These pictures will no doubt bring back happy memories to those who were fortunate enough to receive the gift of education at St. John's & St. Clement's School in South London.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdXf8TlcreA&feature=channel_page

Yes indeed especially as my photo appears a couple of times! Of course, so do those of the headmaster who once warranted his own thread on this forum describing his frequent use of corporate punishment. As a recipient I contributed to that thread. For some reason Get with it, get Witham has been removed.

MOST impressive!

Especially the D-I-Y cane assembly class out of a nature ramble.


That's what I call recycling!


Steve M

That Spanking by Witham in Full

On 27 September 2003, the World-Wide Travelling Traveller wrote:


Corporal punishment was part of everyday life in British schools back in the fifties. Even in the Infants the teachers would punish the boys by slapping the backs of their legs.

In the Juniors, corporal punishment was always administered on the bottom and usually by the Headmaster, Mr.Witham. If he caught anyone misbehaving, he would deal with them on the spot. In such cases he usually used his hand to deliver a spanking although the cane was administered for serious offences. The cane was given in the privacy of his study and only rarely used.

Spankings were not only given for misbehaviour. Anybody presenting the Headmaster with untidy or sloppy schoolwork was (as we shall see) likely to end up with a sore bottom.

Mr.Witham took the class for maths to prepare us for the 11 Plus exam. After completing exercises in class, we were required to line up at his desk to present our work for correction. I expected nothing unusual as I placed my exercise book in front of him but I will never forget his reaction. I even remember exactly what he said - "I'm not having this kind of work, over my knee".

I did as I was told and waited to feel the first whack on the seat of my short pants. This was duly administered and then another and another. I'm not sure how many whacks I received but it must have been more than the regular "six of the best". It did hurt but not too much and the humiliation of being smacked on the bottom in front of my classmates especially the girls, was punishment indeed.

It was the lesson before the midmorning break and as extra punishment I was made to stay behind and rewrite the pages neatly. I must have felt very sorry for myself, sitting in an empty classroom rubbing my sore behind when all my classmates were out in the playground enjoying themselves.

I saw Mr.Witham years later. The school was being used as a voting station during an election and he was acting as a official. I introduced myself and as he stood up, I was surprised how short he was. I recently heard that he had died which saddened me as he was liked by most of his pupils.

What the Fashionable Spanking Headmaster is wearing this Season

Gone are the days when Spanking Headmasters wore frock coats and top hats. Trend-setting Alan Witham is seen here sporting the latest headgear known in South London as the 'Cheese Cutter', but renamed by Alan as the 'Cheeks Cutter'. It's on sale in Primark for only 25p.

Big John - he's the man, as one who invariably follows up any 'historical' references to postings in this estimable Forum I am intrigued by the above reference by Worldwide Traveller to a 'Get with it! Get Witham!' thread (possibly the correct name of the thread, although he does not include the exclamation marks).

This thread has been referred to in other still extant threads, once again by Worldwide Traveller at 08:16 on April 24 2006, in the 'smacked bottom' thread and by Research Assistant at 17:36 on June 3 2005 in the 'leg slapping' thread.

You have quoted Worldwide Traveller's post from the thread in your contribution above. However the only instance I can find of that post is here in the 'The East Dulwich Forum' where it was posted by one 'Pingo' and attributed as 'Found on an Internet Forum'!

Please save me further fruitless searching. Did the 'Get with it! Get Witham!' thread ever exist on this estimable Forum, and if so has it now been totally expunged?

Hi A_L

The name definitely rings a bell. I'm sure it was on here once.



Steve M

Hi Steve, I'm sure you are right, but nary a trace of it to be found now, or at least not by me. However, there are hints of a scandal mystery here.

In the 'Diary' thread, one of the fast moving and slightly surreal threads which characterised the early days of this estimable Forum are two interesting posts. The first of these, at 19:13 on 10 September 2003, from Gillian, says:

• Dear, dear Richard,
  
  Please accept, on behalf of the Research Term, my apologies for the latest outrage by Darwinian Man. She has made pubic, confidential information, housed in the very depths of the archives, regarding a Spanking Headmaster.
  
