My aunt told me that at her strict boarding school in Aberdeen during the 1950s the senior mistress would frequently administer a 12 stroke tawsing across the knickers of some naughty girls with the McRostie.

Since my aunt was not interested in receiving same she decided to invest in a pair of taswe-proof knickers that were advertised in the local newspaper. These knickers were made from a special titanium-aluminium alloy and consequently were relatively light (around 5.0 kg) and were available in the standard regulation school colours.

Well as it happened the entire school went on an excursion to see a matinee performance by George Formby. It seem that my aunt had quite a crush on young George and got somewhat carried away during the performance and decided to take her knickers off and throw them at George Formby. Fortunately they missed George but struck his ukelele which did not do the instrument a terrible lot of good. Needless to say the senior mistress was not impressed by this behavior and told my aunt to visit her study on return to school.

Fortunately for my aunt George was quite the gentleman and returned the titanim knickers so that she could wear them for the inevitable thrashing. It seem that they lived up to their reputation and it was a good outcome for all.

It is common knowledge that the production of tawse-proof knickers was a thriving cottage industry in Scotland right up until the mid 1990s. In fact after the first gulf war the titanium knickers were considered obsolete since the ones made from depleted uranium were more effective and could even protect the derriere from a 12 stroke session from the Lochgelly.

However they were extremely heavy, weighing up to 10 kg per pair and required the use of braces and a belt to keep them secure. They were also very expensive to maintain and the entire kit could cost up to 200 pounds per pair. However for any girl who was a regular visitor to the head mistresses' study they were considered a good investment.

We did not have access to advanced technology to protect our derrieres so we had to improvise. One girl I knew used to wear knickers made out of pillows filled with very small but powerful springs. She was able to take 6 with the McRostie without any difficulty. None of the teachers were any the wiser.

Well if you wanted to be a cheapskate then your best option would be to behave yourself in class and then you would not have to worry about anything.

I am not sue about tawse-proof knickers, but how about smack and slipper-proof gym shorts. At my school if any girl played up during a p.e lesson then our gym mistress would lift up the back of our gym shorts and deliver 4 real stingers to the top of each bare upper thigh in front of the class and sometimes follow it up with a 6 stroke slippering across the bottom in the change rooms. However I think titanium gym shorts would have been a bit obvious.

Smack-proof gym shorts is a big ask.

I remember in senior school one of my friends who was a prefect used to date one of Ronnie Kray's bodyguards who owned a variety of bullet-proof vests.

It seems that at the time these vests contained ceramic plates which were able to absorb most of the bullet's energy on impact.

Well as it happened this prefect had a bit of a run in with the senior mistress for reasons which are still sketchy, and an appointment was arranged for a meeting in her study. Since it was London to a brick on that a meeting in the office of the senior mistress would involve a very good session with the Lochgelly our young friend decided to take suitable preemptive measures.

She was able to persuade her body guard boyfriend to remove the ceramic plates from one of his vests and with some rather skillful workmanship she was able to incorporate these plates into her own regulation school knickers in such a manner as they were undetectable.

The subsequent visit to the study of the senior mistress resulted in the anticipated thrashing. However 6 of the best with the Lochgelly proved ineffective and the integrity of our young friend's derriere was intact.

There were rumors that this same bodyguard was later implicated in the mysterious demise of "Jack the Hat McVittie" and subsequently made himself very scarce. However my friend the prefect was being hailed as a hero and I was the only person apart from herself that knew the full story.

Freddy had done his own porridge when he was convicted of disposing of the body of Jack The Hat McVittie after Ronnie and Reggie Kray shot him -during the ...
netk.net.au/Mathews/Mathews1.asp - Cached - Similar

This confirms the previous posting. I think a few of our more cynical members of this esteemed forum will be joining Gordon Ramsay and dining on a meal of humble pie for some time to come.

Miss UK 1979, the rather garbled link? in your post above presumably refers to this page on the World Wide Web - at least the netk.net.au/Mathews/Mathews1.asp bit in your post seems to suggest this.

Now, for clarification and the avoidance of doubt, as a former eminent contributor here used to say, will you please be so kind as to explain to me and other habitués of this estimable Forum how that web page confirms the rather silly posting of your fellow 'fun' poster Sally (referred to by you as 'the previous posting').

The web page (about an Australian bank robber) does indeed mention Freddy Foreman, who was convicted of disposing of the body of Jack 'The Hat' McVittie after Ronnie and Reggie Kray shot him. However there is absolutely no mention of Freddy Foreman:

• Dating a schoolgirl, prefect or otherwise.
• Possessing bullet proof vests containing ceramic plates.
• Lending such ceramic plates to anyone.

I trust this little request will not occasion you any problems. I only ask because I'd really like to know!

I agree with our esteemed lurker to some extent but the article does give some credibility to Miss UK's story in as much as it proves that "Jack the Hat" McVitie was not a fictional character and that the Krays were involved in his untimely demise.

I agree that the evidence is purely circumstantial but it is very likely that the Krays did have a bodyguard who was presumably young enough to date a sixth form girl. This was not unusual at the time. Also since the Krays were not known to be short of the necessary it is highly likely that they would have purchased a bullet proof vest for him.

I believe that some of the vests at that time did actually contain ceramic plates. Ipso facto any self respecting beau would not hesitate in lending his girl friend these plates if it was known that her derriere had an appointment with the business end of the McRostie. Case closed.

SMG, it pains me to have to take issue with someone who says that they 'agree with me to some extent'. However, sadly, most of your posting above is absolute nonsense.

There has never been any doubt that Jack McVitie was a real person and was murdered by the Krays. Those of us who were around in 1967 will recall the incident only too well.

