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http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/ … d-1/seq-4/The Climax, December 24, 1890, Supplement, page 4, col. 6.
OLD STYLE SPANKINGThe Head of Reformatory Introduces an Effectual Remedy for Insubordination
As is well known, Major Robert W McClaughry recently warden of the State penitentiary at Joliet is now the successful warden of the State reformatory at Hunting in Pa. He has conceived and adopted a new system of punishment for such institutions which will doubtless provoke extended discussion at the next worlds prison congress. One day, says the Chicago Blade, the sharp-eyed Major detecting one of the inmates in violation of the rules of the shoe shop picked up a leather sole at hand and treated the astonished offender to a thorough and impressive spanking. The effect was so wholesome and touching that it came to the Major as an inspiration that he had stumbled across the ideal nineteenth century system of punishment.
He adopted the process at once and is charmed with its success. For fear that exaggerated reports of the punishment might reach the public and accusations of undue severity follow, he concluded to confer with the highest authorities in relation to it. He interviewed the Governor of Pennsylvania and explained the plan and its workings to him. The Governor was convulsed with laughter and said “Major, I heartily congratulate you on having struck the keynote and I assure you that the good people of this commonwealth will sustain you in this war measure. I promise you the backing of the National Guard if necessary in your poetical plan of spanking reformation into your rebellious subjects.” He then called upon the chairman of tho State Board of Charities, an old time Quaker, and explained the situation to him. The Quaker smiled broadly and said “Major thee deserves thanks and should go on with thy noble work. It reminds me of my sainted mother who has been in Heaven many a year. It was her favorite method of correction and I tell thee Major she did it well. It is proper and humane and I approve of thee handsomely spanking the boys into submission and obedience.”
The Major returned to his reformatory thoroughly convinced that his improved process of punishment would receive general approbation. So now the weekly spanking school is a feature of the institution and the Major’s strong right arm wields the avenging leather. The result is quite beneficial and the in fraction of the rules are less frequent and flagrant as the inmates have a wholesome dread of the shame disgrace and stinging pain of the Major’s orthodox spanks.
A follow up on KK’s post about Major McClaughry found in the last link.
The Illustrated Buffalo Express 1891.
NO SPANKING.
The good, old-fashioned spanking has been introduced into the State Reformatory at Huntingdon. Pa., with surprisingly beneficial results. With the aid of bis strong right arm Mag. McClaughry, the warden, does most of the spanking in person, his favorite weapon being a leather sole from the shoe shop. His theory, in common with that of mothers of well-brought-up boys, is that external application of the sole promotes the internal well-being of the souL The Major speaks solemnly, earnestly, end soundingly, realizing that the bad bays in his care would never have been in the reformatory but for lack of spanking in earlier years. This long-felt want, as they say in Vol. I, No. L the Major proposes to fill. When the boy has been spanked enough to make up for lost time, and with some regard to the future, his moral condition is so improved that his immediate release is made feasible.
The Major’s spank is probably no more efficacious than the ordinary slipper spank, but the Major has more boys to spank than most mothers, and his greater experience has brought, ao doubt, a far more thorough understanding of the art. It is, alas, an art that will be lost before long unless something is done to revive it. As it dies out there is a corresponding increase in the number of reformatories for boys who have needed spankings and have deteriorated because of the continued lack. The small boy needs spankings just as much as live-stock needs salt or as matinee girls need caramels. He becomes morally lop-sided, spiritually bowlegged, without these corporal corrections for which his soul longs.
In view of these facts we would suggest that Maj.McClaughry deliver a course of lectures on the subject to mothers in the larger cities, taking with him for examples a few of the boys in his reformatory who most need spanking. He could best divide his lecture into these heads: 1. The necessity of spanking. 3. Spanking as a fine art & The benefits of spanking.
Should this suggestion be unavailable the next best thing would be the opening of a school of span kins; in connection with his reformatory at Huntingdon, Pa. Mothers could and should be sent there at Government expense, to receive instruction in the correct use of the slipper, and advice as to the number of spankings per month which would be productive of the best results in particular cases.
We make bold to prophesy that if these suggestions are carried out the country will be swept almost immediately by a moral tidal wave engulfing wickedness in its trough and bearing the millennium on its crest.
Major Robert Wilson McClaughry was held in highest regard.
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KKxyz3,59957
The connection of the article to the school paddle is tenuous. One theory is that the school paddle was derived from common parental practice. Those running reformatories also liked to claim their often very severe practices were parental in nature. Their use of the word “spanking” is a clear warning of this.
My only reference to McClaughry was long ago. http://www.network54.com/Forum/198833/m … 1311322134
There is a great need for evidence-based law making and public practice. Too often, those who innovate are far from objective when assessing the success or otherwise of their innovation.
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The paddle seems to be very much the preferred implement in USA schools. When did it first come into widespread use? I am particularly interested in early mentions of the school paddle in dated factual or fictional literature, and in official documents.Have other cultures used the paddle in schools?
