Private Eye Report.
Enclosed on attachment is a typed copy of the ‘Private Eye’ report on Bacons, dated 22nd May 1981. As you shall see, ‘Private Eye’ made a confident statement regarding the caning of girls on the bottom. I’d have loved to have known where on earth they got their information from. There doesn’t seem to be any information or any other reports that support their bold claim. I’m sorry, but I shall keep coming back to it, sadly, both Friends Reunited and Facebook have put the claim to bed. The excellent Bacons posts that Oliver Sydney recently sent add weight to that. Although, you know what, I’m sitting here now and somewhere in a corner of my mind, I’m still wondering…………………..
So it begs the question from which source did ‘Private Eye’ get their information? Did they send a reporter to the school to ask girls if they’d been caned? Did a few girls say they got it on the bottom? Or is it all nonsense and ‘Private Eye’ were simply being mischievous? Will we ever know for utter certainty, if, girls at Bacons, once upon a time, during those far off good old days, got their’ hams cured!!!!??’ BOM-BOM!
Sue Olds report from The Evening Standard.
I have enclosed a typed copy of The Evening Standard report, headed, ‘Girl Who’s afraid of Going to School,’ dated 30th October 1978. I do have the original copy, thanks to the National Newspaper Library in Colindale, but it’s secured in a scrapbook and is looking a tad fragile and tatty. I do also have a copy of the one on Corpun. Luckily, I must have typed out a copy at some point.
Schoolgirl Bits
You remember my thread, ‘Schoolgirl Bits?’ Well, enclosed is a copy of that on the Sue Olds incident.
EMBELLISHED version of the Sue Olds report.
Ah, now then, now then! Bless my heart and soul! Back in the days when I was in my infancy regarding the use of the Internet, and may I lament, rather green behind the ears, I found this report. Back then I never knew for certain what went on at Bacons. Yes, I had a few newspaper cuttings, yes, I’d heard, but not seen, the ‘Private Eye’ claim. So when I found this report, I was idiotic enough to think it was possibly true. It’s author has clearly lifted part of the Evening Standard report and added the embellishment. It’s in two parts se please ensure that you read part one first. Also, apologies for the handwritten first line of part two. When I originally printed it, it missed the first line!!!
Finally, a report from The Evening Standard, dated 13th September 1979, regarding the caning of girls.
Enjoy and I look forward to your thoughts.
Best wishes,
Paul.
-
- SUE OLDS Evening Standard 30 October 1978.docx (432.42 KiB) 12
The Sue Olds report as you can see is on a Word doc. in the last post
Enclosed here is the two part embellished Sue Olds document and Schoolgirl Bits
Paul
-
2015holyfamilypenguin4,32069
P.S. Paul keep looking. I know you’re doing your best.-
bripuk39929
-
Another_Lurker10K256
If I didn’t think you were joking I’d say you were getting confused. 
An amazing collection! Thank you very much for taking the trouble to assemble, prepare and post the various items.
May I please turn first to what you term ‘the two part embellished Sue Olds document‘.
I am sure you are aware of the unpleasantness and eventual rift in the Forum some time ago when a long-standing contributor published very similar allegations, claiming that they were the result of a survey the contributor had carried out by emailing several girls who had attended the school.
There were additional embellishments in the accounts related in that instance. Girls required to present with a specific hairstyle, sometimes more than one witness including other male staff, a mistress carrying out the DDD clothing adjustments, but in essence the routine described is so coincident that I feel that either the contributor had read the same web page that you found or the person who wrote that web page had seen the allegations in this Forum. A purist might argue that a third possibility is that it actually happened and the various accounts simply describe the experience of girls so punished. I do not however think that is likely.
If you have the information or can recall it, it would be most interesting to know when you found the page and where. For instance was it on a blog, a commercial CP site, a personal site? Any detail at all, and even an approximate date, would be of interest. I note that you say of finding the report that it was:
Back in the days when I was in my infancy regarding the use of the Internet, and may I lament, rather green behind the ears, I found this report. Back then I never knew for certain what went on at Bacons. Yes, I had a few newspaper cuttings, yes, I’d heard, but not seen, the ‘Private Eye’ claim.
