Lorene, smarting from the whipping, which was thorough and applied with the maternal bare hand as well as with a coat hanger, ran to Miss Inez MacKinnon, her Sunday School teacher, and at that lady’s advice, had her mother arrested. So great was the interest in the case that Municipal Judge Fred R. White transferred his court to the Kansas City Auditorium. But even that great hall did not begin to hold the mothers, fathers, teachers, welfare workers and boys and girls of spankable ages who crowded the streets outside.

The judges seemed in doubt as the case went on. Lorene had evidently been soundly whipped and it was not the first time. But Mrs. Woodside, proprietress, of the St. Charles Hotel, was a hard-working mother who gave her full measure of everything including a £600 wardrobe, a motor car of her own and plenty of spending money, and when it came to spankings, she was equally open-handed. In fact the mother had to borrow one of her daughter’s expensive gowns to appear properly dressed in, court.

Lorene wept at the trial and wanted to call it off, but her stern-faced advisers urged her on and the judge fined the mother £20. But Mrs. Woodside refused to pay, nor would she let her husband, Lorene’s stepfather, do so nor raise bail, pending the appeal. Mrs. Woodside said:

“No, I did what was right. Everyone complains that boys and girls are going to the dogs because ‘dancing mothers’ neglect their training. I am not a dancing mother, I am a hard-working one and every cent I make I spend on that girl who has nothing to do but enjoy herself.

“But when Lorene goes out in her car she is going to BEHAVE AS I TELL HER and come home when I say so. And if she defies me I am going to whip her hard enough to hurt. If it doesn’t hurt it doesn’t do any good.

“She will come back under those terms or she will not come back. I am not going to be responsible for her behaviour if a court is going to back up a lot of meddling organisations who have encouraged the girl to defy me and who would be the first to blame me if she goes wrong.— And-I am going to gaol in protest against an unjust decision.”

So Mrs. Woodside went to gaol to serve four days for every pound of her fine and the wellfare workers, the mother-teaching associations, etc., etc, told Lorene that she had done a fine and courageous thing. So did her high school friends. They called her “the woman of the hour — the great emancipatress.”

Bodily chastisement is probably as old as the human race. In fact, until very recent years it was recognised as a handy and suitable method of curing delinquencies outside of the family circle. The schoolmaster of former times ALWAYS HAD HIS WHIP rod or bundle of switches in conspicuous position on his desk and within easy reach.

Servants, farm laborers and apprentices were flogged for idleness, disobedience or blunder, but even in past centuries it was recognised that personal chastisement must be kept with reasonable limils. And so it was that Elizabeth Brownrigg, according to ‘The Newgate Calendar,’ was executed in England in 1767 for flogging to death Mary Clifford, her servant.

As soon as Mrs. Woodside was locked up trouble began, both in and outside of the gaol. The boys and girls of Kansas City held meetings, made “patriotic speeches,” passed resolutions and served notice on their astonished parents that the day of “mediaeval corporal punishment was past. Parental tyranny WAS OVERTHROWN — hereafter all children were free and equal with their parents.

Before daring to raise a hairbrush to their progeny, let fathers and mothers consider Mrs. Woodside, serving 100 days in gaol while her daughter enjoyed the car and £600 wardrobe her prisoner-mother had given the girl. Before surrendering entirely to this ‘bill of rights,’ fathers and mothers swamped Judge Henry Meade, of the Wyandotte Juvenile Court, with letters, wanting to know what to do about a son or daughter who stayed out all night and then told them to “go roll a hoop” or to “sit on a tack.”

The judge could not answer them all, but he explained, through the newspapers, that the law did not mean to abolish spankings entirely, and that a parent might still SPANK A CHILD without going to prison for it, if the following rules were observed:

“Procure a paddle about sixteen inches long and rather thin.

“Adopt a proper frame of mind, a desire to correct the child rather than to satisfy your own anger.

“Strike only four or five blows on the proper part of the child’s anatomy.

“Make it plain what the spanking is for.”

The children hailed this learned opinion with shouts of joy. Under such humane conditions they would not mind being spanked every time they came home. Their interpretation raised so many questions that it seemed evident that parents would need to call in a lawyer and witnesses at spanking ceremonies in order to be on the safe side.

“What is a paddle?” was asked. The dictionary says. “An oar; specifically a sort of short oar having a blade or two (one at each end).” That would have been all right, but the judicial ukase stated that it must be about 16 inches long. Nobody makes as short an oar as that. And what did “rather thin” mean? The parents thought that a paddle shaped spanking implement, only sixteen inches long would have to be from three-quarters of an inch to an inch thick to be at all effective.

The youths and maidens of Kansas City held that this would be rather thick. They CAUTIONED THEIR PARENTS that they would not be a party to breaking the law by allowing themselves to be spanked with anything thicker than a shingle. There would be legal proceedings if they were assaulted with a heavier paddle.

