Letters from Uniform Girls 13

Dear Editor,

I wonder, have you ever considered the interesting paradox of the sweet, innocent, Victorian teenage Miss, and her many ‘sisters’ scattered throughout the world?

In the far East a girl would be sold as a wife at twelve or thirteen, or even into slavery. In African tribes she would be initiated into womanhood, in the wild west of America she would be handling a gun, perhaps shooting Indians, hunting, and skinning her quarry. In India the equivalent social class might be given servants of her own to control as she wished. In the south of America she could whip her own slave. In England the same girl was severely disciplined, birched and caned for the slightest fault, until she was nearly eighteen.

All these differences were merely because of variations in local cultures. The point I wish to make is that despite her soft pale skin, demure manner, submissive obedience, perfect deportment and unworldliness, the English Miss was tougher than all her contemporaries. I will attempt to explain.

The country that ruled the world’s greatest Empire did it by sending out the flower of its upper middle classes as individuals and families to serve in the administration or military. They were all dedicated to their regiment, its dignity and history, and the trappings that make a military life one of ritualistic repetition. In a world of uncertainty, security came with formal repetition. Pipeclaying, and preparation of the uniform; the parade; inspection; drills, etcetera. At home, the equivalent was interest rates at 2.5%, stable and secure, and they had the knowledge that society did the same things, the same way all the time, and that above all, everyone knew their place in the structure of society. There is one further point to be made. There was always time to do something properly. I will refer to this again later.

When the American girl graduated to loading her father’s musket, the subject of our attention was graduating from the nursery, and the complete control of her governess, to the schoolroom and that of her tutor. Although it was never specified as such, the greater part of her education was directed towards discipline of the mind so that she could take her position in the vast regiment that ruled the world, and maintain it, knowing her place and that of her sisters. To discipline the mind the Victorians disciplined the body, and in particular a girl’s naked buttocks.

As frequently as her American counterpart might hear ‘Fetch me my gun Lucy, I’ll teach those varmints a lesson.’ The words in the schoolroom would come, quietly and firmly, ‘Fetch me the cane Lucy, I will teach you a lesson.’

In both cases the girls would have a little flutter of excitement in their tummies, but of totally different natures. In neither case would either hesitate to obey. If the former delayed she might soon be dead, and the latter — well an endurable thrashing of only a dozen could easily become one of two or three. So, by different methods both assimilated discipline. How therefore can I make the point that the Victorian Miss was the tougher of the two by far. Please follow my argument further.

The Victorian upper middle class life ran to a rigid schedule, morning prayers, meals to time, a walk in the afternoon, or carriage ride, Father’s return from his business, club or barracks, always to a time, allowing no deviation except for the routine on Sunday with church morning and evening. A girl would know exactly where she was. Security and confidence lay in routine, and nowhere in Victorian England was this more understood and practiced than in domestic discipline. Before Lucy married, and on her wedding night, ‘lay back and thought of England,’ she had been much exercised in the same thoughts, but laying over with her bottom bared, no idea of resentment entering her head. If a punishment had been awarded, then she deserved it and had been taught to accept it in the same empire building spirit that it was given. If not exactly with gratitude, then as stoically as she was able.

Whilst I cannot hope to cover more than a token of the techniques used by the well-meaning disciplinarians of the period, I hope what is discussed will be sufficient to make my point. Punishment was never treated lightly, and rarely given at the time it was awarded, except perhaps in the schoolroom for some very minor offence. Each household would treat the matter differently, one having a set time of the day when offenders would be deal with, the other making her wait until the pater familias was available for the infliction, in yet a third it might be on just one day a week, the punishments accumulating like a cloud over her head, or maybe bees over her bottom would be a more apt simile. Whatever the misdemeanour, she would have ample time to reflect on its impropriety and the inevitable consequences. It was never a question of — To flog or not to flog? — but one of — How hard, and with what?