  Gillian

The second, at 23:07 on the same day, from the legendary Carl and Mats, says:

• Darwinianum Man/ gladdys you is BANNED
  
  Gilain that informatione about old withem is confidentile You is BANNED and all. Big RAY still cant remember the pasword - can you tell us what is please
  Thankyou
  Carl
  
  Lady karen is on holday up down E. Grinnsted

The first of these two posts has been edited by larry1951 at 21:47 on Mar 20, 2006, some two and a half years after the post was made! Strange or what, as they say in the Leen Valley vernacular!

Off-topic, but driven by vanity, I was much taken by an earlier post in the same thread, from Tracey, who said:

• I have been let down again. I need a man who will love me now and every day. If only I could find a Virgo man modest, shy, meticulous, reliable, practical, diligent, intelligent, analytical, charming and studious.

Being a virgo, had I been around at the time I should of course have volunteered!

I remember the "Get with it- Get Witham" thread. It was one of the long threads that kept getting replies for quite some time. It painted a picture of a Headmaster gone wrong with SCP. The stories were appalling. I guess Mr. Witham was the poster boy for abusive Headmasters.

Bob T,

No action was threatened and to avoid further speculation the last sentence of your above message has been removed.

Another_Lurker,

The thread entitled 'Get With It - Get Witham!' was deleted some time ago.

I also liked the jaunty angle of his hat & the moustache.

He looks a bit like Laurie West, who was ITV's very first weatherman.

Wonder if he had 2 jobs, as TV was never on much at all in school hours at that stage of our history.

Bet he didn't miss much with his beady eye, either!



Steve M

Mr. Withams actions would certainly be viewed as abusive these days but back in the 50s it was part of everyday life. The chances of any boy ending his schooldays without a few hidings were slim in those days.

In my case the Headmaster even attempted to justify his action after handing out the punishment described in my above account. I was made to walk around the classroom rubbing my sore behind to view the neater work of my classmates. I then had to stand before him and admit that my work was indeed not up to scratch and that I had deserved my punishment. As a result I was made to stay behind after the lesson and rewrite the pages neatly. Such treatment may appear harsh by todays standards but it didnt seem so at the time. In those days it was quite normal for lack of effort to be dealt with in that way

Mr. Witham wouldnt have been happy with my lack of punctuation in my latest post:

I was made to walk around the classroom rubbing my sore behind, to view the neater work of my classmates.

A full stop is missing in the last sentence as well!

It appears that a lack of attention to detail is still evident after 50 years and that the spanking didnt have the desired effect.

Research Assistant 2, thank you for clarifying the matter for me. It is always sad when material has to be removed from a Forum such as this but I am sure that there were good reasons why this was necessary.

Steve, you liken Mr Witham's appearance to that of Laurie West. I can't recall Mr West as I never was much of a TV watcher. However, you may wish to note that a photographic posting by Big John MOI at 17:17 on 16 June 2007 in the 'More Pictures' thread here juxtaposes Mr Witham with a widely known celebrity. There is indeed some resemblance!

Worldwide Traveller, you say:

It appears that a lack of attention to detail is still evident after 50 years and that the spanking didnt have the desired effect.

The longer I spend in this estimable Forum the more I come to wonder if perhaps school CP only really worked with those who, like me, encountered it very early in their school career and resolved to avoid incurring it thereafter. The sad corollary of this is of course that to keep up the pressure on children like me to behave other less fortunate classmates had to suffer CP from time to time to emphasise the continued existence of the threat!

Hi A_L & indeed Worldwide_Traveller.


Here is the actual moment that Trevor Howard's chances of a knighthood went west.







Ralph Richardson appears to have avoided the sultry charms of our madameoiselle, from what I remember of the Conrad(?) story, which is why he became Sir Ralphie.

Or was this why Mr Witham decided teaching was a better bet than going native? At least he would be called Sir each day!!

Actually, if the film hadn't been shot as early as 1951, you also have to wonder if our merciless kisser didn't bear a passing resemblance to our lost & lamented Lotta Nonsense!


Steve M

The golly-haired girl seated in the middle is Linda Perham (nee Conroy), former Member of Parliament for Ilford North, elected 1997, unseated 2005.

The golly-haired ........

Umm, not sure you're allowed to use the g-word any more in a family Forum like this, Big John!