I suspect that this would precede events here, so what you saw may have also inspired our contributor.
It is not unknown for commercial CP media sources to ‘amplify’ actual SCP which has been widely reported. For instance the caning of girls at the Rodney School for a visit to a boys’ dormitory was covered in some UK papers due to the efforts of Ms Joan Thomas, the school’s owner, and the person who wielded the cane, who seemed to think, probably correctly, that SCP was a selling point with some parents. However it appears that it was a US commercial CP site which added the embellishment that those caned had to present themselves for punishment in PE kit, with only rice paper thin PE shorts between their bottoms and the cane.
As I nearly but not quite became a pupil at the Rodney school I had always had an interest in events there and in my early internet days I acquired a copy of the ‘PE kit’ story without noting its source. In fact I doubt it was direct from the US site as that was apparently a pay site, and I’m far too mean to pay for my computer activities! Subsequently I published a copy of the text here, still not knowing the source and believing it to be true due to incidental corroboration, doubtless also mistaken. An illustration of how easily fiction can come to appear reality! Possibly something similar may have played a part in the Bacons accounts. So if you can recall where you saw the embellished Sue Olds story it really would be helpful!
The Bacons saga here went on to encompass ‘secret’ committees investigating the canings which weren’t recorded in any media sources whatsoever but which supposedly interviewed vast numbers of parents and pupils, searches of the school, and even, if memory serves me correctly, mysterious records written in invisible ink. Perhaps I imagined the invisible ink. The whole thing did become very silly and very, very heated arguments ensued, followed not long after by the Great Schism.
My own position is, as I’ve said before, that I have no reason to doubt that some girls may have been caned on the bottom at Bacons, whether by Mr Ing or a female mistress. Probably not many, but some. After that, well it is just possible I suppose that a skirt (or rather a kilt, at one time a long and substantial looking kilt was a Bacons winter uniform option) may have been considered to impede an effective caning, but other than dubious sources I’ve seen no evidence for that.
As for the rest, as far as I’m concerned it belongs in SCP fiction with regard to a school like Bacons which although not LEA regulated (it was a C of E school) was very much in the public eye and subject to comparative scrutiny against LEA regulated schools. A small private school out in the sticks, possibly. A 1000+ pupil C of E secondary school in a big city environment in the 1970s? I think not!
There is a very interesting bit at the end of your ‘Evening Standard’ 13/09/1979 clip. A Mr Scott, described as an ‘angry parent’ protests at the adverse publicity Bacons was getting, saying that due to the discipline it was one of the best schools in the district and that most parents had consented to the canings. I don’t think this implies US style written consent for a pupil to be caned, just a general feeling that the cane was no bad thing.
There certainly were such feelings evinced by parents sometimes. I’ve mentioned above that Ms Joan Thomas of the Rodney school was still promoting the cane at her school as a selling point into the 1990s (Rodney School was a private mixed day and boarding school and SCP only became illegal in such schools in 1999). There seems no doubt that for some of the military families who used the school the strict discipline and the cane was indeed a positive feature. In the case of Bacons school I found an extensive retrospective discussion of the parental view of caning there, alas now gone from the web. Here’s what I wrote in another thread:
…….. in at least one place on the web parents (or at least persons claiming to be parents) both said that they had sent their children to Bacons because Bacons used the cane and also that though they approved of CP they hadn’t been able to get their children into Bacons because it was oversubscribed. Bacons CP policy wasn’t some sort of guilty secret kept hidden from the world. It was a marketing point, as it frequently was with schools that used CP and had the right parental profile. Look at the Rodney school in my locality!
These parental accounts were historical rather than contemporary with the CP regime at Bacons. The web wasn’t around while Bacons was using CP. They arose because a then London local radio station (if I recall correctly – though it might have been a local paper) had done some sort of retrospective on Bacons, which attracted much traffic in its associated web Forum. This stuff was already a few years old when I found it, and it disappeared shortly thereafter, the radio station (or paper) having already folded. I think I linked this while it was still extant in one of the various threads here which have touched on Bacons.