There is also little doubt that Freddie Foreman was involved in the final disposal of Jack McVitie's body. He was convicted of involvement in the murder and is said to have admitted disposing of the body in an interview in 2000. For the record he was 35 at the time of McVitie's death. Mr Foreman is of course still alive, and should they come to his attention he might well not take kindly to allegations that he was involved with a schoolgirl. Contrary to your claim that 'this was not unusual at the time' the fact is that other than their criminal activities the gangsters of that time tended to lead lives of the utmost rectitude.

As for the ceramic plates, I am not a ballistics expert, and I stand to be corrected (with evidence of course) by anyone who is. However, I am pretty sure that you would be looking at the mid 1980s for the beginnings of research into ceramic materials in body armour, and some time after that for the application to become a reality. As Sally's posting claims that the ceramic protected tawsing incident took place before the demise of Mr McVitie in 1967 I fear that her grasp of reality is non-existent.

As someone with strong connections to South London's Richardsons(who were somewhat harder than the Krays), I can assure you all of a few things:

1) NO 60's hoodlum would have been daft enough to get involved in any way shape or form with schoolgirls-the simple reason being that this would give the filth one very good reason to run them in.

2) One of the Krays was gay, and all his boyfriends were of mature age and often from the upper classes, hence why he(think it was Ronnie) was never arrested for it before it became legal in 1967.

3) The Krays did not have bodyguards at any stage of their criminal careers. They had enforcers or frighteners to set up their protection rackets, but considered themselves hard enough not to need protection.

4) Jack McVitie was STABBED to death by Reggie Kray, although he had planned to shoot him, only for the gun to jam. McVitie had been paid £1,500 by Ronnie to shoot dead a double-dealing business associate, but failed & kept the dosh.

5) None of the Kray gang were much use with a shooter, hence the fiasco at 4). Why else would Ronnie have paid a berk like Jack the Hat rather than ordering one of his close circle to do it?

6) Ronnie Kray's earlier murder of George Cornell at The Blind Beggar pub in 1966 WAS with a gun-one bullet through the head at close range with a mauser. Cornell was an east-Ender who moved to South London & joined the Richardsons, hence Ronnie's dislike of him.

What was NOT made public was that Cornell had engaged in golden riveting with one of Ronnie's favoured boys, despite calling Ronnie a fat poof earlier on. Ronnie also told no-one,including Reggie, about wanting to kill Cornell-it was personal, not business & that's probably why Ronnie was able to do it in such a way.


Steve M

I think lurker is quite right about insisting that ceramic plate technology was only incorporated into body armor from around 1980 onward. As to whether a 35 year old could date an 18 year old girl, well I do not think that is out of the question.

However as far as I know, most girls who knew that they were going to be thrashed would not have the knowledge or ability to incorporate any type of protection into their knickers.

And even if they tried it would be too obvious. Maybe the original poster was confused and the incident happened in say 1990 when corporal punishment was still legal in private schools in the UK.

But even so, I think most girls would just accept a thrashing and forget about it. Remember in those days corporal punishment was relatively common even for senior girls, although I think that a good session with the McRostie was probably a little severe.

Never the less stranger incidents have occurred. It would be more likely the girl in question would have chosen the easier option of wearing say 4 or 8 pairs of thick knickers if she thought she could get away with it.

I have recently been watching one of my favourite movies, the original Parent Trap starring Hayley Mills and there's a scene in that film which might be relevant here.

I have the recent DVD release which includes a commentary by now adult-Hayley talking about her memories of the film.

There is one scene early in the film when a group of girls cut away the back of Hayley's skirt, exposing her knickers for all to see. In the commentary, Hayley reveals that she was extremely embarassed about the idea of this scene and so she wore multiple pairs of knickers over each other in a belief this would make things better.

Personally I don't see it. If everybody is going to see your underpants, I don't see why the fact that they can see an outer pair of a number of pairs rather than just the one pair you'd be wearing normally really makes things better. But that's what she did.

Anyway, I think the scene might be of interest because it would perhaps give some idea of just how detectable the wearing of multiple pairs of knickers would be to the observer. Would a teacher notice or not? I'd never noticed any sign of it until I heard the commentary. I'm not sure if I still do.

I also have to say that maybe the scene in question might be of relevance to some other discussions here. I would point out that in 1961, Walt Disney and his company apparently saw absolutely nothing wrong with the underpants clad bottom of a 15 year old girl (Hayley's age - the character was 13) being displayed all over the world for all to see. Apparently nor did Hayley's parents, nor did millions of filmgoers as far as I can tell. It's a very popular film and I haven't often heard much controversy about the underwear being visible. So in that case, why should we be incredulous about the idea that a school teacher might have had any hesitation about exposing a girl in that way?

I wasn't caned over the knickers at school (wish I had been!), instead it took place through my skirt. But if a female teacher had chosen to do something like that, I wouldn't have thought anything of it myself - and even if a male teacher had, while I wouldn't have liked it (except I would have because I get off on such things but I'm trying to think about it as a normal girl would have), I wouldn't have thought anything particularly negative about him. I would have just assumed he wanted to make it hurt more (if he'd wanted to go any further, however, I'd have kicked him between the legs.) But seeing my underwear - well, not really any worse than the PE uniform we had to wear.

Halfpenny,

It would be interesting to know why you would have preferred to be caned over the knickers. Was it to increase the humiliation, the pain?

Halfpenny modestly neglects to tell us Hayley's astounding talents didn't stop at flashing her knickers to all and sundry.