To follow the argument let us take the fortunes or misfortunes of a particular case. Lucy is seventeen, the elder of five sisters living in a prosperous part of London. She has the temerity to question her tutor during a morning lesson. What would have been initiative in the far West, is insolence in Lucy and must be whipped out. She has to wait until six o’clock to present herself to her father to request her punishment. In some households she would have to be in her room, awaiting his arrival, cane readily visible and to hand. In another, already bared, across the bed, buttocks raised on her pillows. In this instance let us assume Lucy attends his study at the appointed time. Again, techniques differ. In some establishments she would have to bring the cane with her from her room so that the whole household would know her shame. In this instance the instruments of correction are kept in his study. Lucy enters, he stands with feet apart before the fire, stern and unforgiving. She has trouble keeping the tears from flowing as he delivers the long homily on ingratitude to parents, insolence, and this-will-hurt-me-more-than-you, until she feels suitably chastened and guilty.

At this stage, if she has not already brought it, she can be sent to fetch the cane from the bureau, although many disciplinarians found it curiously effective to have the cane already in their hands when the culprit arrived, and to emphasise points by tapping it against their thighs, or flexing it quietly and methodically. Culprits would watch it as fascinated as a mouse would watch a snake. By whatever method it was arrived at, the moment would come when the disciplinarian would have cane in hand, the lecture would be over, and the real business of beating the miserable Lucy would begin. She would be suitably positioned for the cane.

It is impossible to dwell upon the innumerable ways those well-meaning Victorians dreamt up to position a girl so that her bare bottom could be soundly thrashed to the best advantage. It depended much upon the individual flagellator’s stature, angle of striking at the naked buttocks, and the culprits tendency to resist punishment.

Whipping blocks were uncommon in the domestic scene, although library steps were much in demand as a substitute to which a girl could be securely fastened. But Lucy has (if the pun may be forgiven) had many whippings behind her and accepts her punishments well. As she knows she will be lowered into the seat cushions. Some households will insist she removes her skirts before laying over. Elsewhere they are taken up once she is positioned. In either case, the disciplinarian who would be horrified if he were to see her upper torso naked would be adamant that her buttocks be laid bare for caning, and quite rightly so. How else is she to be made to appreciate the indignity of her position, and how else can he assess the accuracy and effectiveness of his strokes?

So all is ready. Lucy, with skirts pinned up (she attended without her drawers, but there was a school of thought that desired these to be removed at the time of correction), and knuckles tightly clenched to give her courage, requests in a subdued little voice a good whipping for her misdeed.

I mentioned earlier that nothing was hurried. The Victorians had time to attend to these matters properly. There was no radio, TV, telephone to interrupt. So far only ten minutes of the allotted half an hour had elapsed. Lucy is given another long moment to consider before he approached and lays the cane gently across her tender white bottom-cheeks, tapping little soft snicks of sound into the air. The bottom wobbles invitingly. She is totally relaxed and receptive. She knows there is no other way. In the south of America her sister claps her hands for the overseer to come and whip her slave; in the East her sister is making ardent love. Lucy grips the cushion tighter and stares down at the dark leather, an all too familiar sight for her and her siblings.

She has not as yet been told how many she is to receive. There is still hope. It might be only a modest beating, after all it was a small fault. On the other hand, he might just beat her on and on without her knowing when it will stop. The voice of authority speaks…

In Georgia her sister giggles as her black slave squeals under the lash. Lucy straightens her legs out and digs her toes into the carpet as she waits to receive the first stroke of her two dozen. It is a more grievous fault than she envisaged. Her Papa heaves a sigh of heavy regret as he prepares to suffer his duty. In the East, her sister, astride her lover, hollows her back until her bottom is as prominent as Lucy’s. Maybe he will slap it as he sometimes does and impart that lovely stinging, tingling sensation. She cries out as the waves of delight spread from the tautness of her buttocks. What pleasure it can be. Lucy’s Papa imparts the third satisfying slice of pain across his daughter’s bottom. She wriggles silently. Her duty is to take it without making a noisy exhibition of herself. With luck she will make it to about ten. At five she gave a strangled cry to coincide with her Eastern sister’s. Now she was being flogged to her limit.

When the Lucys of England went out with their husbands to rule the colonies their ability to suffer any deprivation or hardship made them a bulwark against which their men could support themselves. Their training in discipline and acceptance was their strength. When we stopped disciplining our teenage girls we lost the Empire.

On this note Mr Editor, I rest my case. For brevity’s sake I have omitted many points of the Victorian disciplinary techniques to both shame and humble a girl, and also make the sting of the cane more intolerable within the strict limits of discipline they set themselves, but I hope that my point has been proved.

