A male perspective.

Hello Cathy,

Yes, I think your friend Carl is on the right track.  For most people with current living memory of corporal punishment in their youth I think CP at school will probably have been a more memorable experience and created more impressions, fetishes, fantasies than CP at home.

This is not so for everyone of course.  Some of our contributors have clearly been greatly affected by their home punishments.  However my estimate would be that they are in the minority.  The relationship with parents differs very much from the relationship with teachers and SCP almost always has an inevitability and a ritual aspect which makes it more memorable.

Of course this was not always so.  In the past when households with domestic servants and governesses to bring up the children were much more common than they are now, home punishments often had all the ritual and impressiveness of modern school punishments and more.  In the late 18th and early 19th century boys birched on the bare at home by their governess while held down by the house-keeper and the upstairs maid later provided the customer base for the many birching establishments of the period such as the notorious establishment of Mrs Theresa Berkley at 28 Charlotte Street, London.

However probably equally many of their contemporaries were inclined to parallel pleasures in later life as a result of being required to kneel bent over on the birching blocks of the great public schools of England, or seeing others so punished.

In later years though, as already noted, I think the balance of influence has definitely swung in favour of school corporal punishment as the main factor in producing people with an interest in corporal punishment in later life.   I think your friend identifies some of the main determinants of that.  His paragraph

However, at school, you are being spanked by someone other than your parent in an atmosphere of your friends and classmates (I know principal Marlin was your uncle so they may be a bit different).  You get called up to the front of the class or take a trip to the utility room or principals office.  They give you a speech about why they are about to apply heat to your seat and they tell you to lower your pants and bend over and it begins.

says much of what needs to be said on the subject.

However I think the influences at work were sometimes different for different people, depending very much on personality.  I was a very, very shy and withdrawn little lad.  To illustrate just how withdrawn, other kids were upset when they weren’t invited to birthday parties.  I was upset when I was invited, because my parents would try to make me go and I hated having to mix socially with other children and the embarrassment of being unable to integrate and enjoy their company.

Nowadays I’d probably be labeled with an ‘ism’ of some sort and given all sorts of special facilities and help.  However most of the ‘isms’ hadn’t been invented then and you just had to get on with life the best you could.

I was very greatly influenced and affected by my first experience of SCP at school, the smacked leg with several other offenders in front of a big class of other boys and girls.  It certainly set me on the course of an interest in SCP, especially in avoiding it in the future.  I doubt very much if any other child in the line-up of miscreants that day was so substantially influenced.

Being smacked at school was pretty much routine for most kids in those days, painful at the time, but quickly over.  For me however the indignity and embarrassment of the punishment in front of so many other children was the thing which made the most impression.  The smacks were painful, but that wasn’t what stuck with me.

Your friend Carl was obviously much influenced by his session with Mrs Brailey, being paddled on the bare over her knee in private.  Clearly a trigger factor for him.  Curiously I’ve recorded here more than once in the past that I’m absolutely certain that if Miss B had smacked me on the bare bottom in private that fateful day it wouldn’t have made nearly such an impression as the relatively much the lesser indignity of having the leg of my short trousers pulled up to be smacked on the thigh.  For me the trigger factor was the embarrassment of the large audience of contemporaries.  Horses for courses as the saying has it.

Carl also mentions another major factor in generating an interest in SCP.  Seeing others being punished in circumstances which excite.   In his case the excitement was unfulfilled and imagined – or at least I presume he didn’t get to see Becky being whacked by your uncle, or indeed to whack her himself.  For me seeing a female classmate slippered in PT was certainly a factor in subsequent interest.

There were various reasons for this:  Girls didn’t normally get slippered in gym knickers in front of the class.  She was a very pretty girl.  She was being slippered for speaking to me so I should really have been bent over in front of the class alongside her. Lots of things.  But most of all, and I can’t put this any better than very sadly missed once frequent contributor Alan Turing did in the final sentence of the penultimate paragraph of one of his very early contributions, posting as ‘John’ here:

Finally, of course, observing power and authority in action is always memorable, particularly when it isn’t aimed at you.

Hello Cathy,

Sorry, my mistake.  And indeed on re-reading Carl’s letter it could not be clearer that the punishment was on his underwear.

In the UK in my own experience of the era under discussion (i’m aged between Carl and yourself) punishment of boys on the underwear was probably rare.   In Infant schools (ages 5 to 8 in my part of the UK, though 5 to 7 in some others I believe) I’ve seen plenty of accounts of smacking on the bare, and in Preparatory schools (ages 8 to 13, but a fairly small subset of UK schools)  SCP of boys on the bare was not unknown.

