When I first arrived in Brighton around 15 years ago, the Argus was covering a court case surrounding the boarding house housemaster (and his wife) at a girl’s prep school in Sussex. My local geography was lacking then, so I can’t give particulars. But the gist of the complaints was that the housemasters would spank the girls with a home made paddle (created from formica covered plywood), giving up to eight hard strokes. The girls would have to “bend forward and raise their dresses at the back.” Some of the witnesses claimed that he would sometimes pull their knickers down. When questioned about this allegation, he replied that the girls did not always wear regulation knickers, and so when they bent over… their knickers came down on their own. The prosecutor did wonder how females were able to bend over at the supermarket, the library and at work without such an event occuring!
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