Hello Another Lurker and Six of the best,

As Mr Putin’s Public Relations Department  will no doubt agree the truth can annoyingly get in the way of the message you are trying to convey.

I cannot ,of course,in any way, raise any issues whatsoever with your undoubted skills  and Six of the best’s congratulations. However, I had hoped (probably with little or no chance of success) that my initial contribution would evoke more contributions to this thread in the vein of your excellent # 35 had the “myth” been allowed to continue a little longer before being shot down in flames.

I cannot recollect in my youth being unduly affected by the lovely Miss Hardy,

One young French lady who does stick in my mind however is the coquettish Mademoiselle Estelle Skornik who played the delicious Nicole in the car advert.

And of course some would have us believe that this particular young lady was spanked OTK at school with her knickers taken down in front of her classmates.

http://www.oocities.org/hollywood/cinem … stelle.htm

Are matters such as her likely age when this occurred and the number of spanks she received and indeed whether this was a regular occurrence in French schools suitable matters for discussion by this most esteemed forum or will the Ghost of Lotta quickly arise.

I seem to remember one of our French teachers encouraging us to listen to spoken French. To us teenage lads listening to the delightful Miss Hardy was better than trying to read any French classics. Back then France was a very different country to ours. Different food and culture and of course the martinet, something that the French never seemed to export!

Hello Sir John 2,

My apologies.  I fear that I obviously blew the gaff rather too soon on Miss Brown, hard caning headmistress and Dorothée, elegantly  long skirted French actress, singer and animatrice who sadly probably didn’t wield a martinet (or a cane).  But once I got the bit between my teeth, the thrill of the chase, the scent of blood etc., etc.  Just like the old days trying to work out whether it was the users, operators or engineers who had caused the computer to crash and cost the company £thousands.  It was never the system programmers of course, perish the very thought! 

Martinets seem to be in fashion in this thread at the moment, but first a warning.  The following link leads to  a page which, in addition to the intended target of the link, contain, ahem, ‘adult content’.  Please do not click on it if you are under age 21 or likely to be offended by such material.

So, by way of compensation for my spoiler activities, here is a picture of Miss Lacourt.  If you scroll down you will see that she is described as an ‘estimated’ French teacher.  I rather think that should be ‘estimable’ but anyway if you read on you will see that Miss Lacourt’s speciality is wielding the martinet on naughty boys in the traditional French fashion, with the recipient  bent over her desk, bottom bared, for 30 or so stinging lashes from the lanières of her martinet.  Since there are usually 9 or 10 lanières that’s a lot of stinging stripes!

Now, can anyone tell me the fantasy school for young ladies at which Miss Lacourt was employed as a teacher, the name she used there, the subject she taught, her height and physical statistics?  The information may be obtained from various sources and anyone linking naughty pictures of Miss Lacourt’s sometimes eccentric dress habits in the classroom while teaching there will be referred to her for a demonstration of the martinet!

As regards the lovely  Mademoiselle Estelle Skornik, aka Nicole, I think any discussion will probably be Lotta free.  Your link is of course to a page from an early version of the ‘Spanking Facts and Research’ site, which may be revisited via the various links on your linked page.  I didn’t realise that SF & R had a site at Geocities.  I had a couple of sites there myself early in my webmaster career.

Miss Skornik says that her bare bottomed over the teacher’s knee spanking occurred at her first school.  I don’t know at what age children then started school in Paris, but I think we are probably looking at an early primary school punishment.   Rather like Another_Lurker’s smacked leg.  Memorable for the recipient, but of little import to the spectators.  Now if an irate dissatisfied Clio purchaser had rushed onto the set and exacted revenge for his disappointment on Miss Skornik in the same fashion ……………

Hello six of the best,

You wrote in your contribution #40 in the thread above:

Should anyone else here have more knowledge or indeed experience of the French Tawse, I for one, would be delighted to learn more of it.

I really don’t think we should regard the martinet as a tawse.  I have never experienced either but I believe they are significantly different in style and effect.  The tawse is effectively a strap with the striking end split into two or more tails.  It  generally had a significant degree of stiffness, being made of quite thick leather or other suitable material.  Probably most used on the hands but if used on the bottom it had more than sufficient weight to be effective through normal clothing, although for severity it was used on the bare instead of the birch in some Scottish Court jurisdictions and was reputedly greatly feared by miscreants.

The martinet however is a multi-tailed light whip, with a rigid handle and several relatively light lashes, generally very thin leather strips.  It is said to be relatively ineffective over other than very thin tight clothing.  As you note in #40 the name of the martinet is said to derive from 18th century  French Lieutenant Colonel, Jean Martinet, as indeed is the general term martinet for a very strict person.  Malicious historical rumour however claims that Colonel Martinet was the commander of a French military academy and sought a punitive implement which would specifically require his officer cadets to be bare bottomed for punishment.  Serves ’em right for le vice Anglais!

