over thirty years that would be 180 girls caned -- on the bottom? In one school? I'm only suggesting a couple of hundred in the whole country.

One can talk for ever about the number of pupils caned....the fact is that nobody can say for certain. It all depended on the area and the head. I think it is fair to say that schools in run down working class areas made greater use of the cane than those in middle class area. Of course the crunch is what period of time are we talking about. In the ten years before it was abolished in state schools its use had declined, but was widely used during the second war and remained so until about 1960. For proof of this school punishment books provide a good source of information. The big problem is that these do not always record every caning and not any unofficial ones by teachers.#

George

One thing that no one has considered is that there are perhaps millions of females who were corporaly punished at school that have no interest in the subject and do not realise that anyone else has.
It is something that happened to them in the normal course of their schooldays amongst many other things.
It was not unusual at the time and therefore has no relevence to them.
What surprises me is that when I have gleaned the odd bit of information from girl friends they have acted surprised that such things could be of interest.
This lack of schooldays punishment interest has also been strangly apparent amongst some females who are into CP fetish games.
Two actually told me they had been caned on the hand at school but that I would not be interested in that because it did not involve their bottoms! They did not realise that some of us find hand caning just as interesting.
It suggests one thing and that is that nothing should amaze anyone in the real world.
mimi
By zee vay mimi is a pseudenym for amiddle aged bald headed male. ( who cannot spell pseudenym)

Einstein,

I am sure you are in the right ballpark with your numbers, although in my opinion and experience at the schools I went to, I think that you are very conservative in some your assumptions.

To take one example, the last school I attended from 11 to 16 had around 120 pupils. I seem to recollect that the cane was used about twice a term, i.e six times a year, sometimes more sometimes less but twice a term on average seems about right. This might even be on the low side.

This means (I think) that we had about a 5% chance of being caned each year. The school was mixed and I also estimate that boys got it mostly and girls rarely I guess about 9 to 1.

This means that in my 5 years at that school there were about 30 canings in all, only 3 of them being girls. This seems about right too. I knew two who were and I am sure there were others.

The birthrate for the years of those people now aged between 40 to 70 was about 750,000 per annum. If we take the school population for the nine years for children between 7 and 16 we get 6.75 million.

Now if my 5% is about right then is it reaonable to conclude that around 337,500 were punished each year? 10% of which were girls.

I might be a bit rong on the logic here Einstein, but I I had a 5% chance each year, then is it cumulative? Can We assume that over our 9 tears from 7 to 16 we therefor had a 45% chance of being punished?

Over to you Einstein for you to crunch the numbers and sort the logic.

EricB

I've looked a bit at numbers of girls caned. There is actually enough reliable data available to come up with a reasonable estimate of the minimum numbers of girls (and boys) caned at Britain circa 1950.

I would stress that this data gives a minimum figure for the number of girls caned in England and Wales. The figure could be higher, it is statistically very improbable that it would be lower. The data available also gives no indication as to what part of the body these girls were punished on. It's also fairly old - as I say it dates from around 1950. But it is data from what is probably the most comprehensive survey to address corporal punishment in British schools ever undertaken.

I won't go into all the details of all the calculations unless somebody is really interested - they aren't that complicated to do on a modern spreadsheet program, but they are quite complicated to explain. While the necessary data is available, it's scattered through various pages of a quite large report and you have to crunch numbers together to work things out.

But important details are as follows.

The report is entitled 'A Survey of Rewards and Punishment In Schools: A Report by the National Foundation for Educational Research in England and Wales'. It was based on research carried out by M.E. Highfield, M.A., Ph.D. and A. Pinsent, M.B.E., M.A., B.Sc around 1950. This research was requested by the Ministry of Education after questions were asked in the House of Commons in 1947 that revealed a serious lack of information available as to common practices relating to punishment in British schools.

The entire report is over 400 pages long - very comprehensive and addresses a large number of issues.

When it comes to working out how often girls (and boys) were caned, we are dealing with a survey that involved 1434 teachers providing information of 44,490 children. The large sample size was used to ensure a fair sample that would give statistically reliable results.

From crunching all the numbers, we can find that in any given year, a minimum of 0.48% of girls - 1 in 200 approximately - would be caned at least once at school - across England and Wales. The equivalent percentage for boys was 5.74%. These are explicitly minimum percentages - the lowest possible values from the data. It seems to me likely that the true percentage for girls probably wasn't much higher than this - I suspect the true percentage for boys was probably comparatively higher - but on those two points, I'm going on informed opinion - it can't be demonstrated by figures.

You can also get figures for slippering and similar lower level corporal punishment - 3.58% for girls, 7.56% for boys.

Note - these are the figures for any given year - not over a whole school career, but any given year.

When you again, crunch the numbers compared to the population of England and Wales, you can safely say that at least 12,000 girls in state schools were caned in England and Wales in any given year around 1950. We can't say on what part of their bodies they were caned from these figures - the people doing the survey do not appear to have considered that to be a relevant thing to inquire into - but the number is firm.