J.J., Essex

Dear Sir,

Everybody should be beaten from time to time, either for punishment or for fun or therapeutically. It should start with the affectionate spanking of little bare bums. I remember climbing onto my mother’s knee for it. Later she made us bend over a sofa. It was part of the ordinary life in our family of many cousins, and we all expected it, and it did not frighten or humiliate us.

As we got older we graduated to the slipper, the sandal, the strap, and so forth, but always on the bare. Also we spanked each other. When my cousin Mary broke one of my toys, she slipped her knickers down and offered me her bare bottom as a matter of course. We were about 8 then, and I gave her a lovely slippering. A bit later we did it for fun. My earliest spanking party happened in an old barn. Five of us, two boys and three girls played Blind Man’s Buff. When you were caught you were slippered on the bare. We never thought of Hunt the Slipper.

A little later still I went to a school where, fortunately, there was CP for boys and girls equally. There was a big chest in an upstairs lobby, and we queued to lower our pants or knickers and receive a few whacks over the end of it with a three-foot ruler, from a master or mistress. It stung like mad, and made a broad red stripe. Some people used to yell, but with my upbringing it seemed natural.

We were well aware of the difference between punishment (retribution) and arse-whacking for enjoyment (S/M) though we did not know the words for the difference. We did not like, or seek punishment: we did like doing it for fun even when we began to get the cane. One winter at boarding school we found a spare cane, and several of us gave each other six. Thereafter, for eight weeks, I bent over every morning after breakfast and was caned behind the shed. It was marvellous! But bending over a classroom desk was not. The masters never knew, because they always caned us in our shorts, but the matron knew because she took them down and when she did it. She never made any comment or let on.

Years later, I met her accidentally, and we talked very frankly. She thought that one should always be caned on the bare because punishment and sado-masochism, though very different, were connected, and with a bottom naked, there was a sort of co-operation between the delinquent and the punisher, which was much better than mere pain. She enjoyed caning us, but she was universally considered a ‘good sort’, so she evidently did not abuse her pleasure. She also thought that girls needed the cane as much as, or even more than boys and that at co-educational schools sex discrimination was wrong: either do without or do them all, but if a master was caning a girl, they should not be alone together. In any case it was much better than other nonsensical, boring or time-wasting school punishments.

She asked me if I still did it for fun, and this was the only time she ever alluded to what she had seen. I nodded. She said that she occasionally beat old pupils. Some people needed it at intervals: others had to get rid of guilt. She also thought that everybody should be caned at least once a year regardless.

I found it impossible not to agree with her and I still do. I also favour corporal punishment of adults of any age at any official level, as a way of dealing with minor offences like parking, and maintaining discipline in an office. A cane or long birch should be used and it should be quite severe — never less than six. There is much to be said for doing it in public. I believe that this is normal in the Sudan, where men and women lie bare-bottomed over a stool outside the police station and are thrashed with a palm rib. I do not see why the audience should not enjoy it. It would make us all less inhibited and empty the prisons.

Spanking should be easier to give or get. We need discreet mutual recognition signals. There is a simple and innocuous symbol * which could be incorporated in a tie or printed or stuck on the cover of a diary. A spanker’s diary with useful information and a place for recording punishments, instruments used, number of strokes and reason would be helpful.

Speaking for myself, I begin to feel uncomfortable if I have not been caned for over a month — punishment apart. I don’t play with it: my caning friends know that they should hurt me, and they really do. I prefer to have it from a woman, but take it from men too. I also am ready to beat my friends or punish them when they need it.

Charles

* I have shown this symbol to the Editor, but for obvious reasons I have asked him not to publish it in this letter.

Dear Sir,

Probably most of your readers in hearing of Austria associate either a vacation with mountains and local costumes or political and other scandals like the wine-scandal or the still pending scandal about Mr Waldheim, former Secretary-General of the UNO.

In both cases the impression could be left that all Austrians are of the more easy-going type, a people without principles, who takes nothing really serious and who turns the eye into the other direction if there is something not so very enjoyable.

But I believe that this, like most prejudices or more general judgements is also a little bit wrong. There are a good many Austrians who do care, who do have their principles and who do live up to them. In this connection one might remember for instance that there is almost never news about Austrian youngsters or student riots. And I believe that there, in our education — among other things, of course — we are still really conservative, conservative in the good sense, which means to stick to principles handed down to us from our parents and grandparents. And that simply means that a lot of Austrian parents do have their children under strict discipline, meaning again that they use corporal punishment in their children’s education if necessary. Here my own family is a good example of this and in the neighbourhood or among our acquaintances we are by no means an outstanding example. To illustrate this let me tell you a bit about domestic discipline in my family.