Hi Steve, you say:

Actually, if the film hadn't been shot as early as 1951, you also have to wonder if our merciless kisser didn't bear a passing resemblance to our lost & lamented Lotta Nonsense!

Sorry, but no. Untamed, unashamed and merciless she may have been, but Lotta was undoubtedly a red-head unlike the young woman in your picture. Also there is absolutely no way Lotta would have been seen in an outfit like that. A very smart (and very expensive) business ensemble would have been her style!

Trevor Howard, played a part of an anti-elephant hunting zealot (Morel) in French Equatorial Africa in a 1958 movie, Roots of Heaven. He reads off a sentence to spank a snobby boastful and very tall white huntress, Jacqueline Fogt (Madame Orsini). She gets thoroughly spanked on her bare bottom for having killed so many elephants. Although the spanking is mostly off screen, the purpose of the punishment was to humiliate her and to publish a picture of her spanking in the local paper. Trevor Howard said that in order to avoid misunderstanding he would call upon the oldest among them to administer the sentence, none other than veteran actor Friederic von Ledebur had the honors. He was thorough and she was just bragging about her expertise as a big game huntress. She got her comeuppance. She was screaming like a banshee and looking for an intervention but to no avail because they were armed with rifles. The two men with Juliette Greco are seen in this long link. John Huston was the director and a few years later he directed Donovan's Reef, a film that also featured a spanking. He used both scenes to put a little humor into his films.

http://images.google.com/hosted/life/f?q=roots+of+heaven+trevor+howard&prev=/images%3Fq%3Droots%2Bof%2Bheaven%2Btrevor%2Bhoward%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:en-us%26sa%3DG&imgurl=9255a6dc32f05edc

Nice one, American_Way! I wondered where Trevor got the spanking label from-sounds like a modernised remake is in order & on-screen this time, please.

The author of Roots of Heaven, Roman Garay, was a very exciteable Frenchman, with an equally French missus, Jean Sebourg.

Quite why she ended up in Paint Your Wagon God only knows-but then God also probably knows why this musical had as its' other leads Clint Eastwood AND Lee Marvin-whatta cast;of non-singing actors!

Anyway, Clint took the opportunity to show Jean he may've been the man with no name, but that this was definitely not the case in the "old fella" department.

Unfortunately, M. Garay got to hear about this & flew over to the location shoot in the USA threatening to inflict some decidely fatal CP of the leaden kind on Clint avec son revolveur.

Luckily, manic depressive(honest!) director Josh Logan managed to dissuade M. Garay & that's why Clint lived to be Mayor of wherever he was mayor of!

Which has nothing to do with Mr Witham or his cap, but is another sort of Worldwide Travelling, as our honourable Withamite practises so well.


Hi A_L

Yes, I did fantasise many times about Lotta being a redhead, but never thought I could be so lucky-they've also been my favourites since my first girlfriend-she was 3, I was 4, so I was cradle-snatching even then!



Steve M

Steve, strange that, Lotta's two biggest fans and we both have the same fantasy! We must hope that the young lady in question is not reading this thread or we'll probably both be in trouble if when she returns!

Everyone: Earnest seekers after the truth like myself may wish to see the film clip referenced by American Way above so that they can judge for themselves if Jacqueline Fogt (Madame Orsini) was indeed spanked on the bare bottom.

The clip (68Mb, 720×576, good quality avi) can be downloaded from here. Please note that this is a Rapidshare download, so it's no use right clicking on my link and using 'Save As'. You have to do a normal left click and go through the Rapidshare rigmarole. If, like me, you don't have a Rapidshare account you'll need to click the 'Free User' button under the dial on the left of the page and be subject to a short delay before downloading. Whilst the visual aspects of the clip are self explanatory, if you want the dialogue sadly you'll have to speak German.

I am indebted to the Chross Movie Database, to be found here for the above Rapidshare link.