12,000 isn't a huge number when you consider there were millions of children at school - but it's quite a lot of discrete incidents.

The thing is that statistics are all very well but they do not beat ( excuse pun) real life experiences.
At my junior school every single pupil got CP at least once ranging from a slap to the rare caning.
At my senior school every boy got the slipper at least once and the cane was given to about a quarter the boys at least once. Most girls got the slipper at least once.
At my wifes junior school every single pupil got the cane at least once.
At her senior school it was virtually unheard of but could be used.
So my experiences are that CP was a normal thing in the 50/60/70s.
Of course there will be some people who went to a school where CP was unheard of, therefore in their experience it never happened.
Most CP was unofficial and not recorded.
Of course Lotta who has no experience will dissagree. I find it strange that anyone who has no tangible interest in CP should waste their time on this forum.
Can you imagine any other club or society that would have a non participating member in them and take any notice.
If Lotta is female then so is the writer.
Mimi

That's pretty close to my estimate. I suggested about 5% per annum with only 10% of those being girls gives 0.5%.

I meant to add in my earlier post that Einsteins number of about 10 million was not far out, as if you take the 30 year period he was looking at given a birthrate of about 750,000 a year on average that equals about 22.5 million total 11.25m boys and 11.25m girls.

If the average school population was about 8.25 million (11 yrs X 750k) at a rate of 0.5% equals over 20,000 girls receiving CP each year.

Have I got my sums right Einstein?

Eric B

I wonder if mimi would be kind enough to explain what 'virtually unheard of' means.

Under a given set of conditions, a thing is either heard of or it isn't, surely?

mimi says "At my junior school every single pupil got CP at least once"

I say "Firstly, where are you obtaining the hallucinogenic drugs? And, secondly, can you get me some?"

....................................

mimi says "At my senior school every boy got the slipper at least once and the cane was given to about a quarter the boys at least once. Most girls got the slipper at least once."

I say "And you once swam up Niagra Falls with a grand piano tied to each ankle"

......................................

mimi says " At my wifes junior school every single pupil got the cane at least once"

I say "Of course they did, mimi. Of course they did. Now just relax while these nice men slip you into this comfy jacket with the long sleeves and buckles"

Someone whose name begins with L is one heck of an idiot!
Mimi

Of the two (all boys) schools that I attended that used the cane, the first administered it in front of the class so we fairly well knew how many canings took place. In my estimation at least two were administered every day, so over 400 a year. The second administered them in private in the Discipline Master's study, but from what I observed the number was probably about the same.
In terms of percentages of the enroled students who were caned at each school, however, I think the first would have been over 80%, but the second school was 4 times the size and some boys (like me) were caned more than once so probably only about 15% of all boys were caned at some time while they attended.

You ask "is it cumulative"? The quick answer is: approximately, if the numbers are very small, but not if the numbers get too large. The quick reason is that, as the numbers get large, there's more chance of any individual being caned more than once. And a second or subsequent caning doesn't increase the number of individuals who have been caned.

(That's why it's important to be clear about the question. I'm asking "how many individuals were caned", not "how many canings were there".)

If you really want to know how to calculate this (not for the faint-hearted!) --

Let p be the probability (between zero and one) of being caned in one year, so that the probability of not being caned in a given year is 1-p. The probability that you'll never be caned in, say, 5 years is (1-p)^5 -- that upward arrow means "raised to the fifth power". And so the probability that you will be caned over the five year period is 1 - (1-p)^5 . Expand the bracket and simplify, and you get

5p - 10p^2 + 10p^3 - 5p^4 + p^5. (The trick of expanding the bracket is called the Binomial Theorem)

Now if p is small then p squared, and so on, are tiny and you can forget about them; so you get 5p, and it's approximately cumulative. But if p is too large then you have to worry about the other terms.

Homework: try it out on your calculator with the figures from your school (use decimals, not percentages).

But first, a word from our sponsor.

I get the impression that there are two broad groups of posters to this forum, originators and critics. Two perfectly respectable critical positions are "we just don't know" and "it never happened". But I also get the feeling that some critics want to hold both positions at once when, pretty obviously, if we really don't know then there are no grounds for saying that it never happened, or for that matter that it did. My point is that we do know some things, and we can make rough (sometimes very rough) estimates to help us bridge the gap. Statistical methods are tools we can use to help us here.

So back to the story. I've been concentrating on girls who were caned at school. If we take my specification of English women now aged between 40 and 70 then the number of those women who, as schoolgirls, were punished with the cane is some number x. This number is quite definite -- each of these women was either never caned at all, or was caned at least once. But of course we don't know what x is, and as George correctly says, we'll never know what it is exactly. But we can try to put reasonable limits on it, and try to estimate its order of magnitude. I've given specific statistical reasons why we can be extremely confident that x is over six thousand, and why it is most likely that x is a few tens of thousands. It's interesting that Dean's figures given above are broadly consistent with this, perhaps rather higher -- see my answer to EricB about how to turn "canings per year" into canings over a pupil's period at school. (Actually I'd expect Dean's figures to be higher than mine as the research he quotes was carries out in 1950, and corporal punishment was more common at the beginning of the period in question than at its end.)