So, let's share those talents, though I'm still searching for a shot of the panties in question.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XPxZSyQ8gs



Steve M

Question to Halfpenny

Did you go to a girls school, and if so were you punished by a female teacher?

At the school I attended UK) some female teachers did raise the back of the skirt to administer either the slipper or more commonly a smack across the back of the upper thighs. I think this was permitted at the time since I cannot remember anybody ever mentioning that it was not.

Connie/Sally/Miss UK 1979,

Read this thread and your questions will be answered.

http://www.network54.com/Forum/198833/thread/1187694157/last-1191227057/Halfpenny%27s+stories

I remember one of my female friends who attended a very strict Scottish boarding school for girls telling me that the material used for making tawses had some conducting properties. This meant that the effect of swinging a tawse through a powerful magnetic field would induce a current in the tawse that would produce its own counter magnetic field.

Apparently a brilliant sixth form girl was aware of this and incorporated copper wiring in her knickers in such a manner as to be undetectable. The wiring was connected to a discretely situated power source.

The outcome was that there was a powerful magnetic field in the vicinity of the tawse as it made its way to the upturned derriere.

This would substantially reduce the effectiveness of the tawsing by a factor of at least 75%. This means a 12 stroke session with the McRostie would in effect be equivalent to 3 stokes, no problem for most senior girls.

Hi Steve. You said:

though I'm still searching for a shot of the panties in question.

Search no more, merely go to this YouTube page and at around 00:01:46 into the video all will be revealed - literally!

Another Lurker has to confess that long, long ago in his beardless youth he was a greal fan of Miss Mills. He was astounded to discover that nearly all her films from that era seem to be available on YouTube. For anyone desirous of owning 'The Parent Trap' the cheapskate way here is the page you need.

Before she made the Parent Trap she starred in a brilliant film called Tiger Bay which also featured Sir John Mills.

I am not sure of her age during that film but she was very young. Her talent was quite obvious then. Somebody like Hayley Mills only comes around once in every generation. Unfortunately she did not enjoy the same success as an adult as she did as a child actor. A great talent. She is also part of a very talented acting family.

Research Assistant 2, thank you for letting us know how many people poor Connie has to share her PC and Internet connection with. I have to say though that I am surprised the list was not considerably longer!

Hi Emily McPherson. I assume physics wasn't one of your favourite subjects. Tawses are made of leather, and by the time it gets into a tawse it is pretty dry leather. Dry leather has a relatively low electrical conductivety. The resistance across a dry leather shoe sole (not much thicker than a heavy tawse) is of the order of 0·1 to 0·5 × 10⁶ Ohm. Even if the young lady in question had been able to direct the entire output of a medium sized power station though the grid in her knickers I doubt it would have slowed the tawse down by a measurable amount. It might have made her fidget a bit during her punishment though, which could have earned her extra strokes!

Even though I am currently resident in Japan, I did most of my senior schooling in the UK. I remember that at one very strict private girls school I attended the tawse was used quite often. However between tawsings the implement was stored in a special container immersed in water to keep it supple.

A few of the senior girls found out about this and decided to sneak into the senior mistresses' office and add some clear electrolytic fluid to the water.

This had the effect of making the tawse a very good conductor of electricity. This meant any motion of the tawse through a strong magnetic field would produce an induced counter magnetic field in the tawse


These same girls were also very well versed in the technology of induced magnetic fields so had no trouble in secreting a very powerful electric field generator in their respective knickers.

As it turned out the system was so efficient that even an apparently severe 12 stroke tawsing with the Lochgelly was considered a Sunday School picnic.

I myself was never naughty enough to be invited to bend over and have my skirt raised, however I can say without any equivocation the technology certainly was responsible for taking quite a few very vulnerable bottoms off the endangered species register.

Actually I believe some tawses in those days had metallic strips incorporated inside the leather to provide stability. If this was the case then the tawse would actually be considered quite a good conductor of electricity.

Also there would be no need to generate the magnetic field inside the girls' knickers. As long as there was a relatively strong magnetic field in the room itself this would be sufficient.

This magnetic field could be generated using the existing wiring in the room by producing a power surge from some external source say a portable generator. however this surge might not do the school electrical system a terrible lot of good. Never the less it was worth a shot.



Good luck to those girls. They seemed to be very innovative.

So people can assess the points made in the later part of this dicussion, the following screen captures from The Parent Trap are made available.

BB,

I get turned on by corporal punishment and I did as a teen as well. I wanted the whole experience of it, while at the same time dreading it. Being caned on the knickers would have increased both the pain and the embarassment and both those things were a large part of why I was turned on by it. If my Headmaster had lifted up my skirt, it would have terrified me, embarassed me, but also would have thrilled me. And I trusted him. I knew he wouldn't do anything to me he shouldn't do, so while it would have been fairly embarassing, I could have handled that.

Part of me would have liked it even if my knickers had come down, but if he'd done that, I wouldn't have trusted him anymore and that would have been the strongest feeling then. It still would have thrilled me but it would have scared me far more. Being able to trust him, to feel safe while I was being hurt pretty badly, was also part of what made enjoy it.

Connie,

I attended a coeducational school and I was caned by my Headmaster - a male teacher. But it was in the presence of a senior female member of staff.

Transcript from the auditory commentary of the Parent Trap DVD:

"This was a deeply embarassing moment in my life. Standing there talking to this, this boy who I thought was madly attractive and having the back of my dress cut out and my behind exposed was really embarassing and I was wearing about ten pairs of underpants... Oh yes, I think you can tell when you see my back view, I've got an awful lot of pairs of knickers on. My behind looks sort of upholstered."