My family, that is my husband Wilhelm and the three girls Dorit, Anna and Beatrix and myself, of course. My name is Elsa, I am forty-two and a rather typical Austrian housewife. Wilhelm is four years ahead and a government clerk.

My husband and I, we have introduced corporal punishment for our girls starting with hand-spanking over the lap. Then they were promoted to the strap and then the cane. They get the cane quite regularly because there is nothing so impressive in education than steadiness and perseverance.

We have a caning session once a week regularly; then they get the ‘usual’ dose which is simply as many strokes as they are of age. This they get if their record reaches a certain upper margin. This ‘usual’ dose can be increased every fourth week if their four-week record is exceptionally bad. Then between two and twelve strokes can be added to the usuals.

If the weekly record stays below the margin then, of course it is taken into the next week. To give you a better idea of how this works, I have prepared in an Appendix a list extracted from my diary concerning the punishments over the last ten weeks.

As you can see from this record of all the canings the girls get the cane at an average of about twice in four weeks, sometimes a bit more frequent and sometimes a bit less. To give them enough time for the cane marks to disappear, the area of application is changed each time they get the cane. Once it is their buttocks, then the next time the backs of their upper thighs and then the front of their upper thighs and thereafter, of course back to their buttocks. To receive the cane on their upper thighs, back and front, our girls find particularly inconvenient in summer, but we cannot help it — they should avoid it themselves with a better behaviour.

Now to the canings themselves. My husband and I do both use the cane whenever one of them needs it; we have two canes, one for each of us and we use them both at the same time on the girl in question. And we use them in all earnest, there is no fidgeting or tapping only, each stroke is applied with enough force behind to make them feel it through and through. There is no doubt about that. The swish of our canes, the dry splatting whack on the naked flesh and the deep furrow the cane’s length digs into the girls bottoms or thighs will tell everybody enough, and more so will the up-springing weals and the up-rising wails. Our girls do cry rather loud — they have to, this is assured by our two canes and they are certainly heard beyond the four walls of our sitting room where all our canings take place, and even outside the house. But our neighbours are accustomed to those slightly strange noises and do not take much notice any longer after so many years of it — there are similar sounds to be heard from at least three of them sometimes as I mentioned already.

The different places where we use the canes on our girls bodies do need, of course different position. It is the buttocks or the back of their thighs then they will bend over the edge of the heavy sitting-room table, arms outstretched for their sisters to hold one each; if it is the front of their thighs they lay back over the same table edge, arms again stretched back for their sisters to hold them.

You see that both sisters of the one to be just caned are participating in the punishment, keeping their mate in place. They have to do this always with their lower clothes removed because if they do not fulfil their task to our satisfaction they will get over the table edge themselves for a small taste of the cane. Their sister is, of course completely naked; she has to undress in front of the whole family at the beginning together with the other two. On these occasions my husband Wilhelm is always dressed rather formally while I take off my blouse usually and also skirt and slip to have more freedom to move. It is rather a strange contrast we present then, but for the girls this sight is quite normal.

I should say here, that in being a genuine Austrian housewife; being born in the rural part of the ‘Burgenland’ I have also the looks of one, i.e. I have a not too small figure with plenty of bosom and hips, a bit on the heavy side, I believe you call it buxom. And our three girls are following me quite close in that respect, they are three healthy, strong things with full-size bottoms and — except for the youngest — already with a good bust too.

When the respective girl is undressed and her sisters too have removed their panties etc and I myself have made ready, then all three of them, with the girl to be caned in the middle wait for a lengthy lecture they will hear from me and their father which goes into their deeds and into the merits of a strict domestic discipline to meet them. The face of the one in the middle shows quite well that she knows what is awaiting her and usually her lips are already trembling with fear and her eyes are already gleaming with the first tears of many tears to follow. But the other two, standing right and left do not look too happy too; they know that they will have to keep their wriggling and fighting sister well in place over the table to avoid the cane on their own buttocks. The screams and yells of their poor mate will not help them in their business, not to speak of the sight of their sisters caned areas, buttocks or thighs which accumulate increasingly more and uglier weals, the sight of which is enough to make them sick and often to cry in sympathy with their punished poor sister who in turn is desperately trying to get her arms free and to wriggle away from under the two canes slashing into her poor flesh.