Now let's move on. The number of those women who, as schoolgirls, were caned on the bottom is some other number y. Again this number is quite definite, but we don't know what it is. I have suggested that the ratio y/x might be about 1/100, though various people have poured scorn upon this. We do know something for sure: this ratio can't be greater than one, and it can't be so small that y is smaller than the number of known and documented cases (which I'll call n). But can we place any limits on y, other than saying it's somewhere between n and x (and, almost certainly, quite a lot less than x)?

I get the feeling that some people believe y is actually equal to n -- in other words, the only cases there have ever been are those that have been publicised. So this is a version of the "it never happened" theory. My view is that this is remarkably unlikely, partly because you always need strong evidence to assert that an unknown quantity is right at one end of its possible range. My suggestion is that the most likely value for y is a couple of hundred; that it could perhaps be less than a hundred; but that a figure as low as a couple of dozen is pretty improbable.

But we'd better start by trying to see what the value of n might be. Let me just mention a few cases; I'm sure that the experts will correct me if I misquote a few details.

We know that Lynne Simmonds was caned on the bottom, because there was a court case where the severity of the punishment was an important issue (the abrasions from the punishment were given medical attention).

I recall, from the late 1970s, newspaper reports that a 15 year old girl called, I think, Karen McAdoo was caned on the bottom (over her skirt) because she had refused to hold out her hand for a caning. This case was publicised because the girl was held down by a teacher for punishment; this was confirmed by the headmaster concerned.

During the campaign to abolish corporal punishment there was a newspaper report that three girls aged 11 or 12 had each been caned on the bottom for stealing: I don't know whether names were given, but the case was mentioned in STOPP literature so I suspect that they had checked its veracity. Part of the publicity here was that the girls had themselves chosen caning over expulsion, whereas the father of one of the girls complained that he would not have given permission if he had been asked.

After the end of corporal punishment in state schools, there was a newspaper report that several girls had been caned at a named private school for (I think) visiting the boys dormitory. Part of the publicity in this case arose because at least one girl had been given as many as twelve strokes of the cane, and that all the girls were punished on both the hands and the bottom.

So n seems to be at least half a dozen; the experts may be able to quote a few more cases to increase its value a little. But the point of mentioning those particular cases is that, in each of them, the fact that the girl(s) had been punished on the bottom was a subsidiary issue in the publicity. Personally, I don't find that surprising. After all, few people deny that a significant number of girls have been slippered on the bottom, and yet most of those cases have avoided the public domain. And, I think, this point is highly significant in the argument.

Now let's return to y, the (unknown) total number of girls who were caned on the bottom. Could y be as low as n? This would mean that, for every such case, there was some reason why it should be publicised: that there had been excessive severity, or whatever. But why should that be, when many thousands of boys had been caned on the bottom without any reason for publicity? As I've said above, it really can't just be because punishing girls on the bottom attracts publicity in its own right, for sexual reasons or any other: slippering shows that it doesn't.

Of course this argument loses weight for larger values of y. I could believe a ratio n/y of 1/10, so that the publicised cases were a tenth of the total, simply because the actual numbers are so small. My guess, though, is that the ratio is actually rather less than a tenth, though I'd be interested to hear (reasoned!) arguments against my point of view.

Yes I broadly get that.

But you can do the sums.

If we assume that there was a 5% chance per annum of geeting CP say over nine years (7 to 16) and it is not 45%, what is it? maybe 40%?

Eric

I make it a shade under 38% (assuming a 5% chance per year expanded to nine years) - but it's been a while since I've had to do calculations like that (basic statistics no problem but I rarely have to do the complicated stuff - I'm an historian, not a statistician - more in the business of interpretation rather than calculation.

Make that a shade under 37% - typo.

Actually there's a point I should mention about the calculation for Eric: it assumes that the events are "statistically independent". This means that the chance of being caned in the future does not depend on whether you've been caned in the past.

Now one might have different views on this. One point of view is that someone who's been caned in the past will have been so traumatised by the experience that the chance of a future caning is far lower. Another is that having been caned in the past shows that you're an incorrigible rascal so that the chance of a future caning is far higher. In the former case there will be hardly any second or subsequent canings; in the latter, most canings will be repeat performances. I guess that neither of these is the case, and that the two effects pretty well cancel each other out.

I despair at some of the statistical analyses in this thread.

If I find a building containing 50 monkeys, I cannot reasonably estimate the number of monkeys in Britain by multiplying the number of buildings in Britain by 50. I think most readers would agree.

Likewise, we cannot estimate the number of girls caned in Britain during the last 50 years of the CP era by comparing the number caned in any sample with the total number of schoolgirls in Britain during the survey period - simply because vast numbers of schoolgirls attended schools at which girls were not subject to CP.

You see, Lotta, a horse wearing blinkers cannot see it is wearing blinkers because it is wearing blinkers. And naturally it will have difficulty if it tries to convince other horses they cannot see either.

