Some while ago  I posted the complete and unexpurgated press report from the Cornishman newspaper of the very real and very severe clothes brush spanking of two sixth formers.

I know the story was ‘old’ but it didn’t attract a single reply from other forum contributors.

The News Report

SIXTH FORM boys who had a “necking session” with two grammar school girls went unpunished — but the girls had to choose between a private spanking or public disgrace.

The girls, one 18, the other 17, chose the spanking — and they were beaten on the bare buttocks with the back of a hairbrush by the headmaster and the senior mistress in turn.

Both girls signed notes saying they consented to the spanking. But the police were informed and the teachers were accused of assault.

They pleaded guilty at Truro, Cornwall, yesterday. John Lindsey Guise, aged 60, ex-head master of Helston Grammar School, was fined £50 with £15 costs. The senior mistress Mrs. Marjorie Smith, aged 58, was fined £30 with £10 costs.

The kissing and cuddling occurred in the school’s Green Room after a Shakespeare rehearsal. And it was reported by one of the boys involved — he had an attack of conscience about it. The head master then sent for the girls.

GIRL No. 1 said in a statement that Mr. Guise told her: You have been necking with senior boys. Such things cannot be tolerated.

“I could make a public disgrace of the matter and strip you of your prefect’ s badge. Or we can keep it private if you agree to a private spanking by Mrs. Smith and me.

“Have you the guts to take your punishment and then forget about it?”

He then ordered her to take off jumper, skirt, and underskirt, tuck up her knickers so that her buttocks were bare, and lean over a table.

He also told the girl to hold his hand and look at him. Then Mrs. Smith started to hit her across each buttock.

Some more?

Said the girl: “She hit me pretty hard and it hurt me. I don’t know how many times she hit me, but I counted seven and then stopped counting. There were quite a lot after that.

“Mr. Guise said: ‘Are you sorry? Are you ashamed?’ and I said “Yes.”

Then with the girl kneeling down while he held her hands behind her back Guise took the brush and gave her another beating.

When he finished he said to Mrs. Smith: “She doesn’t look very sorry. Perhaps she had better have some more.”

The girl went on: “Once more I had to bend over the table and Mrs. Smith beat me again. Then the head master put me across his knee and gave me some more. When I said I was sorry he told me to stand over the table while he looked at my bruises.”

GIRL  2 said she told Guise that she objected to being spanked by him as he was not her father. But he said: “I am acting in loco parentis.”

She, like the first girl, was told to undress. And Guise told her to hold his hand and look at him while Mrs. Smith was spanking her.

Said Girl No. 2: “It hurt terribly. I cried and looked away from Mr. Guise. Mrs. Smith stopped hitting me and Mr. Guise told me to get up and rub my buttocks.

“Mr. Guise then came and stood behind me and placed his hand on each of my buttocks and said: ‘Does this hurt?'”

Mr. J. Wood, prosecuting, told the magistrates: “Two days later he sent for her and looked at her bruises. I am not suggesting anything indecent about that. He realised he had hit the girl far too hard.

“He was anxious to see that he had not done any lasting damage, which would have meant the whole matter being brought into the open.”

Humiliation

Mr. Wood said this girl’s beating was less severe than the other girl received, perhaps because she reacted more to it.

Mr. Wood said that Mrs. Smith told the police: “I am only the senior mistress and have therefore to take orders from the head master.”

Mrs. Smith also said she considered it was unwise for Mr. Guise to touch the girl’s buttocks, but thought it might undermine discipline if she interfered.

Guise, explaining to the police why he spanked the girls, said: “Misbehaviour between boys and girls is something we have to take very great care about, especially in view of present trends.

“We have had cases of pregnant girls and I have been called in by parents over tragic cases. This situation did seem to me full of dangerous possibilities.”

He also explained: “My touching the buttocks was merely to check the degree of bruising.”

Said Mr. Wood: “Mr. Guise must have realised that whatever else he had done he had broken the education committee regulations because a head master is not allowed himself to punish girls.

The punishment inflicted by him and Mrs. Smith was clearly excessive.”

Mr. Michael Hutchinson for Guise said that in a mixed grammar school, with pupils of 18 or 19, the discipline concerning morals had to be specially strict.

‘Too far’

But Guise now accepted he had gone too far in punishing the girls.

“A man who has built up a good school, who has strong discipline, and has achieved that situation just before he is due to retire — these are facts that might lead somebody to make an error of judgment,” said Mr. Hutchinson.

