Favourite for July

 

Many years ago, I can remember reading a scholarly piece of research into different attitudes to punishing boys and girls, both at school and at home. Sadly, I didn't keep a copy (not a mistake I would make if I came across something like that today!) and I can't remember the exact figures they had come up with. I'll make some fairly credible statistics to illustrate what they found.

There were three main conclusions:

1. Both boys and girls did receive corporal punishment on occasion, but
2. Boys were eight times more likely to receive corporal punishment than girls, however
3. Girls were almost twice as likely to have clothing moved or removed for the punishment

The second conclusion was explained by the view that boys were more likely to do bad things than girls and that even if they did the same thing, people were more reluctant to use corporal punishment on girls than they were on boys. The third conclusion was explained that if a girl was wearing a skirt it was relatively easy to lift the skirt out of the way and that having done so it was also relatively easy to pull her underwear down. With boys wearing trousers it was more fiddly and time-consuming to do something similar. I think there's another issue which, as I remember it, the report authors did not consider. When a person wearing trousers needs to bend over to get smacked, caned, paddled or whatever across their bottom, the bending process simply causes the material in the trousers to be stretched more tightly, thereby making the punishment more effective. However, when a girl wearing a skirt or dress bends over, in many cases the lower hem will actually impede the punishment, thus leading the person conducting the punishment to decide it is necessary to move it out of the way.

In English schools, in the era when the cane ruled the schoolroom, there were, unquestionably, occasions when a girl would be the recipient of a caning. However, as time moved on, there was growing unease about caning a girl's bottom. Some schools changed their rules so that if girls had to be caned, it weould be given across the palms of their hands. Others changed their rules so that boys could be caned across their bottoms, but for the fairer sex, a 'slipper' would be used instead because it was seen as less severe. The 'slipper' in practice was more commonly a gymshoe/plimsoll/dab/sandshoe or whatever it was known as in your part of the country.

And so we come to this month's favourite picture. It's unusual for me to choose a B&W image but somehow it seems to add to the potential believability of the scene. And there is little doubt, that on occasions, a badly behaved schoolgirl would have found herself being told to touch her toes, the schoolteacher realising that the hem of the skirt would impede the punishment, lifting it up and folding it on to the girl's back, and then delivering some hard stinging whacks across her tightly stretched regulation school knickers.