We're getting a bit off topic here. Maybe this should be under the Moonlight thread. But now that is has started I'm following through. The first link is the photo that made it in time for publication in their local paper and the second is a direct link to the clip in English and the third is a bare bottom reference from a comment from the fourth posters, Robert J Maxwells, movie review. Im not sure if it was bare bottom but Im virtually certain she wasnt fully clothed. He did lift the dress and that was not seen in the photo and the twelve of the best didnt sound muffled to me. The expression on the onlookers faces made it seem like it wasnt a spanking with her fully clothed. I think if there was nudity or partial nudity involved or Morel wouldn't want someone older than himself and less likely to raise eyebrows to spank Madame Orsini. A grown woman shouldn't be making such a fuss so protected for twelve of the best.



http://tanherhide.blogspot.com/search?q=roots+of+heaven

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052148/usercomments?start=0

The tan her hide link covers all the bases so the image link isn't really necessary. This link from that site shows the lifting of the dress.

This thread seems to have gone off topic although a clip of a good looking woman getting her bottom smacked is a pleasant enough digression

Getting back on topic, the following is a response to A-Ls post of 23 Feb.

The longer I spend in this estimable Forum the more I come to wonder if perhaps school CP only really worked with those who, like me, encountered it very early in their school career and resolved to avoid incurring it thereafter. The sad corollary of this is of course that to keep up the pressure on children like me to behave other less fortunate classmates had to suffer CP from time to time to emphasise the continued existence of the threat!

Corporal punishment is normally associated with misbehaviour or lack of effort and in such cases its probably well deserved. Back in the 50s however those who were not as clever or talented as their peers were often subjected to beatings, detention and extra work. Even those who support CP would feel that giving a child a hiding after a disappointing test result would be unjustified and is unlikely to encourage the scholar to perform better. As a member of the team at my senior school, I was once even threatened with a caning after a run of poor results representing the school on the football field.

Just as undeserving were the punishments handed out by those teachers who considered in necessary to administer regular CP to maintain order in the classroom. If the cane hadnt been used for a while the child who was unlucky enough to be the next one to step out of line could be punished sometimes severely for some trivial misdemeanor.

I thought this cartoon might bring a smile or two to the readers of this esteem Forum. I know Big John Manager of Images will pick up on this link if it doesn't come through.

The sign in the bottom right hand corner is interesting.

Rosa Coote is a character in The Pearl which was a collection of erotic tales that were published in London between 1879 to 1880, when they were forced to shut down by the authorities for publishing rude and obscene literature.

In the magazine she is a boarder at a school where she studies under a Miss Flaybum. Most of the mistresses and girls at the school spend much of their time spanking and whipping each other. When she leaves school, she sets up an establishment in a suburb of London where she continues to partake in similar kinky activities.

I think she also makes in an appearance in a comic version of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and this cartoon could be from that publication.

American way, I'm not sure from your comment above whether Big John MOI has already told you what is wrong with your failed image links.  If not, and if you wish to avoid the problem in future, thus ensuring that you do not annoy people like me, to whom those little squares with red crosses are akin to a red rag to a bull, proceed as follows:

1. Check your post using the 'Preview' button before pressing the 'Respond' button to post it.
   
   
2. If your pictures fail to appear and your image link is correct you probably have the misfortune to be trying to link to a site which is blocking image linking. That is what has happened in the cases above.
   
   
3. If faced with this, either abandon the attempt to display the image, or try this method:
   
   Click here to see American Way's 1st image.
   
   Click here to see American Way's 2nd image.
   
   This can be blocked also, but seldom is.

Hope this helps!

You say:

We're getting a bit off topic here

If everyone on this estimable Forum stuck rigidly to on-topic postings it would be as boring and dull as most of the other CP forums. Happily they don't and it isn't.

Maybe this should be under the Moonlight thread

I can't see why, it doesn't fit any better there than it does here!

I think if there was nudity or partial nudity involved or Morel wouldn't want someone older than himself and less likely to raise eyebrows to spank Madame Orsini

Get a grip man, it's a film, it's fiction, it's not RL!  And besides, your first picture that I've linked for you above shows the lady fully clothed!