Sorry about the italics. There seem to be fascination with Reformatory spankings by manual or electric implements that for the most part occurred at the very end of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century. It tapers off as the Library of Congress newspapers postings end. Wardens had published (HATHI) with notes of conferences that found the CP alternatives more horrific. Those furthest from these institutions inferred that the use of the paddle and lash were akin to the beating of slaves.
These reformatories were places you wanted to guide young offender to return to society so they wouldn’t have to suffer more serious consequences such as Leavenworth. Major McClaughry wanted to show that he personally, as the sole inflictor, cared for his charges. His “spankings” would be a little more severe than a parent would give when their child was at his worse.
If he saw a sad fellow always sad he chose a cheerful cellmate. He was creative and showed results. That’s why he was so sought out. He wasn’t as mean as his critics were ill informed.
I’m drawing my own conclusions from what I have read about the man.
KK
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KKxyz3,59957
The paddle seems to be very much the preferred implement in USA schools. When did it first come into widespread use? I am particularly interested in early mentions of the school paddle in dated factual or fictional literature, and in official documents.Have other cultures used the paddle in schools?
https://books.google.com/books?id=mOitcwwUFgQC
Forgotten Reformer: Robert McClaughry and Criminal Justice Reform in Nineteenth-Century America
Frank Morn
University Press of America, 2010, 402 pages
Forgotten Reformer traces criminal justice practice and reform developments in late nineteenth-century America through the life and career of Robert McClaughry, a leading reformer. As a warden of one of America’s toughest prisons, as a chief of police of Chicago, as a superintendent of two different reformatories, and as one of the first wardens of the federal prison system, McClaughry developed and led a reform movement that resonates today. As a founding member of the reformatory movement that sought to ‘save’ young first offenders, McClaughry advocated new sentencing structures, probation, parole, and rehabilitative regimes within new institutions for young first offenders called reformatories. McClaughry then successfully got these reformatory ideals placed into adult prisons. In addition, McClaughry became American’s main advocate for a criminal identification method called the Bertillon system. He set up the first identification bureaus at the Illinois State Penitentiary, the Chicago police department, and the federal prison at Leavenworth, Kansas and these became models for others across the country. Finally, as a founding member of the National Association of Chiefs of Police (today the International Association of Chiefs of Police) and the National Prison Assocation (today American Corrections Association), McClaughry sought to professionalize police and prison administrators.
_____________________________________
The following has happened many times before and will happen many times again.
A sincere, well-meaning and competent do-gooder becomes concerned about some social or political ill. They manage to bring about substantial improvements. Often, the success of the changes is overstated and / or the downside of the changes are slow to appear or to be recognized. Then, handicapped by inadequate funding, increasing needs and poor staffing the situation deteriorates and new abuses begin. Institutions out of the public eye, where some are given power over others, seem to either attract unsuitable staff, or corrupt their staff over time after the founders have moved on.
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2015holyfamilypenguin4,32069
The paddle seems to be very much the preferred implement in USA schools. When did it first come into widespread use? I am particularly interested in early mentions of the school paddle in dated factual or fictional literature, and in official documents.Have other cultures used the paddle in schools?
Here is a clear example of equating reformatory corporal punishment with home punishment. The image of the instruments of correction would not indicate the same.
September 6, 1893 The Buffalo Evening News The Paddles of Brockway.
The paddle seems to be very much the preferred implement in USA schools. When did it first come into widespread use? I am particularly interested in early mentions of the school paddle in dated factual or fictional literature, and in official documents.Have other cultures used the paddle in schools?
Here are Paula Flowe’s comments about the paddle, the school and the 1867 ban on school corporal punishment. It took more than a century for the ban to catch on state by state. Ane boy did it catch on!
An Australian newspaper regurgitation or reworking of USA news.Mirror (Perth, WA), 7 July, 1928, p. 5.
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article76405953
HOW TO SPANK YOUR CHILDREN Domestic Upheaval When the Kids Took Their Mothers to Court Mrs. Charles Woodside, of Kansas City, Kansas (U.S.A.), recently spanked her sixteen-year-old daughter Lorene and these spanks, like the shots at the battle of Lexington seem to have been heard around the world. Also they started a revolution of children against their parents.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.”
It looks as if the “meddlers” would lose. Mrs. Woodside seems to have COMPLETELY TRIUMPHED She has recovered her daughter and refused to pay a fine or accept a parole, the gaol does not want her and when her case comes up on appeal before the Wyandotte District Court, the main prosecuting witness will be on her side. Parents, too, are perking up. One well-known citizen told his son that if he didn’t behave he would take him out to the garage and give him a good old-fashioned licking “such as father used to make” with a strap, not a paddle, whether he went to gaol for it or not. And the boy behaved. The great revolution has been postponed.
