I have been on this site for about a month and perusing the many articles, as well as some from other sites, I am constantly reminded how much the subject of corporal punishment in embedded in the mind of humans. Some of the accounts I have read are like what I experienced some 60+ years ago, some are shocking and eye opening, some are either exaggerations or embellishments, and some are of course fantasy. What I will explain here is very real and my experiences were more common than many would think. Even today we hear accounts of parents, school officials and the like going beyond the norm and often doing things outright illegal.
Daddy was born in near Robertson, Alabama on March 9, 1901. Mom was born on the same date, 10 years later not far from Semmes, Alabama. My dad was one of nine, five boys and four girls. He would have been one of 10 but one dies in childbirth which was something much more common then than today. Mom was one of six, three each.
Daddy joined the army in late 1917 at the age of 16 (told them he was 18) in hopes of getting out of the poverty he had been raised in, but by the time he got through the basics, World War I ended in November 1918. He remained in the army for another 3 years and learned how to be a good mechanic on the early cars, planes and tanks of the period. After his discharge around 1926, he met my 15-year-old mom when he went to a farmer’s house near Milton Florida to fix his Fordson tractor. They courted for about four years and they were married in 1930. Daddy decided he liked this remote area of the Florida panhandle and with two of his brothers and two cousins, they bought about 300 acres of farmland.
When I say ‘remote’, I mean remote. The only paved road of any quality was Florida State Road # 1 which was made of red bricks in places and concrete in others. This road eventually was upgraded and became U.S. Highway 90. All the other roads were of the red dirt variety that were dusty in the summer when vehicles went by and muddy when it rained. Even today
Almost as soon as they were married they began having kids. I was the 7th of 8 children, 5 sisters (one set of twins) and two brothers. I was born on July 4, 1939. Here is a list of my siblings and the year they were born. My parents had great rhythm as all of us were born between June and September.
1932 – Harold
1934 – Shirley
1935 – Lucy and Lily
1936 – Henry
1937 – Grace
1939 – Yours truly
1940 – Anna
On this huge parcel of land were built 5 homes, one for each of the ones who put the money together to acquire it. In the late 30’s, daddy began working as a contractor to build many things on the new Elgin Air Force Base that was not to far to the east of us. He made some good money and added rooms to hour house as well as his brothers and two cousins. The homes were about 50 feet from each other and positioned in an almost half circle if you could see them from above. Besides the 8 of us kids, there were 23 more between the four other households. That’s 31 kids on a farm that was not unlike a compound.
Daddy – 8 {six girls, two boys}
Uncle Marlin – 7 {two girls, two boys from first wife and two girls and one boy from second wife}
Uncle Sam – 5 {three girls, two boys}
Cousin Richard – 5 {two girls, three boys}
Cousin Woody – 6 {two girls, four boys}
In 1932, Daddy’s two brothers and one of the cousins went to work as teachers and a coach at the local school. Around 1938 my uncle Marlin was promoted to headmaster and my second cousin Richard was a math teacher and school “pastor” and cousin Woody was a coach for what few physical activities they had there. Some may wonder why Marlin carried the title of ‘headmaster’ and not a principal since the former is not used much here in the U.S. It was because he had gone to London for a couple of years after the war and liked that moniker better than principal. Even though the school received public funds, it operated more as a religious one.
We were called Baptists, but it was more of a cultic variety than the one most are familiar with here in the Southern U.S. Corporal punishment was used often at home and at school. Uncle Milton even used a cane on occasion, something else he discovered while in ‘the old country.’
The second World War ended in 1945 and that September I began my first year in elementary. On the second day my cousin Joe, who was also the same age as me, was called up to the desk of Mrs. Bailey and given about 10 quick swats with a small paddle. She whacked him with another force to make him fall onto her lap. Hardy two days went by without someone getting it. Also, I can confidently say that 100% of the kids at our school received it several times as on occasion an entire class was spanked. I experienced this in 1st, 3rd, 4th and 6th grades.
I have often read accounts of kids having to receive spankings on their bare bottoms at school, but that virtually never happened at my school. The exception was boys sometimes getting it just before or after showering after P.E. class or sports. Girls dresses were lifted, and boys got in on the underwear many times, but not bare.
At home spankings were not uncommon. Uncle Marlin, who live in the house to our left (east) seemed to spank one of his six kids almost every day. Daddy spanked us maybe a couple of times a month, but when you got it, you got a very red bottom.