Well, I don't know! I just have to turn my back for a few minutes, and people start talking rubbish about induced magnetic fields. I think it's all to do with the introduction of calculators into schools -- the younger generation simply have no feeling for orders of magnitude. As my good friend Another_Lurker has pointed out, any contraption of the kind described would have no discernable effect on the force of impact.

If anyone cares to doubt this, perhaps they would offer a quantified suibstantiation of their claim (starting from Maxwell's equations and Newton's Laws, of course)?

No, I thought not.

Alan! Thank goodness you are back! Things have been getting completely out of hand on the Science front in this thread and my nearly 50 year old A-level Physics and Mathematics have been totally inadequate to stem the tide.

Now, did you catch the bit on slide rules in the Moonlightin' thread. More to the point did you ever encounter a mechanical PlusAdder and if so can you recall how to do multiplication and division on them?

HALFPENNY

Belated thanks-just spotted the stills you posted.

One of her later Films was In Search of The Castaways(1962?), advertised with this strapline:

A Thousand Thrills-AND Hayley Mills!

I have to say, on the evidence of the multiple panties you found(that's the evidence & the panties!), thrilling was NOT the mot juste in the Parent Trap;wondered why my 9-year old mind had forgotten about it, as I saw the film on its' release.

Mind you, I suspect six of the best across that lot of passion-killers would not have hurt you or her.

And the 9-year old mind is still here & present, of course!


Steve M

Hmm, I have to say Miss Nagano that tawsings must have been a pretty messy and dangerous business at your 'very strict private girls school' which, although you don't say so, I assume was also 'very exclusive' and 'Scottish' - most of them tend to be. Doubtless the tawses involved were also McRosties - they come up quite frequently as well!

Anyway, back to the tawsings. Not only would the teacher find it quite impossible to control a wet tawse properly as wet leather is incredibly slippery, but they would spray water everywhere as the tawse was deployed. Worse still a considerable amount of water would inevitably be transferred from the tawse to the knickers of the unfortunate recipient on impact. I have seen it suggested that this would increase the pain of subsequent strokes, though I know of no scientific foundation for this. However there is a very good scientific foundation for what would happen in these circumstances when the young lady had added a powerful electrical device to her knickers, and the consequences could certainly be terminal. Pun intended!

Although some members of this forum have taken a few liberties with some basic scientific facts it should be noted that the creation of very powerful electromagnetic fields in a rather confined space such as the office of the senior mistress could have some rather dramatic and unexpected consequences.

I am not sure if the more learned and erudite members of the forum have seen or heard of the movie "The Philadelphia Experiment" in which the creation of a very powerful electromagnetic field produced a discontinuity in the space-time continuum resulting in the occupants of a world war 2 battleship being transported forward in time.

Now I am not saying that it was likely that some very naughty form 6 girls in the late 1970s would have the technical expertise to produce such a field, however assuming they managed to access the necessary power, one unintended consequence would have been to move all the occupants of the office of that particular room to a future time in which corporal punishment was no longer permitted. The ensuing court cases would have probably made legal history.
A simpler way for those impish young trout to save their respective derrieres would have been to behave themselves. What say you?

Mary McGregor:

I say that anyone who believes what they see in science-fiction movies has a serious deficiency in their education. The idea of a discontinuity in the space-time continuum is a contradiction in terms. Just what do you think the term "continuum" actually means? That it's continuous, you twerp!

(Or perhaps I should say, "impish youg trout" -- just where have I seen those words before, I wonder ...)

Mr Turing said:

"impish young trout" -- just where have I seen those words before, I wonder ...

Lots of places Alan, and under lots of different names. Same IP address and PC though! With of course the honourable exception of Declan who I think used them when taking the pi mocking one of our 'fun' posters.

The "Philadelphia Experiment" was not a science fiction movie. It was based on a true story. Please research the topic.

Emily, full details of how to construct the item you need will be found on this web page.

When you have completed it, put it on and retire to a darkened room. Lie on your back in a strict North-South orientation, having made careful adjustment for magnetic variation and declination.

Wait patiently. 'They' will contact you with further instructions.

A_L, how on earth did you find that? I still haven't managed to stop myself giggling!

A word to "Emily", though. There is not, and never has been, a true story of objects disappearing and then reappearing at some time in the future. Perhaps you don't accept that. Well, some people believe the earth is flat, others believe in fairies. The rest of us get on with our lives as usual.

In other words you are saying that those sixth form girls were in no danger of being transported into the future if they would have gone ahead with their scheme?

Exactly.

Hi Alan Turing, you ask:

A_L, how on earth did you find that?

Well actually it's me in the picture!

Seriously, Google Image Search is an excellent facility, but then I think you already know that.

Are any of you fine folk out there familiar with the Australian movie "Picnic at Hanging Rock".

It is based on the true story of the disappearance of some Australian schoolgirls in the early part of the twentieth century.

Although not stated explicitly, the film implies that these girls stumbled into an area that may have been able to transport them into the future. Any comments?

The main comment I would make is that Picnic at Hanging Rock is not based on a true story.

It is a fine film but it is a complete work of fiction written in novel form by Joan Lindsay and published in 1967.

The novel was written in a form that suggested it was a true story, but it was not, and indeed the original manuscript's final chapter contained the solution to the mystery of the disappearance. The publisher chose to remove that chapter in the belief (apparently justified) that it would improve the story. The solution was published in 1987.

Appleyard College, the fictitious school in the story was based on Clyde, which was absorbed into the school I attended as a boy - Geelong Grammar School - in the 1970s.

Thank you for that information. You seem to have a very wide general knowledge.
Did that school actually exist or was it fictional?