These canes will come down on the girls buttocks or thighs simultaneously, that is my husband and I raise our respective canes at the same time and then flash them down onto the naked ready target at a little sign of my husband in almost one single (or better double) swish.

The sharp whack with which both canes meet their meat, as one could say, merge into one awful pain-loaded impact. Of course we will both aim for different areas on the girls buttocks or thighs, we decide on that always beforehand, explicitly and for everybody to hear, the punished girl too, so that she will know in advance where the next double-stroke will fall and searing pain shoot through her flesh.

With all this we take our time; we give the girl enough of it to recover for the next strokes after the last and also to have their fear build up again and anticipation of coming and already existent pain have them trembling all over. And they do fear their punishment, our girls, they fear them with all their heart — there is no doubt about that.

Of course they are always arguing that they are too old for such punishment, but that does not work with me or my husband. I have got the strap myself at home right up to the day I married and I did not like it either, but I had to submit to it nonetheless whenever it was thought to be necessary again. In Wilhelm’s family it was not much different. He saw his elder sister under his father’s cane until she was twenty-one and as he often has told, she got plenty of it, even at that advanced age. But as he believes, it was just these drastic measures which prevented her from becoming a bitchy lass and instead shaped her into a very respectable wife and mother, a thing which she is not too hesitant to admit herself nowadays.

For each of our double-strokes we need several minutes with all the waiting and preparation, extending thus the canings into affairs of about an hours time i.e. if it is the usual dose. Every four weeks it may be a little bit longer depending on how many additional strokes are to be applied. But as can be seen from the list in the Appendix, the ultimate caning where the girl receives as many strokes as her age plus a full twelve is not so frequent. Of course it needs more time if two of them or even three are in for the cane. Then for even longer than only one hour our sitting room is filled with the sound of down-slashing canes and the noisy howls and yells of our girls.

When a caning is over and the buttocks or thighs or the respective girl is covered by the right number of weals from me and my husbands canes the girl is released by her sisters and has to stand in the middle of the floor, legs spread a good deal and hands folded behind her neck for another lengthy lecture, her sisters following it standing right and left again. Only then these two are allowed to put on their lower clothes again, the punished girl, of course has to remain naked, standing where she is for another hour or so. If necessary we proceed after the lecture to the next girl who needs the cane and the whole procedure is repeated.

That is in short our domestic discipline and I can say without hesitation that my husband and I don’t see one reason why we should not carry on with it — it works well and has helped up to now to keep our girls out of really serious troubles and we don’t see why it shouldn’t help in the future. On the contrary, we are quite sure that quitting of this discipline would see our little ladies soon in that sort of trouble which parents who are in with soft education complain about afterwards. We will apply the cane to our daughters as long as they are living with their parents and they all three know it, but up to now we don’t think that they will leave their parents care as quick as it would be possible. They are all three happy here, and that is the best one can say of a family, that it is a happy one — and if we can say something about our family, then it is that:

We are happy, because or in spite of the cane — what does it matter then!

I hope that many other parents do take our domestic discipline for an example; we can assure them that they will be more successful in their educational task and find it all much easier. With many and deep greetings from my husband and me,

Elsa & Wilhelm Göppert

Dear Sir,

So impressed was I with the standard of Blushes 10 (which I bought some five months ago in a magazine exchange shop) that since then I’ve been building up my collection of the House of Blushes publications. To date I’ve collected more than twenty issues including a full set of Uniform Girls — my latest purchase being Blushes 12 during last weekend. This brings me to the point of my letter.

Without a doubt the photos accompanying the Stable article in Blushes 12 [Rising Trot] are the best I’ve seen. Being an avid fan of the pantied bottom, the photos of the girl in the saddle, with her short skirt pulled up over her back to reveal her tightly-fitted panties, are superb. I particularly liked the way she was raised and leaning forward in the saddle giving the impression (to me anyway) that she was demanding to be punished.

So please more photos of pantied bottoms, more pantied schoolgirls, more, more, more!

Regards,

Steve