Uncle Marlin, aka headmaster, doled out CP at school on a regular basis. He insisted on doing most of the spankings, so he could be sure it was being given out in a ‘fair’ amount and manner. Not witnesses were used then, and no records kept. Nobody complained except the kids of course. In this rural, fundamental, Christian environment, you were raised in an atmosphere where you were pre-disposed or favorly disposed to the use of corporal punishment. You could get it even at church. On weekend gatherings at the farm, dad, his bothers, cousins and friends often compared recent ‘seat-warming’ experiences and sometimes we kids did the same. The adults even joked that they preferred spanking certain ones over others. I remember Uncle Marlin saying once that if the kid, especially a girl, was too skinny or fat, he would make them do janitorial work in lieu of a spanking.
Again, remember this was a very rural, religious part of the south. And like most fundamentalist type of religions, there was the occasional sexual shenanigans going on. When my Uncle Milton’s first wife, Aunt Mary, died in 1936, he ended up marrying my aunt Hazel in 1938 who was only 15. He was 43, 28 years her senior. There will be more to come. Please ask any questions you may have.
Oliver_Sydney, Another_Lurker like this post
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bripuk39929
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CathyG22730
bripuk wrote:It’s great to get an insight into the culture of the southern states of the USA in the pre-war period . Sore bottoms seemed to be commonplace but unlike today there seemed to be no ideological hangups with CP.
That is true that there were no ideological hang-ups with CP in those days. It was something God said need to be done to correct wayward behavior and it was used often.
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Another_Lurker10K256
What a superb contribution, thank you very much indeed. Please keep up the good work.
I am around three years younger than you it would appear, and I recall conditions and lifestyles here in the UK which younger people find difficult to believe. However your account is a glimpse into what is almost an alien culture. It is of course a culture which has shaped the attitudes of many people in the Southern States of the USA today.
Interesting that your Uncle Marlin chose the title ‘Headmaster’ as a result of his visit to the UK. One does occasionally encounter a Headmaster in school incidents reported from the US, but it certainly seems unusual. You noted in your contributions #14 and #18 on this page that while in the UK he also encountered the concept of a cane as a punitive implement and subsequently sometimes used one as Headmaster of your school. This would perhaps have been of more import to you and his other students than what the plate on his door said!
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CathyG22730
Like some others accounts of kids raised in cult-like environments I have read over the past few years, you were trained or conditioned to not make a big scene when receiving it. It was hard to do at times, but you knew that if you overdid it, you would receive harder, additional whacks.
Uncle ‘Headmaster’ Marlin was probably the one I believe enjoyed giving out and he loved the power that came with his position. In his office were three pieces of furniture that had no other use other than administering spankings. One was a 5 ft long (1.5 meter), 2 ft wide (0.61 meters) brown wooden table that had 3 sets of thick pegs on one end. When you were told to bend over the table, you grabbed the first set of pegs you could and you could not let go until your spanking was done. The other two were shaped like a saw horse except the top was covered in saddle leather affixed with leather tacks. One was slightly smaller then the other depending on the size of the child. More often than not, the table was the preferred item.
Depending on uncles mood, you could get your whacks quickly or if he felt like it he would take his time. I hated when he went the latter route. He was such a control freak and perverted.
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KKxyz3,59053
Interesting stuff, thanks. The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there (Hartley). And perhaps, “The South” is a different country. They do things differently there. (KK, 2018)
I would be interest to hear your take on how and why the paddle came to be the preferred implement in US and especially Southern schools. A direct connection to slavery seems unlikely given that slavery ended long before compulsory secular education began.
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CathyG22730
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2015holyfamily3607
But Tidwell remembers events differently. He said in his deposition that the boys at the school who misbehaved were “spanked,” but never beaten. He said spankings were delivered with a half-inch thick leather strap, similar to what you would find in an old barber shop.
Tidwell said in his deposition that he never raised his hand above his head when he spanked a boy, and he never used full force.
“If I gave him maybe six, it would be a minor offense; sometimes eight. And there’s a possibility that maybe 10, if it was serious enough,” he said.
He denied beating boys, and said he never saw anyone else beat them.
“Never was a boy beat in my presence,” he said. “The years that I worked at that school I tried to be as fair as I could to those kids and I would want anybody working with mine in a school like that to be the same,” he said.
Middleton and dozens of other men have come forward over the past six months with tales of physical and sexual abuse that they allege took place at the Florida School for Boys in the 1950s and 1960s.
https://magazine.atavist.com/the-bones-of-marianna
Reenactment.
Painful reminisces.
More are paddled than ISS and more are paddled than OSS in Holmes County Florida.
https://www.schooljustice.org/circuit-i … es-county/
High school boys are taught the old way. Behave or bend over.
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CathyG22730