Appleyard College did not exist, but it was closely based on the Clyde School which did exist and which Joan Lindsay had attended as a girl.

Clyde, along with another girls' school, The Hermitage, were absorbed into Geelong Grammar School in 1976 as part of its process of becoming co-educational. Clyde House was established at GGS as a continuation of its heritage.

Do you know if there was any corporal punishment of girls in any of those schools that you mentioned, and if so what form did it take?

As a general matter of policy, I don't like naming a school as having used corporal punishment unless I know that it's a matter of public record. Because of my position, I often have somewhat privileged knowledge of a school's policies in this area that isn't in the public domain.

It's also, at times, an extremely difficult question to answer when it comes to Victorian independent schools (and to an extent this is true of other states). Because teachers in private schools derive their authority to administer corporal punishment by being in in loco parentis to a great extent, the bottom line as to whether or not corporal punishment was used in a school was often down to individual teachers. Even if a Headmaster (or Headmistress, or Principal) chose to ban corporal punishment, or for that matter, even if a school council did, it was often down to strength of personality as to what degree that ban was enforced. I know of a number of girls schools where corporal punishment was officially not permitted - but where it did happen occasionally. Boys schools as well - but very few of those had complete bans, so it's a less common phenomena.

Post 1983 - the date of the state school ban - things changed in this regard. It became pretty well accepted at that point that a whole school ban could be enforced, but even today there's only limited power to prevent a teacher in a private school using corporal punishment against school policy - it's almost certainly a violation of their terms of employment, but unless such violations become a pattern (to the extent you can dismiss the person - not easy when they are acting within the law) there's not a lot that could be done about it even now. I don't think it's likely to be an issue in any school today (except perhaps as a one off approach to address a heat-of-the-moment, never to be repeated, mistake) but prior to the 1980s, it did happen in some schools.

If a senior teacher in a girls school chose to occasionally administer corporal punishment outside of school policy, she probably had no problem doing so. And as only a minority of Australian girls schools officially used corporal punishment as a sanction, this might well have been a fairly high proportion of all such incidents.

And then there were other cases - quite common until 1980 - where the school had no official policy at all on corporal punishment. I know of one girls school where it was widely believed there was no corporal punishment, on the basis it hadn't been used in the memory of anybody in the school. It didn't stop their Headmistress caning some girls in the mid 1970s when she decided that was what was called for - and there was no policy that said she couldn't.

Here is a vignestte from bottom link posted on Scottish Heritage thread. Thomas Hand must have possessed an arsenal of tawse that could stand up to however many layers of clothes or even materials like titanium aluminum alloy. Is there someone out there that knows anything about a Huntley Tawse; it was the fiercest instument of them all.

Thomas Hand, head at Balrossie School, Glasgow, wrote: "When it has been decided that corporal punishment is the most appropriate treatment for a serious offence and when strokes are administered on the posterior it is surely right to assume that it is intended that the punishment in this case should be painful to the recipient."

"This is not the case when administered over corduroy trousers and underpants with a light tawse. It is considered that when the occasion demands it, special clothing should be worn to produce the desired effect. Alternatively, a heavier type of tawse should be used."

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=316269

Hi American Way. You say:

Is there someone out there that knows anything about a Huntley Tawse; it was the fiercest instument of them all.

Hmm, I've never heard of a Huntley tawse, but that's not to say there isn't such a thing. Huntley is a town in Scotland, and at one time almost every town had at least one business that produced tawses, often just for local demand.

There are some absolutely terrifying (almost ridiculously so) tawses around made for BDSM exponents etc. but as regards tawses that were actually used in Scottish schools I've never seen the accolade of fiercest awarded to anything but the 1970 J J Dick ROSLA (Raising Of School Leaving Age) tawse. This was two of the J J Dick Medium tawses bonded together to produce a fearsome instrument 15mm thick - that's over half an inch thick!

It's Huntly and it would be wider than a hand and suppler than a Lochleggy. One is on sale but with no picture, below from a previous post.

Re: oldest spanked or given school detention June 11 2009, 3:51 PM

The American Way was the Scottish Way. Our Charter Schools still use corporal punishment in areas where they are banned elsewhere just like the private schools strapped their students on the hand only I presume ten years ago while 20 years ago it was banned in the other schools in Scotland from what I understand. Age was also an issue with the ROSLA, (Raising of the School Leaving Age) and the dreaded Lochleggy tawse was said to be upgraded a notch as I understand. The Huntly tawse which Im sure youre more familiar with than me may have been the Loch Nesss monster of a tawse.

http://www.gcal.ac.uk/heatherbank/pdfs/fs12belt.pdf

I cannot help wondering whether Andy Murray's mother, Judy, has ever been tawsed. She would certainly be the right age for it, and as most girls of her age would have tasted the tawse I suspect she has received it.

Furthermore, tennis players of the 1970s would have worn those dreadful frilly knickers which if she was tawsed on the bottom would indeed provide some protection, and would also be able to diguise some form of titanium plate.

I also wonder whether there is a specialist tawse called a Dunblane tawse, perhaps in the shape of a mini tennis racket.

Contrary to popular belief girls were hardly ever tawsed even in an all girls school in any part of the UK. The most common punishment for girls was an open handed smack either across the bottom or back of the legs.

The next most common would have been the slipper across knickers and the most severe, either hand strapping (but not with a tawse) or caning across the bottom.

Tawsing if at all was always across the hands. Usually only one stroke across each. I attended an all girls school and received just about every form of punishment mentioned above but never was tawsed.

A_L Hmm, I've never heard of a Huntley tawse, but that's not to say there isn't such a thing. Huntley is a town in Scotland, and at one time almost every town had at least one business that produced tawses, often just for local demand.