___________________________________The following brief reports suggest something else:
Reading Eagle – Mar 6, 1928
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Wp … 47,1302220San Jose News – Mar 5, 1928
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ES … 16,5879334
The infamous Kansas City spanking by Mrs Christine Woodside gave the press a field day. What if her mother wasn’t a circus performer? Would it have the enhanced interest?
May 26, 1928
American Weekly via Hamilton Evening Journal from Hamilton, Ohio.
Philadelphia Inquirer May 19. 1929
Schenectady Gazette. March 24, 1928
Daily Editorial Digest. The Kansas city spanking set of a series of editorials throughout the nation.
The paddle seems to be very much the preferred implement in USA schools. When did it first come into widespread use? I am particularly interested in early mentions of the school paddle in dated factual or fictional literature, and in official documents.Have other cultures used the paddle in schools?
See if this works for last link.
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KKxyz3,59957
The paddle seems to be very much the preferred implement in USA schools. When did it first come into widespread use? I am particularly interested in early mentions of the school paddle in dated factual or fictional literature, and in official documents.Have other cultures used the paddle in schools?
Barrels and barrel staves seem to feature often in USA CP history. Barrels were widely used to store and transport a great diversity of wet and dry goods.
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2015holyfamilypenguin4,32069
The following are the earliest mentions of the school paddle I have found. They have been previously noted in the postings above and are repeated here for convenience. The come from a period when compulsory education was beginning.____________________________
The Worthington Advance (Minnesota) February 19, 1880
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/ … d-1/seq-5/Danger in Proverbs
The proverb, “Never put off till tomorrow what may be done to-day,” has gotten me into indescribable trouble. It was about the first thing my school teacher told me, and when I took my vacation on Friday, instead of putting it off till Saturday I was arranged in an uncomfortable position over that school master’s knee and paddled in a manner that I thought should have been put off till next day.
____________________________
Public Ledger. (Memphis, Tenn.), 11 Nov. 1882, page 2, col. 5.
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/ … d-1/seq-2/[. . .]
Suddenly, Talleyrand, in one of his most telling points of a joke, stopped and clapped his hands behind him on that part of the human body which, in my boyhood, was considered the channel to knowledge by the old paddling and feruling school teachers. In an instant more be sprang into the air with the yell of a royal Bengal tiger.
[. . .]
____________________________
Belmont Chronicle (Ohio) March 05, 1885
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/ … d-1/seq-3/It is said that a single room of the Bellaire schools raised 4.5 pounds of coffee, by taking three grains only from each pupil. Now, we do not wish to be doubting, but our devil being of an inquisitive and mathematical turn of mind, has figured on this matter, with the following result: Weighing an ounce of coffee, he finds there are 214 grains, which would be 3,424 grains to the pound, and 15,408 grains in 4.5 pounds. Three grains to the pupil would make this a school of 5,136 pupils. We pity the school ma’am who has to paddle this flock.
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The Herald, Carroll, Iowa, January 11, 1887
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=qB … 41,4376026Brutal Treatment
They must have a brutal teacher in one of the schools at Council Bluffs, and a Board of Education, which, if not in favor of the brutal treatment, is at least willing to tolerate it in school government. Not long ago, according to a Register correspondent, a child, a frail boy of 11 years, was whipped for his failure to commit to memory a small composition. The Instrument used was a hickory club or “paddle“, three feet long, one-half inch thick and one and one-half inches wide, and the punishment was administered by bending the boy over a desk. The bruises on the tender flesh of the little child from the blows of the heavy club were of a severe nature, and a few hours afterwards were as large as goose eggs. Physicians testified to having examined the child at periods ranging from three to nine days after the injuries were inflicted and found the parts swollen and inflamed, and after a period of nineteen days the discolorations were still visible. The school board sustained the teacher in the use of the club. The case is considered to be one of such serious nature, that it will most certainly reach Superintendent Sabin in the course of events.
It is a debatable question, whether or not corporal punishment should be abolished in school government. Experienced and successful teachers are divided on this point and repeated efforts to do away with the rod have been defeated by the Legislature. The sense of the majority seems to be, that properly used, the rod is not a baneful [= harmful] auxiliary to the proper control of our public schools. The sentiment, however, which sustains such brutal and inhuman treatment as that alleged to have been administered by the Council Bluffs teacher is fully a century behind the times. It is such instances as this, in which the right to use the rod on the children of others is grossly and brutally abused, that makes a public demand to brand corporal punishment with the seal of legislative disapproval.
Louisiana recently overwhelmingly approved of paddling. Here is a case of paddling in 1924. It’s not the earliest mention of paddling but thought it was best posted in this thread. As usual, it was the mother who raised a ruckus. KK given the number of articles you referenced regarding paddling forgive me if this is a repeat.
If it weren’t for the Fulton Postcard site I would be dependent on the Library of Congress (Chronicles) that did not cover the years Fulton subsequently covered.
Oswego Palladium February 25, 1924
Second story penultimate column.