Experience Of Caning Essential – And Who Stole The Book?

I recently came across two news items that might be of interest to you readers and thought that I would share them.

Advertising for a female teacher

In this article 30 years ago – Nostalgia – West Sussex County Times an advertisement for a female teaching post from 1982 was reprinted, the advert read…

‘Small Coaching School, mixed, 9-13 years, to be opened September ’82, Sussex area, requires Senior Mistress to share teaching/supervision with owner. Traditional atmosphere. Must be prepared to teach at last two subjects. Experience of caning essential. Burnham Scale. Details please to Headmaster, Box P59, West Sussex County Times. All replies acknowledged’.

I wonder if the interview went anything like this

Our punishment book is missing

Another school had a modern display of how things used to be in the old days. This article Mystery over school’s whacking good book, Hawkes Bay News tells of the display of canes and an old punishment book and this happening to it…

It went missing during a holiday period when work was being carried out on the hall, which was left unlocked during the day. “I think somebody going in there may have recognized a name they knew – maybe even themselves, and did not want others to know what they had done to go in the book.”

Mr Rankin said he went to the school to do some work one morning and spotted fragments of glass on the floor of the foyer.

He then spotted the display cabinet’s glass door had been smashed to gain entry.

Silver trays and cups were left untouched – only the book of caning had been taken.

was this the work of a sticky fingered spanko?

And what retribution awaits them for this dastardly deed?

Images courtesy of F/M Spanking World and Yeowch Spanking Blog.

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Dickensian

Happy birthday Charles

Today, the 7th of February, is the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens. The thing that Mr Dickens left the spanking world was the wonderful word that sums up the atmosphere of the attitude of the Victorian era and that word is Dickensian. When I hear this word it just sends my imagination spiraling. Here are just a few examples of what surges into my imagination.

Dickensian attire

All those wonderful uniforms and overly restricting dress styles of the period.

Dickensian Mistress

Governess, Lady of the house or other feminine authority figure, who’s wrath and harsh punishments where to be feared.

Dickensian devices

Of restraint, punishment, confinement. The people of the Dickensian era had such a broad and inventive bent when it came to thinking up such things.

Dickensian punishment

Brutal, hard and nearly always of a corporal nature.

In conclusion

Things Dickensian are wonderful to fantasize about and can make excellent play scenes but I think that we should be glad that we did not have to live through the harsh reality of that period of history.

Happy birthday Mr Dickens

And thank you for a wonderful word

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Pole Of Shame

I’ve been passing by the subject of this post for a few years now but was inspired to do a post about it after seeing Public humiliations – historical inspiration on the blog Leia’s New Musings!. I see this particular historical item on a regular basis.

The schandpaal

More commonly referred to as a Strafpaal in spoken Flemish (it’s great here, you get to speak in Flemish but read and write in Dutch, just to make life interesting), the Dutch name literally translates as “Shame Pole”. It was the equivalent of The Stocks or Pillory, commonly used in historical times, in other countries.

Those to be punished would have a metal collar placed around their neck and then be attached to iron rings, by a short chain, set into the stone around the pole, for the purpose of public humiliation and pelting with rotten veg and various other nasty things.

The rings were set at such a hight as to be too high to allow the victim to kneel but too low for them to stand erect, thus leaving them in a muscle burning, stress position. As a usual sentence was between two and six hours, it can be imagined that this added greatly to the distress of those being punished.

There are multiple rings set into the stone, so that up to three miscreants could be dealt with at any one time.

There are also some accounts of this type of pole being used as whipping posts on some occasions but the main purpose of these facilities was to publicly show and shame petty criminals.

The images in this post were taken by myself and I am happy for anyone to use them for free but a link back to this blog is always welcome.

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>A Tudor Birching

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Birching in the 14th Century

Over the Holiday period I purchased a copy of the BBC History Magazine and was delighted to find an article on 14th Century schools. The article contained this image, which is new to me, showing a seated teacher holding a birch and his assistant already administering correction to one pupil. I thought that you readers might enjoy this piece of the past.

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