Wright of Huntly was a saddler, that produced tawses in the wider four, three or two tails . Sales were aimed at the domestic market or private sales to local teachers, identified by the distinctive neck and squared top, approx 10mm thick 180g for a two tail. IMHO a poor man's Lochgelly, I own a few early Lochgelly's and a McRostie ( investment only) and I wouldnt part cash for something of this quality, not to say the Huntly tawse wasn't effective in producing many a sore hand and tears



Ketta

Mary,

OK , here we go again, girls and the belt. I'll just quote two 'official' figures

In 1982 the BBC quoted a 1980 survey of state schools in Scotland where it was found 1 in 12 girls had been tawsed in , I think, the previous fortnight.( the clip is on Corpun). I quoted elsewhere the survey of 1,000 pupils by the Scottish Council for Educational Research which found 540 girls out of 1,000 ( Margaret Stone, corporal punishment of girls 2002 p42) had been belted in the Scottish school system at some time in their school career. Now both these surveys may not be wholly accurate , they are samples, but they would have to be blatantly manufactured to support the position that girls were rarely if ever tawsed, ( and always on the hand).

If you want to demonstrate official statistics are rubbish, fine, but don't just ignore them . Besides which talk to any teacher in the state sector within Scotland pre 1980 and listen to what they will say....I know a couple who would tell you ......If you were educated in the pre abolition period ( pre82) and you never got tawsed you were lucky in your parents' choice of schools ,or very good! Of course I think technically CP wasn't finally outlawed in Scotland in theory in the private sector as I understand the law, until 2000, but no tawsing post '82 and the European court ruling.I have no knowledge of what practical effect this two stage legal move had.

Perhaps one of our esteemed readers could clarify the practical position post '82?

Strictly off topic and not for the KEEP IT REAL thread, there is an amusing entry if you Google: The Kilt and the Tawse. It is an example of not KEEPING IT REAL but so are the aluminum titanium and Faraday panties. What qualifies as cross dressing?

Hi Ketta. That's twice in a very short period you've found pictures and information I've failed to find! Whilst I've never regarded myself as a search expert I don't expect to perform that badly. Can I please make so bold as to enquire what search engine or engines you favour?

Hi prof.n. I'm sure that Mary McPherson/Amanda/Sally/Miss UK 1979 is perfectly well aware of the realities of tawsing set out in your post, but he'll deny them, and anything else said by a serious poster, 'cos he's a 'fun' poster and that's what 'fun' posters do.

Oops, my apologies to prof.n and Mary McGregor. I'm getting so worked up about fun posting that I'm getting my McGregors and McPhersons mixed up. That would have been a good reason for sending round the fiery cross in the old days!

Another Lurker,

Thanks ! Given the content of the strand I did think I might be being suckered, not for the first , nor , I guess the last time in my life.

So a gracious thank you and goodnight on this one! MARY etc.etc. etc. 1 PROF.N 0 !!! OK?

As a warning to the general public, could it not be arranged that absoute whoppers should automatically show up in . say, luminescent green?!!!It shouldn't be beyond the technical capacity of our contributors to whom time travel, motorised tawsing stools, and electromagnetic devices are the stuff of everyday life...........,or that they just wear pointy hats?!

C'est la vie!

That is quite a good suggestion by A/L to have a pork pie detector whenever somebody is trying to sell you a bill of goods such as mixed P.E. classes Jocari bats, and mixed bathing areas etc.

Also there should be an off topic detector to minimise the effects of golden biscuits and other nonsense. However we need to encourage the more erudite females of the forum since it is their incisive wit and accurate accounts of 1970s school life that prevents this forum descending into the pitiful state of some other forums that I could mention but will not.

Goodbye and good luck.

Emily

I think prof and his merry band of fellow travellers are suffering from delusions of adequacy. They need to get real. Do not dismiss as fiction that which science has proven to be possible.

The creation of a very powerful electromagnetic field in a confined space can produce a discontinuity in space and time, the consequences of which are unknown. However I am willing to admit that the amount of electrical energy required would not in normal circumstances be available to senior girls in a school scenario.

However if the school in question was located next to say a nuclear power station and the girls found some way to plug directly into the power grid then possibly and I stress possibly the required electromagnetic field could be produced.

This does not necessarily mean that the girls would be transported forward in time, but there could be enough unexplained phenomena occurring to certainly cause the senior mistress to at least delay the tawsing until the situation could be investigated.

I will admit this scenario may sound like science fiction to some, but if anybody knows of a better way to delay a tawsing, then feel free to post your suggestions.

Well I cannot say that there is a better way to delay a tawsing but there is certainly one way to prevent one. That is for those girls to behave yourself in class. In any case does anybody know the reason behind that particular tawsing?

Yet another dimwit (or perhaps the same one, in which case he's even dimmer than I thought) says:

The creation of a very powerful electromagnetic field in a confined space can produce a discontinuity in space and time.

Science has demonstrated no such thing. Indeed, I doubt that the author of that line has any clear notion of what science is. I suggest that a good dose of Popper is called¹ for here!

1. Bet they don't know who Karl Popper is!

SMG says:

That is for those girls to behave yourself in class.

"Themselves", please, not "yourself". I know English doesn't have much in the way of formal grammar, but it's best to get it right when the occasion arises.

I believe this would also be the case in the American version, but of course I stand to be corrected by our experts in that field.

Since the terminology and concepts described in a lot of these postings are beyond the ken of most members it would be greatly appreciated if the more technically advanced members such as Prof could perhaps provide a simplified version explaining all the terms and giving their opinions of whether such phenomena are actually possible in theory even though they might not have actually been proven.

