I've been out working and searching for articles and letters about spanking in mainstream publications the past few weeks and have been lucky. I hit a good vien, running four and a half years in the "Letters" section of the New York Evening World.
The first letter to the editor about Spanking appeared in the August 29th, 1893 issue, six weeks or so after the Evening World established a "Letters" Column", where people could complain or comment on any subject.
For whatever reason, the frequency dropped off for about six months in 1894, then appeared again in 1895 with a vengance. I got as far as mid 1898 before I had to leave.
All together, I found 62 letters about MF or FF spankings, but their were many others about MM and FM spankings. The later in particular as a cure for "the husbands taste for alcohol".
I did not copy nor will I post any MM, FM letters.
I will try to post at least one letter or cluster each day each day except while I'm away, probably twice before the all the letters in this batch are posted.
Also keep in mind that some words were used differently in those days than they are now.
For example the word 'breech', was used instead of the word "bottom', 'rattan' was used in the American context to mean a 'switch', Cowhide and rawhide are also used commonly and I think they had different meanings then now.
I hope you will find the letters as interesting as I did and will engage in some discussion of them with me and other members of our chat group, but give me some room for spelling/typing errors and an occasional wrong date.
I'll post the first cluster in an hour or two.
Will
ps. Also found 23 articles in original newsprint format dating back to 1857. I want to post them here.
The articles are on a floppy disk. Can someone help me with simple easy to follow instructions.