Equally, or perhaps equinely, you can lead a statistic to the horse trough, but you can't get it to drink!

Lotta, though, has horse-sense in abundance! So, let's see what she and thee make of this.

I went to Grammar from 1963-70. Forget the 6th form, as beatings etc there were unknown. So, we have 5 years; let's say there are 100 pupils in any given year; so, how many secondary schools were there. There were around 100 counties then in the UK, let's say they AVERAGE 100 sec. schools each in the state sector.

That means 10,000 lots of 100 children, and that's a million in each year. Let's assume the population falls out at roughly 53-47 in favour of boys, and in any given year, we might therefore reasonably expect to find 470,000 girls.

My hunch is that 1 in 100 BOYS suffered CP at school in that time. Now, given the different society then, which INCLUDED a very definite presumption that men didn't hit women, period, let's say it was 50 times less likely that a girl received CP-this may be an overestimate, so let's be cautious and say 10 times.

That means one in a thousand. If my figures are correct, you are looking at 5,300 boys getting it in each year and girls-470 maximum and 100 minimum.

From talking to my peer group over the last xx years that I've had an interest in it(xx to cover my embarassment!!), I conclude Lotta is not far off the mark, though it all happened long before she was born. It wasn't quite the sort of event that was so rare they flew black flags from the local town hall,but equally, it wasn't so common you could throw a stick into a Cup Final crowd and be sure of hitting a female who'd suffered CP at school.

Well,I hope that's stimulated debate-if nothing else, you can wonder at how I passed Maths O Level in June 1968 with grade 4!

Wind Lotta up and let him go!

So in my N London School there were 400 mixed pupils.
Now I know that "virtually" every one of them got CP at least once in the 5 years they were there.
I was the least whacked, being rather perfect and I still managed 6 slipperings.
Some got it at least once a week.

My question is that if my Uncles my Aunt and Lotta is a Monkey then how many apples in a bunch of bananas?

I find it hard to believe that anyone can be so naive as to imagine that wackings were infrequent or not at all.
This is because of my experiences.
I am however open minded enough to comprehend that someone who had no experince of CP could imagine that it did not exist.
But surely such a person could be persueded that it did exist by the FR comments and punishment books etc.
Otherwise they are rather blinkered.

Mimi the pretend French girl

And I despair at your complete lack of understanding about how statistics work. I suggest you do a basic mathematics course that explains these things.

It is a matter of simple mathematical fact that you can find in any decent book on statistics that if you have a large and fair sample, you can extrapolate statistics covering a whole population with a very high level of confidence. I don't know when this is studied in the UK, but in Australian schools, most children start encountering this concept at the age of about 8 and it's a major part of secondary school mathermatics.

You have to have a fair sample. It has to be a large enough sample. But the statistics I have worked with categorically meet these criteria - 44,490 children in a deliberately designed fair sample.

The confidence level of the least reliable statistics in this study is 95%. Many have a confidence level of 99%, some have a confidence level of greater than 99.9%.

The study was supervised for statistical accuracy by: The Head and staff of the Statistics Department of the Ministry of Education.

Mr. T.B. Boss of the National Physics Laboratory.

Dr. H.O. Hartley of the Unversity College, University of London - an expert on sampling.

Mr. S. Hosking Tayler of the Tabulating and Mechanical Accounting Service, Teddington.

These statistics are reliable and a reliable source for extrapolation. That is simple and basic mathematical fact.

Work like this is done every single day. It's tried and proven.

Reply to Steve's numbers:

My own experience of what percentage received cp is very different. I was in the 'A stream' at a boys' grammar school in the late 50's / early 60's, a class of 30 that tended to be more studious and less inclined to get in trouble. To my knowledge 6 were caned (there could have been more) in 6 years (20%) and at least 50% were slippered or similarly punished in class. My guess is the other 3 classes (75%) in each year were punished significantly more than we were.

So my experience says well over 50% received cp, or 50 times your number!

Surely neither of us can fairly extrapolate based on our own experiences because it varied enormously from school to school, headmaster to headmaster and teacher to teacher.

A much broader brush is needed to reveal the true colour of the paint. I suspect the Friends Reunited data would get a lot closer to an accurate conclusion.

And heaven forbid that Lotta's naive assertions prove to be correct. She would instantly become insufferable.

Er sorry, I forgot. She already is.

You have to have a fair sample. It has to be a large enough sample. But the statistics I have worked with categorically meet these criteria - 44,490 children in a deliberately designed fair sample. (Dean)


Perhaps you could better explain what a "fair" (representative) sample actual is. And how and why the sample with which you worked could be considered fair/representative. And specifically of whom. Certainly the N was quite substantial.

If people want to understand what a 'fair sample' is, I would suggest they either do a course on statistics, or read a book on statistics. I know enough about statistics to use them in my work, and to calculate them where required, and to design meaningful studies - but I'm not a teacher and I don't feel confident trying to summarise what I know about this for other people. But in simple terms a fair sample is a sample that is representative of a population as a whole.

