From the Top Shelf - School Bullies

I have for you today a letter originally published in Janus - the magazine dedicated to all things spanking - in 1979. it was submitted by a former teacher and relates her experiences with corporal punishment (giving, not receiving) at school in the early 1950s.

I am a woman who has always been deeply aroused by spanking and, in fact, worked for many years in an environment where my 'interest' had to be suppressed. I was Deputy Head of a private girls school in the southern counties of England, just after the war. The school used corporal punishment and parents sent their girls to us because the disciplinary policy was well known and respected. This was no regime of savagery, the usual class punishments being a short strap across the hand or a plimsoll across the seat of the knickers. The girls hated this because of the embarrassment more than the pain, in front of their classmates.

More serious offences resulted in girls being sent to the Headmaster, who would administer between four and six strokes of the cane to the knickered bottom in front of a female witness, usually me. Although four strokes may not sound a lot, his strength and technique was enough to guarantee that the culprit was inevitably red-faced, tearful and very sore by the end of the punishment. I was trained in the use of the cane and substituted for the Headmaster during any necessary absences, although my opportunities to 'lay it on' were necessarily spasmodic.

On one particular occasion, in the early 1950s, an opportunity arose which gave me great satisfaction. A visiting school came over for a hockey match, a game which resulted in a win for the visiting team. After the game, while the girls were in the communal bath, a visiting first year girl, aged about eleven, walked into the dressing room to congratulate her team-mates and was seized by some of our team and flung, fully clothed, into the bath where she was held under water for some seconds until allowed to escape, crying in terror. She ran up the corridor, sobbing, into the arms of our Games Mistress who elicited the full story.

Three girls from our school were identified as the culprits, and I was summoned to the Headmaster's office the following morning. He was furious, not least because the victim was a visitor, and the incident created a lot of embarrassment for him personally. He told me emphatically that such bullying deserved serious consequences and what he had in mind was not appropriate for a male teacher to administer, so he delegated the punishment to me.

Two of the three girls were regular trouble-makers and I'd had cause to punish them before, but not with such severity. The third was new to the school and had only been attending for a few months.

I decided to start with her and called her in. Her name was Vivienne (I'll omit her surname) and she was a tall, brown-haired, pretty girl aged sixteen. She looked quite frightened and there were tears in her eyes already. I explained that she would receive six strokes of the senior cane for her part in the shameful bullying and that the punishment would take place immediately.

She coloured up and walked to my desk holding out her hand for punishment. Coldly, I told her that the reason I was to administer punishment, and not the Head, was because we believed the incident was so serious that all three girls should be caned on the bare bottom. She began to back away, weeping, and refused to accept the punishment. I told her we had contacted her father, who had agreed with our decision, and should she continue to obstruct me, she would be taken to the Headmaster's office. There, if necessary, she would be forcibly divested of her knickers and receive an even harsher caning on the bare bottom from the Head and then, quite possibly, expelled.

She broke down in tears, saying she would accept my caning and, with trembling hands, she removed her underpants completely, as I instructed and placed them on the chair. The she bent over my desk, gripping the far edge as I had instructed, standing on tip toes, her bottom raised. I raised her skirt and ran my hand briefly over her plump, firm bottom. I was sure she could take a caning without too much trouble. I varied my strokes to cover her bottom from top to bottom and she was gasping and crying long before the end and, when I'd finished, she lay there weeping, her bottom cheeks pulsing with six bright red stripes. When she eventually did get up, she rubbed her bottom cheeks vigorously and went to put her pants on. I told her to leave them where they were, to hitch her skirt up to her waist and to stand in the corner with her hands on her head.

I called in the second girl, whose name was Andrea, and when she walked into the study her face reddened as she saw the state of her team-mate and understood her fate only too well. Without needing to be told, she slipped her knickers off and left them on the chair, then bent over my desk, pulling up her own skirt and sticking her bottom out.

I told her she would get six strokes - hard ones - for I was sick and tired of this young lady and determined that the message would get through. She had quite a large bottom for a small girl and, by the time I'd finished I made damn sure I'd covered every part of it. I hit her with considerably more force than I had used on Vivienne and, by the last stroke, she was howling and begging me to stop. I made her lie across the desk for five minutes, displaying her stripes, and threatening her with more if she attempted to rub her bottom, before telling her to join Vivienne in the corner.

When the third girl, Pamela, came in she too immediately realised her fate when she saw her two red-striped companions and begged me not to give her the cane but to substitute something else. I had caned her before, over her pants, and it was true that she seemed to have a very low pain threshold for she had screamed almost from the first stroke. So I agreed to use the tawse instead, though I suspect she had no idea of the effectiveness of a Scottish tawse on a bare bottom.

After removing her underpants, she bent over the desk. I flipped up her skirt and raised my three tail tawse and struck. The covering power of a tawse is considerable and she let out one disbelieving shriek. I had realised that this young lady was the ringleader of the three and had caused me considerable problems in the past. The fact that she seemed to have made a bad choice bothered me not one whit and I enthusiastically stuck to my task.

She would not keep still throughout the punishment, wriggling her bottom and kicking her legs until the six strokes had been delivered. She had a big plump bottom and by the end it resembled a huge scarlet mountain. She was gasping and crying, still kicking her legs, as she lay across the desk for the obligatory five minutes. I hoped, perversely, that she would reach back and touch her bottom for then I could thrash her again but she managed to control herself. On rising she rubbed her bottom and jumped up and down in severe pain until I told her to stand still.

All three were warned that any more trouble would mean instant expulsion. The three girls who left my study were very changed little madams from the ones who entered it.

About three months later, Andrea left the school to live abroad with her parents. She came to me before leaving and quietly thanked me for the caning which, she said, had made her grow up very quickly and become more responsible. I was gratified by her comments but a number of girls experience this change of attitude. She was far from the last to feel my cane or have the time to regret her stupidity.

It's good to know that caning had a positive effect on at least one pupil.