I’ll perhaps try to link at least some of the many past threads on Bacons in another post as to my astonishment there seems to be just a teeny, teeny possibility that an otherwise well-informed and excellent contributor has never heard of the school. No names, no pack drill!
marathon8 likes this post
-
KKxyz3,59053
| Posts | 64 |
-
marathon829123
It’s Paul:
Thank you for responding.
No, Janet Dines wasn’t connected with Bacons. Janet Dines was headmistress at Northwich Girels’ Grammar School. In 1976 she and her school made the newspapers after dishing out a caning to a girl. Janet Dines caned rebellious pupil, Lynne Simmonds, aged fourteen. The girl was given three strokes on the bottom, skirt raised, which apparently left long weals on her buttocks of up to fourteen inches long.. The family took out a private prosecution, but the case was thrown out when Lynne broke down in court, after cross-examination, when Miss Dines’ barrister questioned Lynne about her appalling disciplinary record
I hope that answers your question.
Best wishes,
Paul.
Thank you for doing that! Appreciated
Cheers,
Paul
-
2015holyfamily3607
-
marathon829123
Thank you for responding to my collection of Bacons cuttings. It’s pleasing that you enjoyed them.
Firstly, to the embellished the Sue Olds account. You asked from where it came. It came from a website called ‘Mystique,’ and indeed, it was American. It was one of the first spanking sites I found. Then it disappeared. The link at the bottom of the embellished account reads as follows:
http://members.tripod.com/Mystique_/acc … acons1.htm
I printed it on 24th February 2000.
Yes, I do recall the member who posted quite a bit on Bacons and claimed he’d contacted ex-pupils (female) from the school. The responses hardly tie in with what we have since gleaned. I do recall the rift, yes.
One other way the contributor may have got his information/interviews with was from was the few so -called ‘girls’ who claimed ‘bottom canings’ from Mr Ing at Bacons. We had one trying to do that at FB and the claim quickly jumped upon by genuine ex-pupils saying they had never heard of such things happening. What nonsense regarding the ‘secret committees ‘ investigating Bacons, interviewing ex-pupils, getting into the school and searching it. That is utter twaddle. Look, through several areas of my work, even getting into a school thirty years ago and beyond would have been impossible. There is no way any school would allow folk in to ‘search a school.’
Yes, CP/spanking commercial sites, in the main, American, have embellished many an English school incident that had made the Press here. Yes, indeed The Rodney School and Joan Thomas was one such embellishment! You say you’re too mean to pay commercial CP sites. I have done it a few times. I joined ‘Firm Hand’ many years ago. They had a crack at telling porkies about the Amber Page case. Thy even made a video of it.
Perhaps the embellishment of the Rodney School came from a spanking Yahoo Groups free site. It’s very interesting that a young Lurker almost became a pupil at Rodney School.
Your view of discipline during Mr Ing’s headmastership at Bacons, particularly towards his final years, is almost similar to that of mine. Due to his illness and failing health, it’s evident that he became difficult and irrational. Hence, during that time, caning rates soared. Perhaps, just perhaps, a small part of me believes that a very small number of girls got whacked on the bottom. But I don’t believe Mr Ing carried such canings out. It seems caning boys on the bottom was in the minority. If bottom caning/or slippering happened I’d say it was from Miss Davenport, Miss Milsom or Miss Paige, or other senior female staff, but certainly not by Mr Ing. In addition, you made a very good point, A.L. That is that Bacons was not some remote, private school out in the sticks. But a state C of E school in the heart of London’s Docklands, under constant scrutiny. For him to have whacked girls on the bottom in such a school would have drawn a lot of attention, much more than it got. Wouldn’t some of the young, progressive, leftie, trendy-wendy teachers, who contributed partly to his eventual downfall, have picked up on such a thing? I think they would have.