But with regards to the specific study I've been talking about, we're dealing with a large sample size that was deliberately designed to be representative of a particular population - that population was state school children in England and Wales c1950.

The whole methodology of the study is explained in quite a bit of detail in the full report - but in simple terms, the sample involved ensuring that a representative number of schools in different social areas were included, a representative number of schools of different sizes were included, a representative number of schools of different gender make up (single sex, and co-ed schools), a representative number of different types of schools (for secondary - types such as Secondary Modern and Grammar schools).

Basically it involved stratified random sampling where the stratification categories had been based on known population divisions.

A small scale pilot study was carried out in 1948 to validate the planned larger study and it was found to experimentally reliable as well as mathematically reliable - really there shouldn't have been any doubt of this, the pilot study was done to try and uncover unanticipated problems.

Am I alone in wondering what the point of this thread is?

If we knew the exact number of boys and girls who received CP on any particular day in every school in the UK during the 20th Century, how useful would that information be? What would it tell us that we need to know?

No matter what the data revealed, it would remain a fact that almost every 'female' on every Internet spanking chat site is a man in disguise. It would remain a fact that almost every Dom on every Internet spanking chat site is a sub in disguise who'd give his right arm for a spanking from an attractive woman. It would remain a fact that Fran was never slippered in green knickers and it would remain a fact that George is a madman who may or may not live by a lake but who has most certainly never been a headmaster and has never caned anybody in his life. It would also remain a fact that less than 1 CP-related 'true' story in 10,000 has even an atom of truth in it.

Even sadder, it would remain a fact that most of the very few genuine females on Internet spanking chat sites have no real interest in CP. They simply feign interest in order that they might be part of a community, albeit a make-believe one.

Quote from a recent post:

"She's at it again. If we let her, Lotta will once again deflect attention to irrelevant, silly side-issues, Larry1951 will rush around deleting things (detrimental to Lotta!), topics will be forgotten and the whole shebang will descend into chaos as it has many times before.

The trick is to completely ignore Lotta."

May I quote:

"Re: Girls slippered in front of boys, May 30 2004, 9:35 AM

What is this forum coming to? I've read and re-read the above posting and I can't find anything unbelievable in it! A sad day for fantasists everywhere.

Lotta Nonsense"

Well, things do happen occasionally; and some people are interested in how often they have. Others aren't. So there you go.

Anyway, I have to leave now. It's been a pleasure hearing from people with specialist expertise, and from those who are keen to ensure that evidence is tested carefully and rigorously. It's also very satisfying to have an opportunity of explaining some particular types of numerical reasoning to those who haven't been trained in the area but are willing to explore. Of course there have been the occasional opinionated clowns who use spurious technical-sound phrases like "too small to register as a statistic at all" and merely demonstrate their ignorance by doing so, but you get that sort of thing in all walks of like and you just have to ignore it.

I hope that, despite the post immediately above this one, you continue with the discussion and make further progress on the numbers game. I might pop in again in the fullness of time to see how you'er getting on. I'd be particularly interested, for obvious reasons, if you can collect any information on classroom slipperings of schoolgirls. But right now there's some important work on the theory of relativity that I have to finish off, so I'd better be on my way.

Albert

Sez Lotta: "Am I alone in wondering what the point of this thread is?"

Well, it helps people who have a fascination for cp to justify their interest by seeing themselves as scientific investigators. If you can introduce a bit of mathematics, using terms like "x" and "y" and "n", and "x/y" and "(1-p)^5", then jacking off to a Red Stripe video seems like the due reward for work well done. Why do you expect a "point" on a forum like this?

"If we knew the exact number of boys and girls who received CP on any particular day in every school in the UK during the 20th Century, how useful would that information be?"

No use at all, except to gloat over. What information have you been looking for all these years, and what will you do with it when you find it? If you've got a "higher" purpose than anyone else on this forum, then please reveal what it is.

"No matter what the data revealed, it would remain a fact that almost every 'female' on every Internet spanking chat site is a man in disguise."

Okay, I'll take that as a confession, but does it get you any closer to the wisdom you seek?

"Even sadder, it would remain a fact that most of the very few genuine females on Internet spanking chat sites have no real interest in CP. They simply feign interest in order that they might be part of a community, albeit a make-believe one."

That is theoretically possible on this forum, but it couldn't be true on sites like britishspanking.com where members are continually arranging get-togethers, spanking weekends, and caning competitions, like the annual Night of the Cane shindig where participants number in the hundreds. Here is the link for the 2004 bash. And if you click on the link at the bottom of the page you can see lots of pics.

http://www.the-firm.org/NOTC2K4.htm

Maintaining a gender-fiction would be quite difficult in that environment, wouldn't it? For once, Lotta, one of your assertions is demonstrably false. But it won't make any difference, will it? You'll just wait a couple of weeks and then say the same thing again. But why, hmm? What are you after? Or have you revealed it already, maybe? Do you just want to be "part of a community"?