But of punishment of boys on their underwear I recall very very few reports in any type of school.  Though of course punishment on PE shorts wasn’t unusual and boys were generally required not to wear anything under those, so it amounts to pretty much the same thing.

Your Mrs Brailey sounds a thoroughly unpleasant teacher.  I’m not clear what grade you and Carl were when you got your respective punishments from her, but in my own experience in Infant and Junior school (ages 5 to 11-12)  female teachers were more enthusiastic users of SCP for boys and girls alike than the relatively few male teachers.    And young female teachers were the most  enthusiastic users of all.

Another_Lurker wrote:Hello Cathy,

Sorry, my mistake.  And indeed on re-reading Carl’s letter it could not be clearer that the punishment was on his underwear.

In the UK in my own experience of the era under discussion (i’m aged between Carl and yourself) punishment of boys on the underwear was probably rare.   In Infant schools (ages 5 to 8 in my part of the UK, though 5 to 7 in some others I believe) I’ve seen plenty of accounts of smacking on the bare, and in Preparatory schools (ages 8 to 13, but a fairly small subset of UK schools)  SCP of boys on the bare was not unknown.

But of punishment of boys on their underwear I recall very very few reports in any type of school.  Though of course punishment on PE shorts wasn’t unusual and boys were generally required not to wear anything under those, so it amounts to pretty much the same thing.

Your Mrs Brailey sounds a thoroughly unpleasant teacher.  I’m not clear what grade you and Carl were when you got your respective punishments from her, but in my own experience in Infant and Junior school (ages 5 to 11-12)  female teachers were more enthusiastic users of SCP for boys and girls alike than the relatively few male teachers. And young female teachers were the most  enthusiastic users of all.

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I’ve mentioned in previous posts that at the schools I attended, canings/spankings often appeared to be handed out indiscriminately simply to reinforce the teacher’s authority. If things were getting out of hand or corporal punishment simply hadn’t been used for a while, certain teachers would simply pick on the next scholar stepping out of line and punish them. Such unjust punishments were not only undeserved but often quite severe for relatively minor offences. Obviously the teachers who commanded the respect of the pupils had no need to resort to such unfair tactics.

It follows that inexperienced young teachers would be more likely to lose control of a class than their more mature colleagues. With the option available to them in bygone years they might well have been tempted to resort to corporal punishment to keep order and to apply it more frequently than was necessary.

though i never support corporal punishment i can say as a former substitute teacher that loosing control of a class can be terrifying… its like you were sailing on choppy seas and suddenly you feel the gale rising up all around you and you can see where things are headed and have little chance of averting the looming disaster… i can understand how in such circumstances the temptation to lash out at anything remotely related to the problem can be overwhelming and how the student who is punished could easily be considered to just be the one who was left standing at the end of that round of musical chairs

I saw this in my grammar school in the 1950s/60s although the younger new teachers weren’t allowed to administer CP for their first few years. I  remember one mature new teacher just out of teacher training college sending boys to what was his mentor, a more senior teacher, for CP. Those sent were often just told not to torment  this new teacher and were sent back to the lesson although the occasional one was unlucky enough to get a firm stroke of the cane.

Even in this era there were many teachers who found no need to use CP. However some relied on the plimsoll or cane to maintain discipline in their classroom. I remember a few of the older teachers who used CP fairly remaining liked and popular with most of us. To many lads then it was just an extension of what they received at home when they misbehaved.

I agree. Teachers were respected even if they used CP as long as they were fair and consistent. If it was seen by us boys as justified then all well and good. You were told clearly what was ok and what was not, you crossed that line knowing full well if caught youd get punished then fair enough we accepted it. It was as others have said the indiscriminate use of CP usually by weak teachers which was resented.
My form master aged 11-13 was very fair and ge whacked me a number of times and i was always in the wrong so took it.
As Six says also school CP reflected what i got at home though actually home was more embarrassing as my sisters often watched whereas at school from aged 9 it was just boys.

Hi Stuart,

How did school CP compare to what you received at home? Were your sisters punished at school or at home in the same manner as you were?

I was an only child and rarely spanked at home. School CP hurt much more but it wasn’t excessive.

I suspect that in the past, perhaps the 1920s/30s, Many parents used CP much as schools did back then. In more recent years I think parental punishments became less severe; over knee spankings, etc. whereas many schools continued to bend youngsters over to properly cane their bottoms. Of course all this varied family to family and school to school. This is possibly why so many are still intrigued by it.