I shall go back to it again: far too many girls on both FB and FR stated they got it on the hand. In the last few days, Oliver Sydney has added some more little gems for us to had weight to my thoughts.
For years, before the Internet, I’d sit and dream, if you like, of girls being caned on the bottom at Bacons, as I sifted through my cuttings and clippings. ….
Alas, the truth, I think, finally emerged……..or did it????? I Still wonder where ‘Private Eye’ got their information from (??????).
And, indeed, it was an excellent point of view by Mr Scott in my cutting. If you look closer at FB and indeed when we had FR, a lot of ex-pupils respected and liked Mr Ing, and quite a few parents supported him during his final years.
Thank you, A.L
Paul.
-
Another_Lurker10K256
Excellent! Thank you for the information regarding the source of the fake caning report re Bacons. Your high degree of organisation and record keeping does you great credit. Not only the date downloaded but also the URL concerned!
I remember the ‘Mystique’ site very well. Everything on it was phoney. One of the stories on it about 2 Australian girls judicially caned in Kuala Lumpur was linked here as fact by a new contributor. In fact I think it might have happened twice.
I don’t recall the Bacon’s story on ‘Mystique’ but once I realised everything on the site was fake I stopped visiting. From the date you give for your download I’d say it is quite likely that ‘Mystique’ was where our former contributor who invented the Davenport Denudational Deviation got the idea, though I admit to coining the name.
Although there was fakery and account embellishment by commercial CP sites they were also victims of this. You mention Firmhand Spanking, of which you were once a member. You may recall the picture below, which at one time featured on almost every US anti-SCP site to illustrate the evils of school paddling. Sadly these sites frequently rely on fake paddling pictures as otherwise they have difficulty in justifying the ludicrous claims they make regarding paddle dimensions and paddling practices.
If you know anything about faking pictures that picture just screams ‘fake’. Everything about the disposition of the figures with regard to the background is wrong. The picture cropped up here a few times and I said it was a fake each time. I’m happy to say that it mysteriously disappeared from most of the anti-SCP sites, though naturally I wouldn’t claim credit for that 
Happily I was eventually able to prove the truth of my allegation when I chanced on the source of the cut and pasted figures here. A picture clearly identified as a Firmhand Spanking commercial product.
The juvenile Another_Lurker almost becoming a boarder at Rodney School? A kind offer by a then family friend acquainted with Ms Thomas to partly fund the venture. Declined as too costly by my parents who anyway were expecting good things from the 11+. Just as well, as the latter came to pass and I’m darn sure I got a better education at NHS than Rodney School would have provided. Alas though I missed out on the chance of being topped and tailed by Ms Thomas with only those ‘rice paper thin’ PE shorts for protection – allegedly!
I think we are very, very close on the actuality of canings at Bacons. I do though think that the occasional girl might have had to bend over, possibly to be caned on the bottom by a female teacher, possibly over Mr Ing’s desk to be caned on the bottom by him. There would have been nothing particularly unusual in a headmaster so caning in more serious cases in that era.
As for Private Eye, they would only have needed knowledge of two cases of girls being caned on the bottom by somebody at Bacons to be quite safe in publishing their article. They simply said:
Even in establishments where girls are still caned, the punishment is usually meted out on the hands. But at Bacon’s girls have been caned on the bottom.
Note that ‘usually’. Not always, just usually. Note that ‘girls’. Just 2 needed for the plural. And finally note that in the whole article they don’t actually say that Mr Ing caned any girls at all in terms which could be made to stick in court. It’s cleverly written to appear sensational while actually being completely innocuous!
-
hcj4422823
I wonder who had the task of measuring the weals?.. Fourteen inch weals with a thirty inch cane seems a bit unlikely to me. Rather than bacon and eggs, I think pork pie was on the menu that day!
-
Another_Lurker10K256
There are three newspaper reports and a newspaper editorial on the 1976 Janet Dines caning of Lynne Simmonds to be found here on the excellent Corpun.Com site.