Rangy Strider

If people would concentrate on arguing against what I say rather than against what they imagine I say, we might make a little more progress.

It cannot be doubted that women do attend these live meetings; neither can it be doubted that there are genuine females on Internet spanking sites.

My point, as ever, is simply that such genuine women tend to comprise but a small fraction of the overall 'female' population of spanking chat sites.

This is bait folks. What does a wise mouse do to the cheese in a mouse trap?

Spanking CHAT sites ! ! ! ! ?

Then go to the Spanking Chat sites and tell someone who gives a ________.

"If people would concentrate on arguing against what I say rather than against what they imagine I say, we might make a little more progress."

You will not make any progress until you stop improvising answers.

"It cannot be doubted that women do attend these live meetings; neither can it be doubted that there are genuine females on Internet spanking sites."

The reason it can't be doubted is that I've just proved it. You never said anything about live meetings before. It's another improvised answer.

"My point, as ever, is simply that such genuine women tend to comprise but a small fraction of the overall 'female' population of spanking chat sites."

Your point, as ever, is in direct contradiction to the admission you made above. Nearly all the participants in the Night of the Cane were contributors to britishspanking.com, which is one of what you've just called "spanking chat sites", and is choc-a-bloc with females.

And, as ever, you produce no evidence of any kind to back yourself up, leaving it to your opponents to prove the opposite. Very well, I've just searched for the thread for last year's NOTC, and here it is:-

http://www.britishspanking.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25018&highlight=notc

I've counted them up. There were 12 male and 11 female contributors to that thread busily reminding each other of the previous night's festivities. Women caning men, men caning women - it all happened, and both men and women spent much of the next day talking about it on britishspanking.com.

So now, would you like to improvise another answer to that? (if you do, try to avoid using "comprise" when you mean "constitute").

Rangy Strider

Some time ago, when Rangy was at school, there was indeed a distinction between 'to comprise' and 'to constitute' but, in the 21st Century, the Oxford English Dictionary tells us that 'comprise' means 'constitute'.

This from the OED:

comprise

• verb 1 be made up of; consist of. 2 make up; constitute

Those striving for linguistic perfection might, however, wish to take issue with Rangy's use of the expression 'to count up' in which 'up' is most assuredly redundant.

She's at it again. If we let her, Lotta will once again deflect attention to irrelevant, silly side-issues, Larry1951 will rush around deleting things (detrimental to Lotta!), topics will be forgotten and the whole shebang will descend into chaos as it has many times before.

The trick is to completely ignore Lotta.

Now that I've provoked Lotta into actually looking things up rather than just passing off wishful thinking as fact, maybe the momentum will carry her towards a more scholarly approach to the issue of men in disguise. Let us remind ourselves of Lotta's "fact":

"No matter what the data revealed, it would remain a fact that almost every 'female' on every Internet spanking chat site is a man in disguise."

Since she has the time to rush off to the Oxford English Dictionary to try to match my pedantry with her own, maybe she also has time to look at the link I posted, where it is clear that 11 of the 23 contributors to the Night of the Cane thread are female, and also clear that these are people who have encountered each other face to face. It's a resounding refutation of her "fact" about men in disguise, unless it can be overturned by some counter-refutation from her. Much more likely is that we'll end up with yet another improvised answer.

But to tell you the truth, I'm more interested in her other "fact":-

"Even sadder, it would remain a fact that most of the very few genuine females on Internet spanking chat sites have no real interest in CP. They simply feign interest in order that they might be part of a community, albeit a make-believe one."

Well, you're never without friends here, Lotta!

Rangy Strider

I once ventured onto the British Spanking site after it had been mentioned on this forum.

I shall not be venturing there again.

Pass me a sickbag, somebody.

Nobody will pass you a sickbag. They're all in use at the moment. But they might give you a white feather.

Rangy Strider

I find bits of this debate particularly the ideological and statistical positioning fascinating. But then I am a boring older man with experience of UK school life stretching back to the 50s.

I note again the assertion that Fran is a male and was never slippered in green knickers. However the evidence is that Fran is female and did attend Copland school until 1966 leaving school aged 14.5 to 15 years old. The attendance records matched with other information confirm this. Her close friend at the time confirms that Fran was registered at one time on the Copland FR site and with a profile containing facts about her early history which could not have been known to impostors. As a result of the FR posting her friend was in brief contact with her. However Fran removed her FR entry a short time afterwards no doubt due to the fact many others also attempted to contact her! Apparently her FR profile said she pursued an academic career which most of us who have read her material will not find surprising, except that she left school at a relatively early age for this to have been a likely option at the time. Apparently there may be a picture of her in one of the class photos from Copland in which she is characteristically wearing thickish white socks over tights but this is not certain.

But was Fran was ever slippered in green knickers? Other women who attended the school also assert that for gym they definitely wore green knickers and that the gym master in question did occasionally slipper girls. As such a Bayesian view would give a reasonably high probability to the proposition that if Fran was slippered in the circumstances she has consistently described it would have almost certainly been on green knickers. Not proof of any specific case of course but the fact still remains is that failing recent demise evidence is that Fran is female and certainly still exists.