When punishing children it was generally deployed on any areas of bare flesh left accessible by clothing, calves and lower thighs being favourite targets.  In more severe domestic punishments both boys and girls were punished on the bare bottom.  In schools boys often experienced the same fate, but girls were generally punished on bared thighs or on the knickers.

There is much more on the martinet to be found here, but sadly I’m out of time.  More to follow, possibly.

The traditional martinet, famously made by an elderly lady in Morvan, was quite light and didn’t do too much through the clothing.  Used on the more sensitive bare leg, the effect was rather like a slap with the hand, not deeply painful but sore and prickly for a short time.  I am not aware of heavier martinets being used in French schools, I think they were mostly used for younger children.

I did see a picture of a martinet-style whip with thicker tails that was allegedly from the German army, but I never saw a real example, although I did see some similar implements in the adult market.  Where implements have a number of tails, the force is distributed across a larger area, rather than being concentrated as it is with a cane, so the effect is quite different.

I always felt that a tawse was relatively less effective on the backside than on the hands.  One reason is the friction caused by the contact between the leather and the bare skin.  Typically, the rougher underside of the tawse is applied to the palm, rather than the smooth upper side.  As with the martinet, because the force is spread across a wider area, the tawse on the bottom causes a sensation more like the slipper and doesn’t deliver the sharp, concentrated pain that is typical of a cane.  Although it seems counter-intuitive, a narrow tawse can be more severe than a wider one.

Firstly I have to apologise the my screaming error in referring to the martinet as a sort of tawse. Of course it is not. I fail to understand how I made such an error.
The martinet is almost exclusively French. Nothing quite like it has ever been sold or available in the UK. From what I have read over the years it was made for use by parents on their children. I’m sure there were homemade versions too.
The only two items intentionally made for juvenile discipline in the UK have to be the cane and the tawse. There were of course many other implements pressed into service for the purpose, the less is endless. The slipper/plimsoll has to be the best known, trouser belts and straps too. At the risk of being boring a list; hairbrushes, wooden spoons/spatulas, table tennis bats, etc., rulers, garden canes, rope ends and lengths of electrical cords. The list is virtually endless and we must not forget the parental hand, I have even read of toys being used, mention of a toy plastic sword once! Feel free to add to the list. Before anyone points it out the cane and tawse were more a school punishment than a parental one I agree.
Back of our French cousins, I’ve seen the little video of the elderly Morvan lady making martinets by the dozen in fairly recent years. I don’t believe that is where the martinet for parental punishment originates from. However industrious I just can’t imagine she could have fulfilled the demands of the whole of France. Did martinets vary region to region, were they made in various sizes?
I have to say my knowledge of French school and parental CP of the past is extremely limited. I’d heard of the martinet many years back but was surprised to see  them openly on sale in a department store in the Loire Valley just over 50 years ago. From memory they looked massed produced, with perhaps a dozen on the shelf. If there was no demands for them why were they openly on sale? Just imagine a French parent, mum of dad, taking one through the checkout advertising the fact they were intending to spank their child in that way.
France is a still a different country to our own although many things are now more alike nowadays but I have yet to see frogs legs and snails being part of the UK’s diet. That said I doubt that the average France family serve them up on a daily basis and they are not on the menu in a French McDonalds!
Please don’t see any of this as a criticism of France or its people. That short stretch of water has created many differences, long may it continue!

Hi, SotB.  I haven’t seen a martinet in real life, but I remember someone kindly posting a link on here to a video showing how they were made and used (albeit on an adult model).  I also don’t really know how widespread their use is/was, although I agree that if they were on sale in general stores, there must have been some demand for them.

I did have a thought on your point about a parent buying one is advertising that they intend (or at least would consider) hitting their child.  I wondered whether people might invest in one when they were expecting, or had just had, a child?  This would mean that they were advertising that fact, which is something particularly dads are often keen to do.

Hi Sorepants, I only saw them that one time. I’d heard of them before but noting more. As I remember they didn’t look that ferocious. It was the implication that they were being sold to hit children that surprised me. Perhaps in a way if it was seen in France  back then that it was safer to produce a ‘safe’ item rather that risk the use of something less dangerous. How times have changed!

I previously linked this extract from the Les Malheurs de Sophie (2016) which depicts a martinet.

I have heard the martinet compared to the cat of nine tails, as in this 1955 item from the news magazine Time.
https://content.time.com/time/subscribe … 39,00.html

The cat of nine tails was essentially a whip used on criminals and soldiers in the past. It was always brutal and reserved for extreme punishments. The martinet from what I have read was the opposite. By having an ‘approved’ implement it may have encouraged parents to used corporal punishment on their children but it did perhaps set some sort of standard. Fortunately most parents, British or French, cared for their children