There seems absolutely no doubt that Lynne Simmonds deserved a caning, and in the day 6 of the best might well have been deemed more appropriate than 3 strokes, given the catalogue of accrued offences.
Only the last of the three reports, from the the local paper, the ‘Northwich Guardian’ of 18 November 1976, mentions the length of the wheals and says:
A letter from Dr Kiaran O’Sullivan, of Barnton, said Lynne had three red weals across her buttocks, two of them stretching round the hip region 14 inches long, and two marks on her knuckles.
This report is also the only one to specifically mention the cane used, of which it says:
…. when the police interviewed Miss Dines the day afterwards, she produced an ordinary three foot cane, which she said was an “official” cane she had brought from her previous school.
If indeed the cane was 36 inches long, rather than the 30 inches perhaps more typical of school canes for use on junior boys and on girls, and it wrapped at the hip, is it perhaps possible that a stroke might produce a wheal whose total length was 14 inches, which it was alleged is what happened on two of the three strokes?
Ms Dines certainly must have laid it on! The same report says that
Woman Police Sergeant Valerie Lowry was due to give evidence that she could still see the marks 10 days later.
and Lynne Simmonds is said in another report to have claimed that she was in such discomfort that she was unable to sleep properly for 3 weeks as a result of the caning.
-
marathon829123
Thank you for your kind reply, but sadly, you are quite wrong. I’m sorry you think this is untruth.
This is not porky pie.
The police measured the weals on Lynne Simmonds’ bottom. It was carried out by WPS Valarie Lowry, who was due to give evidence that she could still see marks on Lynne’s bottom ten days later. This is a very well known incident and the facts of it were/ and are made very clear. I’m sure its well documemted on here somewhere.
I have newspaper cuttings from two different national newspapers and one local newspaper which is The Northwich Guardian, dated 18th November 1976. Perhaps as soon as I have time I shall put it on an attachment here, but just to quote. it says:
‘ “Miss Dines told her she would have to cane her, told her to pull her dress up, bend over and lean against the bookcase, and gave her three strokes on her backside.’, said Mr Hughes, the barrister for Lynne Simmonds. Police had taken photographs the next day and copies were handed to the bench. Woman police sergeant, Valarie Lowry was due to give evidence that she could see the marks ten days later. A letter from Dr Kiaran O’ Sullivan of Banton said Lynne had three red weals across her buttocks, two of them stretching around the hip region fourteen inches long, and two marks on her knuckles.” ‘
( Lynne had marks on her knuckles while holding her dress up as Miss Dines had told her to. It seems a very clumsily administered caning to me, to be fair).
In this report I see no suggestion that the cane was thirty inches long or otherwise, but certainly a cane of ‘school type’ would be able to leave welts of fourteen inches long.
NOPE! This one is not a porky pie with or without eggs.
Thank you, Hcj44
Paul
Correct, A.l.
THe report DOES mention the three foot cane. I missed that
Thanks
Paul
-
hcj4422823
marathon8 likes this post
-
Another_Lurker10K256
In the past there was discussion and speculation here concerning a cane said to be used by Ms Joan Thomas of the Rodney School, Nottinghamshire, who almost certainly caned a great many more girls than Ms Janet Dines. The cane in question featured in a photograph which appeared in various newspapers and I believe in a somewhat dubious book which dealt with the SCP of girls.
The photograph appears in this contribution by a former contributor and my comments on the dimensions of the cane are here, subsequently endorsed (at least, I think it was an endorsement 
That cane was I think about 36 inches long and ¼ inch in diameter, and these were in fact the dimensions given in some of the newspaper articles about one of the canings of girls at the Rodney school. It would probably have been pretty difficult to use accurately when caning bottoms but amazingly it was also claimed to be used on hands as Ms Thomas reputedly favoured topping and tailing.
Sorry, I hadn’t seen your above response when I posted my comments on the preference of some lady teachers for very long canes.
I would stress that when I made the earlier post about the Lynne Simmonds caning my intention was most certainly not to correct you! Rather it was to point out that unusually the cane involved may have been 36 inches long rather than 30 inches and to seek your opinion as to whether in that event wheals 14 inches long might have occurred.