The fact she seems to have given up interest in the subject and issues is also consistent with the loss of libido and general interest in anything of a stimulating nature experienced by many women at her time of life. A great loss to us all here of course but also means that asking/harassing her for more input and detail is not likely to result in anything except deeper silence. One can imagine her using the classic (UK) phrase beloved by grandmothers and older women in general 'I can't be doing with all that!' and indeed why should she.

Deus ex Machina writes:

‘Her close friend at the time confirms that Fran was registered at one time on the Copland FR site’.

Would you please tell us how this was confirmed?

Deus ex machina refers continually to 'evidence' but fails either to quote from it or to say what or where the evidence is .

I have checked the FR site most thoroughly for evidence that the gym teacher referred to by Fran ever slippered girls and I can find NONE.

There are, however, references to the fact that when girls were misbehaving in gym class, this fearsome male teacher would throw his slipper at them.

Fran was a fraud.

If this forum was checked thoroughly for posts that lack credibility and evidence, Lotta's portion would weigh a few tons compared to several ounces for the runner up!

Don't point a finger at minor discrepancies from other people, Lotta, when you are the major offender yourself.

First let's see consistent proof that you base your own statements on reality.

Valid deductions would be a big help too.

Sez Lotta: "Deus ex machina refers continually to 'evidence' but fails either to quote from it or to say what or where the evidence is ."

My God, he doesn't, does he? What an appalling contrast with your own scholarly approach to evidence! I wouldn't be surprised if you told us you'd checked the FR site most thoroughly for evidence that the gym teacher referred to by Fran ever slippered girls and you can find NONE.

"I have checked the FR site most thoroughly for evidence that the gym teacher referred to by Fran ever slippered girls and I can find NONE."

Your indignation does you credit. However there does remain your oversight in failing to examine the evidence I posted refuting your assertion that "it would remain a fact that almost every 'female' on every Internet spanking chat site is a man in disguise." You could investigate that "most thoroughly", since I've done half your work by giving you the link to British Spanking where 23 posters, half of them female, reveal that they met face to face the previous night. What next? Would you like to call someone a fraud?

"Fran was a fraud."

Ah.

Rangy Strider

My assertion that almost every 'female' on every Internet CP chat site is a man is disguise is not even slightly dented by Rangy's claim that he can conjure up a dozen human beings without a Y-chromosome between them from the exceedingly murky depths of British Spanking.

Keep wriggling, you fantasists!

Don't know if my post was deliberately misread or confusion was caused to some readers by tears of frustration but I quite clearly stated that the attendance data for Copland school shows that the person known to this forum and others and at school by her friends as Fran left in 1966 aged 14.5 to 15 years. This is a verifiable fact available literally in black and white and anyone who has followed the trail as far as I have, including contacting her best friend at the time, will also be in a position to corroborate this as evidence.

King Canute didn't drown but I bet that if he could swim he was very glad of the fact.

Deus ex Machina appears to be an intelligent man and I'm therefore surprised that he continues his attempts to use smoke and mirrors to convince us that Fran was anything other than a male fantasist.

Could Deus and Fran be related?

Could Deus, Fran and friend of Fran, Sherry Ingram, be related?

Anyone following the whole saga and who like me will be nearing exhaustion will know that I said in earlier postings that I would continue research in the background and not contribute until there was some additional information or point of to make. I think I have now done enough at this stage to achieve both so will adopt the background position until there is more that could or should be said.

Of course the information I have means that I am in a very good position to prove that I am unrelated to either Fran or Sherry at least within the normal span of generations commonly accepted as unrelated as we are all related at some point in history. Had to say that before the vultures started picking at that one! As far as I know Sherry Ingram never posted to this or any similar forum although one never knows who is reading this stuff. Or writing it for that matter!

Fran was a man.

Quite a decent fake as fakes go, but a fake nonetheless.

Let us have no more talk of his being anything else.

Prove it.

'All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal.'

A well known syllogism apparently created by Socrates beloved of the renowned logician professor Professor A.J Ayer and taught to first year undergraduate philosophers throughout the world as a classic example of analytic veracity in action.

However there is a a small problem even with this paradigm. There is no doubt that the form of the statement is correct and if presented to a jury in a courty of law they would be entitled to belief in the truth of the statement that 'Socrates is mortal' provided the truth of the other two statements could be established by whatever means.

The major problem here is that of course Socrates deliberately chose to terminate his own life by suicide. There is therefore no evidence whatsoever that had he not done so he would not have lived for ever. If there is a possibility that he could have lived for ever and no evidence available against that proposition are then all men provably mortal? Was Socrates mortal? Was Socrates a man?

Next week - Schroedingers cat. Take the money or open the box? Quantum theory in action with reference to Quantum tunnelling and appearing simultaneously at both ends of the Universe. Same place, same time?

Definitely nowhere near the standards achieved by the original and in subjects probably not to taste but if Fran is by any chance reading any of our posts I hope she is at least smiling.