Who would have known this thread would take on a life of its own with its twist and turns in just one month? Search as you may you would never find anything like this thread in all of cyberspace or such a Happy Circle.

I think that Prof has better things to do with his time than to provide free on line science lessons to some of the technically challenged people that post on this forum.

However with no disrespect to the highly regarded Prof, I think some of the concepts being suggested on this forum might even be above his pay scale.

I think we should all relax a little and just consider these concepts as possible scenarios rather than events that actually happened.

Although this might be just coincidental, in a recent posting by our very eloquent and dapper young friend Declan, it was mentioned that seven impish young schoolgirls suddenly appeared in a cupboard without any logical explanation. I would be interested in the explanation that our esteemed Prof has for this rather strange phenomenon.

Yes I will have to agree with America Way on this one. It seems that this thread has got more twists than Chubby Checker.

Heather , Heather Heather,

I am flattered!

You really wouldn't want ME to do it I'm sure. You see amongst these august Physicists, Mathematicians, Chemists , IT bods , I am the one real sceptic.....a social philosopher ( we use this term to distinguish ourselves from scientists!!!)., with degrees in sociology, philosophy politics and education...really the very WORST person to ask for a simple guide to anything at all.......

You see all the other guys ( and ladies) with their scientific backgrounds will at least start by believing that what is on the bench is , well on the bench.....I need them to prove it ...oh and not by Sir Karl's method :

'All swans are white.....but I see a black swan ,,,...????? Discuss.

No no I am not an empiricist, or more precisely a systematic empiricist..

Because the sun rises in the East every morning of your existence doesn't mean that it will continue to do so. Sure the string of empirical observations impute it , but do not prove it....theory can approximate it to the 99.999999999 percentile, but it might not happen, it just might not...we cannot be certain...... and if it doesn't, well we're all pretty much snookered. ..

But what could a social philosopher offer a poor wee lassie facing the tawse ; apart, that is from a long intense and fascinating course on the epistemology of Hegel, Husserl and Sartre which would help them rationalise their existence, reality , the human condition, and possibly dismiss the McRostie as a mere social construct within the repressive state apparatus? .. Well how about the following :

Next time any of you are called to see that fearsome headmistress in a very exclusive boarding school in Aberdeen or Yorkshire or the Falklands , just close your eyes, ignore her, and repeat the mantra that the meeting is not real , the McRostie is not real , and that if you screw your eyes up tight and count to ten the whole nightmare will disappear,.

I f that doesn't work retreat to plan B , just repeat 'mind over matter' with sufficient conviction to suspend the laws of physics for a split second , and the McRostie may stop in mid flight., or dematerialise, or not as the case may be. .........anyway , should that fail, look at it this way your small sacrifice will have been for the greater good of science.....and mankind.

Then in twenty years you may be able to ring up a no win no fee lawyer and put in a claim for post traumatic stress, whilst the headmistress sues you for your behaviour being the cause of her RSI.......and that nervous breakdown

If that again doesn't work try one of these fail safe back up plans..... look up the number for STOPP. in a pre 1999 directory , or find a police phone box with a Timelord in it......in extremis google 'Star Trek' and follow the instructions to 'beam me up Scottie...'

This is the considered advice of a social philosopher, as usual simple, straightforward. down to earth, practical and definitely without a money back guarantee......

Next step, Heather, find a real scientist who will give a sane(?) answer your questions !!!!

Hmm, I see you are a fellow insomniac prof.n. Assuming you are in the UK that is!

A brilliant résumé of life, the universe, and everything. I'm sure that it will be of enormous assistance to Heather in making some sense out of her (or more probably his) existence and at the same time a great comfort should she (or more probably he) encounter a McRostie at close quarters.

I'd like to undertake the task of giving her (or more probably him) the scientific viewpoint, but I shall be sensible and leave that to my distinguished fellow contributor Mr Alan Turing, whose Maths is impeccable as befits a man with a Doctorate in the subject and whose Physics is also considerably better than mine.

While not claiming to be in the 97th percentile of IQ which we can safely assume our esteemed Prof is located, I thought I detected a rather oblique reference to "Dr. Who", a popular British sci-fi series which was very popular some time ago. Could I be correct?

And if so, does our esteemed professor consider that young Declan may have stumbled upon something quite remarkable in recounting that story of 7 British school girls mysteriously appearing in a cupboard presumably 4 years younger than they were when they were about to present themselves for a well deserved tawsing by a very determined senior mistress?

The creation of a very powerful electromagnetic field in a confined space can produce a discontinuity in space and time.

Look at the tawse as an instrument to be used for a two slit experiment to see how long the classical laws of physics apply. Consider a tawsing as a man made effort to turn ladies knickers into black holes. Even if the laws of physics on the large scale don't apply the pain will be much more endurable knowing it's for a noble cause. It's been thirty years since my Physics BS so I'll leave it to those who have doctorates to pile it on high and dry before Schrödingers cat does.

http://www.physorg.com/news113822439.html

Amelia,

I can see you are troubled by the apparent discontinuities in space and time, and probably particle motion versus wave motion as well......Unfortunately , as my science was left behind after A levels I am in an even worse position that AL to help you on particle physics..... except to warn you not to mix that with particular election and redemption, a largely Calvinist doctrine of no relevance to the scientific debate whatsoever.....( and probably to the girls in the cupboard as well). And the last thing you want are a bunch of angry Calvinists wielding their McRostiess believe me!.