“Mother, how will I be sure that you are in what the judge calls a proper frame of mind for spanking me?” asked a flapper. “I think you should call in a jury of my peers, twelve of my disinterested boy and girl friends, to determine your mental attitude. And should it be a prayerful frame of mind or an affectionate one? Will you begin the ritual by getting down on your knees or by kissing me? I think the least you could do would be to shake hands with me, like the prizefighters, before the first blow.”

What is the “proper part of the child’s anatomy” on which the four or five blows must be planted, unless the parent wishes to be penalised for foul blows? “That is the one thing that makes sense,” said an exasperated parent. “Through the ages there has been one classical area to which spankings have been applied.”

“That idea is all out of date,” replied his high-school son. “They may have TURNED YOU UP and spanked you, but in schools today they hit you on the palm of the hand, and not many teachers dare do even that. Read Freud and you’ll see that such a humiliating posture might cause an inferiority complex. Four or five times on the palm with a shingle is all the judge allows. You wouldn’t want to disgrace us by going to jail.”

The fourth and last clause, even the children considered foolish, and they voted to waive it. No child complains that its parents don’t tell it what it is they disapprove in its behavior, but rather that they tell it too often. The flappers and jelly-beans thought the judge would have done better to have limited parents to. just one, criticism and told them to make it brief.

Anyhow, this bears out the hair-brush and the maternal slipper which parents of past generations used for educational purposes without suspecting they were cruel and wicked. Of course, the willow switch, the stove poker, the dog whip and even so light and flimsy a thing as a coat hanger ARE FORBIDDEN by this judicial decision and opinion which overrules the biblical injunction: “He that spareth his rod hateth his son.”

One Kansas City father announced that his own hand would do for a paddle and that if five applications did not bring results he would try five more and keep on until he made an impression. His son served notice on him that while his hand might look like a paddle it was not a proper one because it was not ‘rather thin.’ If he used that or if he used any other more than five times he would call a policeman.

Children in these athletic days are often bigger and stronger than their parents. In that case would the judge permit calling in assistance, such as the cook or chauffeur, or, if there were not servants, was it the policeman’s duty to act as assistant spanker? The children magnanimously waived this question also. As long as the spankings were done ACCORDING TO THE JUDGE’S PRESCRIPTION . they would not resist or object. Why should they? It was not as if the thing were a serious matter like having to wash the dishes or going on an errand.

Mrs. Woodside was determined to serve out her 100 days, but she proved such an embarrassing prisoner that they put her out after only three days. Instead of sending out for heroin or cocaine, as convicts are supposed to, she called for soap and a scrubbing brush, sent home for her working smock and scrubbed her cell till it was clean. Then she insisted on tackling the corridor and neighboring cells, “so they won’t smell so.” Mrs. Woodside could not see why a jail shouldn’t be just as clean as a hotel, and she got the other “guests” to complaining about the filth. The papers PRINTED HER COMMENTS and the matter became most annoying.

“We are not trying to compete with first-class hotels down here. What does she think this place is?” protested the jailors, and finally somebody induced Mrs. Woodside’s husband, against her orders, to put up a £50 bond, pending the appeal of the case, and then, against her wishes, she was put out of that jail.

Just seven days later the great revolution that was to free children from parental bondage received a staggering blow. Its patron saint and heroine, Lorene, went over to the enemy. She left Miss MacKinnon, with whom she had been living, and all her other advisers flat and without warning appeared at her mother’s door. As the mother and daughter looked at each, other tears came to both.

“Mother,” the girl sobbed, “I want to come back to you.”

“Now you realise your mistake you are back,” said Mrs. Woodside with a flash of sternness which quickly melted as she folded the non-spankable daughter in her arms. Lorene, however, was no longer that way. She came back on her mother’s terms and made a public statement that she was wrong and wanted everyone to know it. She said:

“The commandment, ‘Honor thy, father and thy mother’ has been forcibly brought home to me in my week of suffering. Advice and counsel in the face of my love for her counted for nothing. It was all a TERRIBLE MISTAKE. My mother is dearer to me than all the world. I have been guilty of a grave sin.

“When I swore out that warrant against my mother I did not know what I was doing. I was given to understand that I was obtaining some sort of a peace bond for protection of persons who thought they were befriending me.

“My return is not conditional. I return as I left, willing to take punishment whenever my mother thinks it necessary. I have been spanked again, as mother promised she would when ever I returned. I asked mother to; I felt to deserved it.” The mother was, delighted to get her daughter back.

“Maybe this will be a lesson to other mothers’ daughters,” she said, happily, and then, as an angry after-thought, added: “And also to certain meddlers who have nothing better to do with their time and money than turn A daughter against her mother.”