In the dim and distant days (well, up to 1948 anyway) when the British judicial system allowed for young men to be birched for minor criminal behaviour, we know that the normal practice was for the lads, once sentenced by the court, to be taken either to a room in the court building or to a spcially prepared cell in the local polic station. There they would have to either lie down on a bench or bend over the end of a table, be stripped naked below the waist, and the birch would have been applied vigorously to their bare bottom.
The scene being enacted here, I believe in an Eastern European nation, and probably meant to be with a small and remote village community. Okay, so they've taken things further than the British model - first of all, the subject is evidently a female (the Brits stopped judicial whipping of females in 1820), and she's completely naked rather than just from the waist down. Clearly from the marks, she has already received several strokes with a switch or birch, although it's not clear whether the punishment was concluded at this point. Reports of judicial birchings in Great Britain suggest that it was quite normal for the skin to be broken, but her marks look relatively undamaged. At least the marks do look like they were genuinely caused and not just faked for the image, and coming from a production in that part of the world, I would expect nothing less. She's also being publicly humiliated - we don't see here what sort of audience was present, but the purpose is evidently to shame as well as cause pain.
2 comments:
Is that a sword I can see?
Wolf Hall...and Birch Hall
Birch to Bottyland !
Fascinating as always, thank you, James. Indeed 1948 is perhaps the start of the totemic post-war, "golden age of spanking", as depicted by Janus, Roue, your good self & Strictmoor Academy (other magazines n media sites are available)
Let's rewind a mere 400 years, James, to the young Princess Elizabeth in England, who was punished with the birch when she gotten her math, Greek n Latin all wrong. Boo-Hoo! Spoiler alert.....she gotten the birch on her bare buttocks ! YUP! Pray, her tender, fair-skinned sit-upon (in waiting) would hardly be smarting a red-sore bunch if all those Medieval robes, fabrics, silks n garments were in situ, protecting that sensitive Royal botty in Court !
"No ma-am ! On your naked posterior it shall be your Royal Highness, I'm afraid to say".
Alas, it did her no harm: & Queen Elizabeth 1st of England is an existential foundation in "this green and pleasant land" Oh my! My own mother would have said, "no bottoms were harmed in the raising of this princess !"
After the Tudors ? Well, naturally it's the Victorians, already :-)
And Oh my! I do remember reading the history books as a lil' girl growing up in the 50s & 70s, & seeing those "ye olde worlde" sketches n paintings with the birch in the kitchen n scullery, James. Why, Cinderella gotten her bare backside whipped, already James !
Fast forward to Janus magazine in the mid-1970s: the birch was a key foundation of stories, articles & Readers' Letters. As a student in my late teen in the 1970s, I was mesmerized by Janus: I had grown up with a bunch of stern CP as an essential necessary fact of life at home. That post-War period, "1948", was the starter-gun as writers told of their own knowledge & experiences of the birch. Some letters detailed the 1930s too.
Although, clearly the cane was regularly applied to the bare bottoms of naughty daughters at home in this post-War golden age. The birch was becoming almost mythical in the 1970s....disappearing into folklore.
But...fear not James....I was mesmerized to read in Janus (now 50 to 40 years' ago!) that naughty girls in Scandinavia gotten the birch on their tender, bare, white bums from mother at home (50s & early 60s). But by the late 60s, Scandi PC was kept up (along with naughty princess brats' cotton underpants, sadly) & CP was firmly on the way down by itself :-)
Janus was a compelling, essential cornucopia of geo-spanking for y'all. Bums across the Ocean. Bottom spanking Implements & rituals across the globe (especially in The Commonweath). I so loved the coverage, James (uncoverage) & felt a super-strong, visceral affinity with y'all UK girls as I was also raised with "cane to bare botty" from my strict, loving, religious mom in 60s/70s. GULP! Oh my! And, along with geography, came history, already: with the British birch a bunch in Janus.
And to your points above, James, many Janus letters & reports featured the birch in British Institutions in the 1930s, 40s & 50s. Such municipal, "ancient" "Establishments" were Educational, Medical, Pastoral, Church/religious and yes, penal. In the late 1950s, & of course mainly the 1960s, these Institutions disappeared (along with the birch & later the cane) as Modern Britain & the NHS, School systems etc emerged. It was now the "White Heat" of infrastructure & post-war boom & economic development already, not the white heat of that birch across naughty schoolgirls' denuded, tender-skinned bottoms.
Oh my! And so James, our dearest friend, artist & writer, Brigitte, or "B", is currently re-writing her amazing Eilean Beithe Academy stories based in Scotland (EB means Birch Island). And B is honing her incredible writing, AI & artistic talents to reconfigure the original, beautiful EB drawings & stories. Check out her oandpspankingstories.blogspot.com which for y'all readers, is always high up on your "Blogroll (most recent)".
Bring back the birch, James ? Unlikely.
Bring back the cane ? Not so unlikely.
Thanks a bunch & kind regards as always.
Good Lady Brenda xx
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