However to things on which I may be able to help.......unless you happen to be of the economist tradition of marxism , who really believe philosophy is dead and buried, one of the nice things about philosophical discourse is the there is no given primacy of material actions or material practices over ideology and metaphysics. (Yes a different sort of physics, but one which can come in pretty handy when you're stuck in a cupboard four years earlier than you went in there!).

To solve this riddle I would probably refer you to the work of Blaise Pascal , for was it not he who got into terrible trouble with the ideological state apparatus of the church of his day McRosties have at times been as nothing to them (think 1486 and malleus maleficarum )....anyway was it not Pascal who uttered the words....Kneel down , move your lips in prayer, and you will believe. Thus scandalously inverting the accepted order of things......Now I'll try ( probably without success) to keep this simple, on topic and .and not digress or meander...... (believe me when you were taught your introduction to metaphysics by a Jesuit Father who had fallen out with his order and the Curia about the particulars of the metaphysics of art.......this is no straightforward task!). However......

If the girls ignore Pascal sticking to Jansenist defiance of a language which can directly name reality, for defiance at all is a red rag to an already angry senior mistress......they may well come to see that the reason they cannot think themselves out of their predicament is because in the philosophical inversion the term ideas has disappeared , to be replaced by ritual practice. They live , move and have their being only in a ideology...so it is the ideological construct which has shifted, not the material manifestations of it.............

Hope that's clear . If it isn't take this definition from one of France's greatest 20th century thinkers
renowned for his clarity of thought and transparency of language ..:

'I add .that the category of the subject is only constitutive of all ideology insofar as all ideology has the function (which defines it) of 'constituting' concrete individuals as subjects...'( Louis Althusser 'The ISA Notes towards an investigation' La Pensee 1970)

Finally the girls can take comfort from Jacques Lacan,( for an easy introduction in English ; or what I can assure you passes as such, try New Left review 51 ; 1968) that the metaphor of the cupboard is nothing more nor less than the artefact that reveals to each of them the effectiveness of Order, the Law , that has been lying in wait for each infant since before its birth, and seizes them before their first cry, and assigns to each their place role and fixed destination . They cannot avoid fate.........sorry!....the McRosti awaits, with the angry senior mistress in tow........


As I said before.....their only hope is Captain Kirk, Scottie and Star Trek........either way they must boldly go .....

Come to think of it why did I decide to answer this anyway?.

This is getting interesting; I'd like to make two comments, at quite different levels.

The first concerns the mathematical notion of continuity and discontinuity. Technically, the concept of "continuity" is something you apply to a function, that is, to a correspondence between one collection of things and another. Thus, for example, the speed of an object might be discontinuous as a function of time if it suddenly increased from 30 m/s to 50 m/s without, in the meantime, having been 40 m/s. The collections themselves must have the structure of what mathematicians call "topological spaces"; but the term "continuous" has no meaning when applied to the space itself, rather than to functions between these spaces. The four-dimensional entity which physicists call space-time is an example of a topological space, although it has much more structure than a general topological space. It is what's called a differentiable manifold.

The simplest kind of four-dimensional differentiable manifold is like a four-dimensional version of an infinite plane, going on forever in all directions; the next simplest is like a four-dimensional version of a sphere. But these manifolds can be more complicated; for example, imagine (if you can) the four-dimensional analogue of a sphere with a small hole drilled through the middle. In popular science some years ago these were sometimes termed "wormholes", with the idea that an object could disappear down a wormhole and then reappear in a different place (or at a different time). But for that, one would need evidence that such wormholes existed. The nearest we've got, I believe, would come from the study of extremely massive black holes which might distort the topology of the universe in that sort of way; but these arise in the context of strong gravitational fields which would turn everyday objects into highly-compressed collections of subatomic particles. Not the sort of thing which could transport schoolgirls into a cupboard!

That leads me into my second comment, which is philosophical rather than mathematical. It's quite right to say that we have no absolute proof that the future will be like the past. We have no absolute proof that the sun will rise tomorrow like it did today, yesterday, the day before, ... . But I'd be a rich man if I'd bet against people who didn't believe in scientific continuity!

That's not to say that science doesn't change: it does, but in the physical sciences the change appears at the extremes. Newtonian mechanics is a good example. For ordinary, everyday use, it's as true today as it was 300 years ago. Of course it's been overturned by the two twentieth-century theories, relativity theory and quantum theory, but both those theories only differ from the Newtonian theory in the extremes: in the large-scale (for relativity theory) and in the small-scale (for quantum theory). If you're looking at the mechanics of how your car works, or even how a space-rocket follows its trajectory, then Newtonian Mechanics is all you need.

And there will be further developments in the future. But, just as I'm confident the sun will rise tomorrow, I'm confident that any future scientific developments will be modifications which differ from the present understanding only at the extremes.

Alan Turing

Excellent reply , the modelling was clear as crystal..

Just to emphasise one point. If you compare Alan's reply today and mine at 3.40 yesterday you will see that the difference between the scientific approach and social philosopher is clear. We don't disagree on the material issue ( eg the sun rising), or even the chances of that happening, but Alan will take a practical utilitarian approach, because he has to work from the real world I have the liberty to take an absolutist approach for the fun of asking the what if (not) questions?

One interesting point . Our fields can and do actually intersect, or more correctly interplay ,at the very edges, or boundaries of pure mathematics.

If you want to see a pure picture of horror watch students in a university who have opted for an 'Arts based' social philosophy programme , or even for many students economic philosophy, when they are told that it will be 'helpful' if not 'essential' if they can understand calculus .......particularly today with those who don't continue through A level. ...and they often don't even do that for engineering......biological sciences, and occasionally biochemistry let alone philosophy. Pure mathematics is a basic 'language', an essential building block of our society, and we would do well to remember that!.