The only way 'she' can possibly be smiling is if 'she' has undergone gender realignment surgery.

Even if 'she' is currently wearing a dress and sporting 'her' previously-attached testicles as earrings, 'she' remains biologically male.

Fran is a man and Deus's obsession with disputing that indisputable fact suggests very strongly that Deus and Fran are but two sides of the same hermaphroditic coin.

In some ways I wish this were true as I would then have an interesting fantasy life which would also have the power to involve and stimulate others. Unfortunately I am cursed with literality, can't tell jokes or make up stories even for my children when they were little and have to borrow pre-existing references to make or expand a point or inject what may hopefully pass for humour. I am sure my postings confirm this.

Essentially a long-term true nerd from days before the word existed with job-valued functional rather than dysfunctional OCD I have never been able to leave a hypothesis untested no matter how long it takes once taken up. Quantum theory is exciting to me because it gives an acceptable framework for what even to others more comfortable with open fantasy may still seem a fantastical view of the world. For instance the concept of the cloak of invisibility which I believe appears in fantasy form in Harry Potter books has only become of interest to me recently since viable models of fabric-mounted auto-cooperating wireless linked multiprocessor based light receivers and transmitters of sufficiently small scale has made it feasible. One could conceive that I could potentially now appear invisibly on Brighton Pier for example where no doubt I would be instantly recognised by well known contributors to this forum.

Even more seriously though. One reason I don't post my personal school experiences on this site which extend back into the fifties even though I have an interest in the subject and realise they might be of interest is that it comes out as so boring even to me. Looking at attempts in print you won't be surprised that it looks like 'On Tuesday September 21st 1959 I was proceeding in a North Westerly direction down corridor X in school Y when I came across a classroom incident. Having determined that I was not likely to become involved I observed a teacher of medium build and athletic appearance remonstrating with a pupil of perhaps 11 years.... (Insert reference to attendance register, dated punishment book entry etc etc)' Alternatively it looks like a set examination question 'Was this a likely scenario. Discuss with reference to exhibit A: a size eleven slipper etc.....'

I simply can't achieve the free-flowing and at times atmospherically involving posts provided by other contributors leading to my efforts looking more like heavily constructed plodding fantasies on re-reading. I do find others postings fascinating however including how they are produced, hence the search to find and contact the best authors.

I shall continue the work in my Miss Marpleish way almost inevitably as I have found no way to stop as yet. I shall try not to bore you all to death too often however.

Definitely the last post - I forgot to observe that what made me dip into this thread in the first place was of course that the root posting is from 'Einstein'. One does hope sometimes to meet fellow travellers in the more scientific community with a view on this subject however complex or numerical the form of exposition. I am now dipping out for certain.

Thank you, Deus ex Machina, for your recent contributions. You are like WORTHING, (as it says in the song), never boring.

http://www.dailymotion.com/BigJohnPeacehaven/video/100492

Some of our older members (particularly those in WORTHING) are confused by, what one such describes as, your 'stream of consciousness style' and therefore I ask would you please confirm that,

1. You have corresponded via e-mail with Sherry Ingram. (This lady may be heard at
http://www.dailymotion.com/BigJohnPeacehaven/video/149466)

2. Sherry told you that girls were slippered by a male P.E. teacher at Copland School.

"I could potentially now appear invisibly on Brighton Pier" says Deus.

However, it might be argued that very act of appearing is wholly dependent upon the appearer becoming visible and that 'appearing invisibly' is therefore a contradiction in terms.

More importantly, Fran is a man and no amount of Quantum Theory techno-babble can alter that state of affairs.

my wife told me of the details of her school slippering her friend who witnessed it also told me she had to report to the headmisress's room after school she was given a long lecture and told she was going to be slippered the headmistress removed the slipper book from the desk drawer and started writing telling my wife to fetch a chair the chair was placed in front of the heads desk when the mistress had finished writing the book was replaced headmistress stood up walked over to a cupboard unlocked it and fetched out the slipper my wife said it was one of her old mule slippers pink with a well worn rubber sole after a second lecture waving the slipper about in front of my wifes face she said bend over that chair my wife bent over the seat of the chair she felt the headmistress's fingers lifting up her navy pleated wrapover skirt placed her hand in the small of her back and gave her three hard wacks across her knickers this happend in a wolverhampton secondry school

Paul was your wife wearing navy blue knickers as well? What about a slip??

Paul was your wife wearing navy blue knickers as well? What about a slip??

I think he's gone to night school to learn how to punctuate!

who has falling star

JFT, my wife didn't have to wear uniform coloured knickers at her
school. She wore a variety of colours, navy blue was one of them,
so was sky blue, red, white, pale blue, pink.
She didn't / doesn't wear a slip, her uniform consisted of a white shirt,
tie, she wore a short navy blue pleated wrap skirt and white knee socks.

Are the posts legible enough for you now Falling Star?

Thank you Paul.
Trying to read stuff like that makes my eyes water, and more importantly, detracts from the story.