A recent correspondence with a regular commentator on my blog raised the memory of an infamous case in the UK in the early 1960s when two girls were actually punished at school on their bare bottoms. That it made its way to the courts of law and all over the national press serves to underline that this was extremely unusual and most unlikely to have happened unnoticed elsewhere. The detail is recorded through the press at the time and collated by the famous World Corporal Punishment Research website, Corpun. Two typical articles of the time are reproduced here.
Another report, more detailed almost to the point of lascivious interest, was published in a local newspaper - The Cornishman. The only scan I have found of that article is of much too low a quality to be worth reproducing but Corpun does include the highlights of the text here.
4 comments:
I've always thought the boy (or boys) who ratted on the girls deserved a good caning. What right minded boy would even think of it. I can say hand on heart that I would never have done so.
Old Tom
I agree that the boys getting away with it does make the whole event seem even more iffy than it was anyway - I suppose there might be an argument for taking into account the honesty of the one who owned up but not to the extent of no punishment at all. The argument that he couldn't punish the other boy because he didn't have any independent evidence against him would presumably have applied equally to the girls. I can't imagine any headmaster I ever came across who would really condone someone snitching - it wasn't really the thing to do.
On the face of it CP for girls was seen as unusual - now I know that even at my school it was far more common than I then suspected (school 1970s) girls just didn't brag about it as the boys did. This from conversations with former female students years later.
As for bare bottom CP - again more common than you might think - at least in public schools. It was routine at my wife's school up until the early 1990s. There are some 'chains' of schools ie schools run by the same national group who had stronger traditions in this regard than others.
Worse things happened and parents didn't want to know - students do not tend to tell.
There is a famous account (in memoirs) by a famous man (then schoolboy obviously) who got a bare bottom caning in front of the whole school for homosexual practices. Bare bottom cp was routine (in fact de rigor) - this school was later co-ed (from mid 1980s) and I have it on good authority that traditions did not change!
The big difference was that these girls were not going home having been caned to get quizzed by the folks as they undoubtedly were at day schools in the state sector.
Great detail & research as always James. You are our great Curator of spanking artefacts & anecdotes!
If these girls had gotten their bare bottoms caned by their parents at home, would that make the headlines? Definitely not: for it was normal, routine CP back in the 1960s in UK, Europe & USA for y'all. But bare bottom spankings at School sure made the big headlines, already. No surprise there.
As a child of a strict Christian family (born 1959) my keen observation is that CP at School is over clothed bottoms, but CP at home is over unclothed bottoms!!
Oh my ! That is an accurate assessment as CP has been part of my life (& my peers' lives in Atlanta, Georgia) as a constant since the early 1960s! Both as a routinely whooped daughter myself & then as a strict, loving spanker-mom to my own two daughters.
I always seek facts, James, not fantasy. I love your factual Blog. I find it fascinating in every way. I am generally sceptical of stories about bare bottom spankings at School: they are quite unheard of in actual fact (rather than fantasy!), as this stark article clearly shows. I never saw bare bottom spankings at school & never actually received CP myself at school.
But as a naughty girl at home in 1960s Georgia, I gotten my bare botty caned with the rattan "switch" as a mater of normal, routine parental discipline (ditto for my younger sister)...loving whoopings in front of God. Our mother was the main tanner of our bare lily white backsides in the living room. And the Church more than approved, already, James. Oh my !
My young daughters naturally gotten the exact same punishment from myself (1980s/90s).
The two girls in this article were born 1946 & so it was likely that they gotten corporal punishment at home, back then. Over the ensuing decades (from the 1990s notably) the attitudes & practice of CP diverged starkly between Southern USA & UK, France, Germany etc. Both in Schools & in the home.
It sure is a fascinating article & occurrence in 1964, & highlights the emergent differences right now in CP & PC between UK/USA. Not divided by a common language already, James; but by different family values on spanking!
Regards & thank you.
Brenda xx
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