I'm having a hard time getting a grip on myself, so bear with me,I think they wanted her clothed for the local newspaper that they were in a hurry to publish and this was 1958 so what the crew may have seen would have never seen the light of day. The photos toward the bottom of the page suggests the lifting of the dress only occurred after a considerable struggle and that Madame Orsini may have indeed been given a spanking on the bare or almost bare. To flesh out the details, so to speak, the noise didn't correspond to the noise of the smack of a fully clothed KMK spanking and certainly not the fuss. I find it poetic justice that a big game huntress, not exactly small herself, got her comeuppance through her hide. Why would Morel show mercy when he called for twelve of the best? What's best than bare, for her good, as well as, for our benefit or on the cast and crew RL. The expression of the man in the white jacket and bow tie also gave me the impression that he was witnessing some global warming for sure. Thanks for the good advice for this newbie about thread relevance and I'm lost on blocked links maybe someone can write a how do for this dummy or has that been dealt with in another thread?

http://tanherhide.blogspot.com/search?q=roots+of+heaven

Worldwide Traveller, you clearly have a fairly encyclopaedic knowledge of things spanking - unless, like me, you've also traced American way's cartoon back to its source here where one 'Charlie' confirms that it is indeed from the 2 volume comic book "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen".

You say above:

Just as undeserving were the punishments handed out by those teachers who considered it necessary to administer regular CP to maintain order in the classroom. If the cane hadnt been used for a while the child who was unlucky enough to be the next one to step out of line could be punished sometimes severely for some trivial misdemeanor

Certainly that's my experience, and I was also at school in the 1950s. I recently said in another thread that it was usually a case of punishing somebody 'pour encourager les autres' and the unfortunate child who played the part of Admiral Byng was often selected at random or just happened to be the last person to catch the teacher's eye.

It was often pure theatre with the teacher acting as both director and one of the two principal members of the cast. Those pupils who like me were determined and equipped to impress enough with their scholastic efforts and good behaviour to largely avoid CP got to sit in the best seats and watch the performance. Those who weren't got to participate in the show, frequently rather painfully!

Sometimes though even scholastic merit and good behaviour couldn't save you. The worst punishment I saw in Junior school was the severe slippering of a girl who certainly worked as hard and behaved as well as I did. She had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong teacher, always a possibility for any child in those days.

Hi American Way, you say:

Thanks for the good advice for this newbie about thread relevance

Not necessarily good advice, I'm afraid. Just my personal opinion, others may well disagree!

You also say:

I'm lost on blocked links maybe someone can write a how do for this dummy or has that been dealt with in another thread?

No question of you being a dummy. I happen to write web sites so I get to know a little bit about these things. Using a server side script it is possible for a site to block image links of format

<img src="the URL of the image">

A link like that would normally cause the browser to collect the image from the source site and display it in the web page. However, if the source site is running a blocking script it effectively says to the browser "No, you can't have that picture!" Thus thwarted, the browser instead displays the dreaded little white square with red cross, indicating that it can't get the image.

Why would a site block image links? Various reasons, the most common being a desire to restrict bandwidth usage to include only actual visitors to the site. Another less common reason would be to record who has seen a pictures. If you have to visit a site to see a picture that site can keep a record of what IP addresses have viewed the picture in question. Sometimes though the blocking script is there for no better reason than that all the server side stuff was copied from somewhere else, without regard to what it actually does!

Circumventing this problem. Well, there's a sporting chance that the method I used above will work. Essentially what this does is substitute a direct link for an image link. Not much difference, same bandwidth implications, but in practise you are now directly visiting the site holding the image, and thus the server may be disposed to let you through.

To do this you could simply put the URL of the image in your post for people to click on, just as you did with the very long URL in your post at 21:44 on February 24 2009 in this thread.

Alternatively you could use the shorthand method I've used above, but beware of this if you are not happy writing HTML. On Network54 getting the HTML slightly wrong can get you more error messages than missing out a full stop in old fashioned mainframe COBOL, and that's a lot of error messages! Also to use it you need to ensure that the 'Enable formatted text' box at the bottom of the 'Post' page is ticked - it normally is ticked by default.

Below is what you would type on the 'Post' page to display the first link I did above, followed by what you'll see in the actual post. You can vary the text, but the bits including and between the <> HTML delimiters must be exactly as shown, except of course that you'd need to change the URL for different pictures. To avoid complication I've left the link colour at default instead of changing it to red as I normally do.

If in the 'Post' page you put:

Click <a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_076Soy2bLC8/SW_hzD9JD2I/AAAAAAAAEz0/xXyzHYYM3-g/s1600-h/rootsheaven3-p.jpg">here</a> to see American Way's 1st image.

In the actual post you'll see this, and clicking on 'here' will display the picture:

Click here to see American way's 1st image.

Hope this helps!