“Harlow Star” “Paul Wilson”

<div style=”width:100%;background-image:url(“/realm/A_L_123/A_L_trg.gif”);”>Hello PJ,

You said above:

Hmm, that may be New York USA, but this is the Forum Theatre, Billingham, Tyneside, UK, from the review summary on Ms Pollard’s own website. (Scroll down to just under the third logo in the left hand column.) And in the UK in the bad old days when beating little orphan girls we went in for the more refined cruelty of the cane rather than the brutality of the paddle. Well anyway we did after we stopped birching them because of considerations of modesty!

Seriously, this is an instance where I was in too much of a hurry. I looked at the Google summary rather than the actual web page, and the Google summary said:

In the event the page concerned (linked above) turns out to be a collection of reviews from several theatres, and the cane-wielding is only mentioned once. However in my defence I shall point out that there is no mention of paddles or paddle wielding at all.

Least any of the numerous pedants here seize on the point I had better also note that in the later years of school CP parts of Tyneside opted to use a leather strap rather than a cane. I have no idea if orphanages came under the auspices of LEA’s (Local Education Authorities) and would have been affected by this. </div>

“Harlow Star” “Paul Wilson”

Well, “paddle” is written into the script and is the word the girls use more than once. And it generally hangs from Miss Hannigan’s waist, which a cane would not easily do.

Not that this all matters very much.

“Harlow Star” “Paul Wilson”

<div style=”width:100%;background-image:url(“/realm/A_L_123/A_L_trg.gif”);”>Hello PJ,

What on earth do you mean “Not that this all matters very much.“! To those of us who frequent this estimable Forum it is the very core of our entire existence!! </div>

“Harlow Star” “Paul Wilson”

“Daily Mail” “John Smith” wife spank

“Harlow Star” “Paul Wilson”

Businessman fined putting wife over his knee and spanking her

John Smith put wife Kim over his knee and smacked her bottom, court told.

The 60-year-old carried out the smack after a row over financial matters. Magistrates told he held her face down on sofa smacking her several times. He later told police that she had ‘deserved’ the spanking, claiming she had shown him ‘disrespect’

“Harlow Star” “Paul Wilson”

“Brighton Argus” “Cliff Richard” Maltby

Good comments too!

“Harlow Star” “Paul Wilson”

“Daily Mail” “Charles Napier” Rapier

“Harlow Star” “Paul Wilson”

I wished I’d been sent to state school, says Earl Spencer

The younger brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, says his Northampton preparatory school was a ‘tough’ place to live
….
Boys considered to be “stupid or lazy” were beaten “really unpleasantly” with a cane on bare buttocks on a weekly basis, he said, but omitted to disclose whether he was subjected to such punishment himself.

See reports in the Telegraph or the Daily Mail .

“Harlow Star” “Paul Wilson”

In a further article, by food writer William Sitwell, it was written:

In his memoir of childhood, In The Blood, the former poet laureate Andrew Motion writes about Maidwell Hall as a prison run by sadistic sociopaths. Motion said the then headmaster Oliver Wyatt ‘enjoyed beating’ the boys. Indeed, there didn’t seem to be a crime that didn’t merit a caning on the buttocks. Read full article below:

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