And now a general follow-up to my above post on the Rodney School cane:
I said in one of the posts I linked:
A little long perhaps, though of course it may not have been held at the very end. I’ve obviously never seen a female teacher caning a girl but in fetish films purporting to represent this the ‘teachers’ often seem to use long thin canes which they grip well down from the handle. I am certainly not going to claim that these films must be based on real life, but this concept of the type of cane and how to hold it must derive from something.
Amazingly as I searched for something for my next intended post just such a picture flashed across my screen. As it illustrates extremely well the point I was trying to make I am going to link it. There appear to be a vast number of copies of it on the web so it may be one of the pictures I was thinking of back in 2009 anyway. First a warning though:
Here is the picture. Note how at least a third of the cane’s length is not being deployed. Surely if this was a real punishment it would be more sensible to use a shorter cane. I wonder if Ms Dines and Ms Thomas might have used this technique to manage the length if indeed they did favour very long canes. Possibly not the former though in view of the wrapping at the hip and those long wheals.
-
CathyG22730
-
KKxyz3,59053
Perhaps the doctor was reporting the combined lengths of the weals.
-
Another_Lurker10K256
As I have no personal experience of being caned or wielding a cane it is perhaps presumptuous of me to dispute your above comment regarding cane weals. Nonetheless I shall insist on doing so!
The statement by doctor in the Janet Dines caning prosecution was that the recipient, schoolgirl Lynne Simmons had:
had three red weals across her buttocks, two of them stretching round the hip region 14 inches long
Personally I would say that it is quite clear that the doctor was referring to the length of individual weals, not to a combined length of any sort. Further it would be logical to assume that by the length of a weal the doctor would mean the length measured across both buttocks and (as the two strokes involved clearly wrapped) round onto the hip. Consider:
- Lynne was ordered to lean against a bookcase. This would almost certainly indicate a semi-standing posture since for practical reasons bookcases are generally not low enough to require significant bending. A semi-standing posture would make it much easier for the cane to fall diagonally across the buttocks, particularly if Ms Dines was taller than Lynne.
- Ms Dines was probably not an experienced caner. In stressing the seriousness of the affair she said to Lynne that she has hardly had to cane anyone in the 10 years that she had been headmistress of the school. Inexperience would predispose her to inaccuracy (possible diagonal strokes and wrapping).
- The cane used was produced to the police and was said to be 36 inches long. A long cane used less than expertly might well wrap badly, extending the length of the weals significantly.
Taking the above factors into account I do not think it unlikely that the weals would be 14 inches long. In fact they may well have resembled those in the following picture, which I think would certainly be at least that length.
Warning!! The picture is on a fetish site and taken from an eastern European fetish film purporting to show schoolgirls being caned on the bare. Please do not click on the link if it is likely to offend you.
Here is the picture: Link to image.
-
KKxyz3,59053
You have thought about the caning females much more than I have.
As I am reluctant to carry out any practical studies on females I have limited myself to measuring lengths on my own body with a tape, and 3D scale drawings. The results suggest that even an unusually flexible cane applied to an much softer than male target would struggle to make forceful welting-contact 14 inches long unless the target was unusually large. It would need to be larger than that shown in the photo you provided the link for.
I have positioned a 10-cm grid in front of the cane-accessible region in the diagram. Only the very backs of the thighs are shown which is why they appear narrow.
-
2015holyfamilypenguin4,32069
She is a lifetime member of the Royal Academy of Dance. Taken from an impeccable source.
“A student who had been caned, and saw Miss Thomas’s caning style, described her technique. The girl had to bend over Miss Thomas’s desk, and Miss Thomas would walk back several steps. Then raising the cane, she would trot forward, and at the last second she would leap high into the air, frumpy long tweed skirt and all, and upon returning to earth would bring the cane down with a frightful THWACK! The girl said Miss Thomas probably leaped three feet in the air, remarkable for an elderly schoolmarm.”