“These incidents had happened and he had made up his mind to stop it.”

Mr. Hutchinson added: “Here is a man who was about to retire with the praise of everyone, the governors of the school and everyone else, and was about to bring to a conclusion an honourable and successful career with the good wishes of everybody.

“As a result of these events all of it has changed.”

Mr. Lewis McCreery, for Mrs. Smith, said she had repeatedly told Mr. Guise she was not in favour of corporal punishment. In these particular cases she had acted directly under the head master’s orders.

Her future

The magistrates were told that the head master’s resignation, tendered when police inquiries began after complaints by the girls’ parents, had been accepted.

The future of Mrs. Smith, suspended from duty since the summonses against her were issued a month ago, rested largely on the court’s findings.

Said Mr. Guise after the case: “I hope my pension will not be affected.” Mrs. Smith made no comment.

 

 

Response

This real-life event seems to have the power to disturb many of those interested in our subject.

I don’t understand this, because the incident seems to represent CP in a way that proves fantasy and reality are sometimes the same things.

A Head and his crony exert their unfair authority to extract the co-operation of 2 young female adults .

The offense is minor, but the penalty couldn’t be more severe, or infantile.

The Head holds the girl’s hands and looks into her face as she experiences the pain, and humiliation of the brush on rear.

Then, he takes her over-the-knee, pins her wrist, and spanks her himself.

He actually physically checks the condition of her buttocks.

Worst of all, if all this has not led to floods of tears, he makes the girl repeat the punishment again!

Strangely, if he had shown any self-control at this point, none of this would even have appeared in the papers.

 

Surprise, surprise one of the girls broke down in front of her parents,

mortified by the daily abuse that followed the punishment and gave us the court case and newspaper reports we all know so well.

But this story, true as it is, hits all those uncomfortable nerves.

Don’t ‘cheat’ and dismiss this example because of the conviction.

The court made it clear that almost all the facts I have mentioned above were acceptable (including, incredibly, the after punishment inspections of the 18-year old by a male head.

I’m afraid many Heads did abuse their power, and did live out their fantasies, and would even now (if alive still) claim that such actions were legal and acceptable.

Why does the ‘Helston’ incident cause so much silence?

Why indeed!

 

Response

Having read this article many times it does appear obvious that the only reason for the prosecution was the strange rituals and that everything seemed outside what was accepted practice in education.

The pupil should simply have been given the cane.

In nineteen it would have raised only a few eyebrows and most certainly not given rise to a prosecution.

The caning could even have been severe, with the deputy present as a female witness or even to administer, the girls could have been made to bend over, have their skirts raised to receive six strokes across their pants.

They might even have got away with making them pull their pants across to bare their buttocks. Let’s face it this would have been exceptionally painful and humiliating but would have been more or less within the rules of the day.

What’s more, with no prosecution, many others would have followed in the years to come. Ah well…….

 

 

Response

This incident was not about a Head and his ‘Senior Mistress’ accidentally over-stepping the bounds of acceptable punishment.

No, this story illustrates how many ‘dodgy’ head-teachers used the legality of CP as the ultimate ‘job-perk’.

Read the details of this case again.

The Senior Mistress gives the clue to avoiding legal trouble when enjoying the unreasonable exercise of School authority

This is namely picking on the pupils whose parents express a clear willingness to have their offspring humiliated and beaten!

We all know, sadly, that in every form-year of sixties pupils, in every school back then, some parents would have been enthusiastic backers of ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’.

Reading between the lines, that ‘Helston’ brush, probably a more parent-friendly daughter punisher than the cane, got plenty of use in many parent-teacher-naughty-girl sessions.

Of course, human nature being what it is, forbidden fruit is always the sweetest.

This head had no doubt had his fill of watching his Senior give unsatisfiying (to him) hairbrushings to unappealing 3rd years at their parents’ behest.

So, he’s reaching retirement, dying to see out his ultimate fantasy.

He chooses an incident that allows moral blackmail of the participants, rather than a usual incident of school rule-breaking, to give himself greater ‘flexibility’.

I find it interesting that the only concern of the Senior Mistress was that the parents hadn’t given permission.

Shouldn’t she have expressed some concern about the appropriateness of the events (given the ages, undressing, and touching).

I find it interesting that the investigating policeman said the Head was the most ‘difficult’ man that he had ever interviewed.

Speaks volumes about how happy we should be when the N U T and others tell us to disregard complaints about teachers by pupils.