P.N. Dedeaux Duty Caning

This comes from An English Education, set in a strict girls
boarding school of the kind featured in Jane Eyre. Indeed
Jane is the principal character and sufferer. Enjoy.

An hour later the Duty monitor for the day, a
great girl called Hutchinson, swirled past me in a
side corridor, looking sumptuous in her white.
‘Oh I say, Eyre.’ She turned back and felt into a
little leathern bag at her waist. ‘I nearly forgot.
You’re on Demerit tonight. Untidy locker on
inspection.’
She handed me a button with UNTIDY on it. My
lips were giving way. Tears mutinied to my eyes.
‘Ber-but I’ve just had nine …’
‘Well, you’ll get three more, won’t you. Oakes is
on Duty and she always makes it hurt. Cheer up!’
And she patted my cheek. ‘It won’t kill you, quite.’
I was ‘up’ for my first Duty caning. My stomach
shrank, my sides caved in. Sure enough, the
dreaded list went up shortly before Evening Hall.
‘Hard cheese, Eyre’, said a voice in the crowd
around it.
‘Good Lord, Maud is in for eight!’
There were six names: I was to suffer last.
‘Jennifer’s hardly going to have much fun.’
The notice, whose letters squirmed like snakes
before my eyes, read:
The following will attend on the Duty Mistress at
9.00 p.m.

Drayne, J Tardy 5
Palmer, T. Idle 4
Morris, M. Pert 4
ditto 4 [this was Maud]
Wragg, T. Inattentive 3
Ponsonby, E. Idle 3
Eyre, J. Untidy 3

Needless to describe the content of the hours that
passed between that simple reading and our evening
prep where, eyes glazing over well-bethumbed
Ovid or stealing a crucial glance at the clock above,
the six culprits sat with cringing skins and sinking
stomachs, occasionally receiving the sly glances of
other girls.
Promptly on the chime of nine Hutchinson strode
in and went up to the mistress in supervision. Then
she came down the aisles collecting us. She tapped
me on the shoulder with a whispered ‘Wanted’,
and I hecticly amassed my books in my desk and
followed the rest out. Without the door she called
our roll to see that all were present, then said
‘Hurry up, get into line. Now follow me.’ We did so
to the far end of the building where we went down
some wide steps to the formal Duty chamber. It was
the most miserable rank imaginable who lined up
along the wall one side of this, while the Prefect
stood opposite with the great black Demerit book in
one hand. After some minutes a few senior girls
appeared, and chatted with Hutchinson; they
liked to see the punished girls come out after their
chastisement and squirm and writhe their way up
the stairs. Finally, the sharp staccato of a
mistress’s high heels might be heard. Miss Oakes
came into view.
The Latin mistress was young and energetic, with
short curly blonde hair and square shoulders on a
chunky body. Her close-fitting black velvet tunic,
with the big L in gold on the left breast, hung
without a fold from the bursting body, while the
skirt hem barely covered the buttocks, under which
smoky stockings were tautly gartered. She bounced
into the room as we curtseyed and Hutchinson
followed in with her.
One of the great girls at the side said, ‘Ouch …
ouch … whew!’
I took a deep breath. Apprehension was filling
me wholly. We were going to get it. There was no
avoidance now. The ineluctability, the march of
events, had us in its sway and I fear that just in
front of me Thomasina Wragg [the girl birched by her tutor] was gently
crying.

Then the door abruptly opened and the monitor
called, ‘Come in’.
We entered and lined up, one behind the other,
on one side of the room. This was timbered and
raftered and far too large for the task assigned it,
that of corporeally correcting the skin of not so very
terrible sinners of the fair sex. Its size alone struck
awe into our hearts, even if its appliances did not
suffice for that task. There was a large fire. Miss
Oakes sat on the edge of a worn deal table
confronting us with three or four of the most
ferocious canes I had ever seen behind her, and the
Prefect stood beside our rank with her book. But all
the furniture we could see was the board.
This simple affair was the guillotine in our lives
of the moment. It was a plain upright board, or
plank, resolutely accoutred with straps and bars,
and for us it bespoke pain. We were going to have to
bend over the board, buttocks bare, and be flogged.
The mistresses believed in variety. Some took
the proceedings with many monitives; tonight Miss
Oakes seemed averse to such. She merely nodded.
‘All right, Hutch, let’s get on with it.’
The monitor scrutinized her book. ‘Drayne?’
‘Here.’
‘Tardy. Report of Miss Smith.’
The mistress said, ‘Have you anything to say?’
‘No, Miss.’
‘Do you wish to appeal?’ On another negative
Miss Oakes said simply, ‘Five. Take them off.’
The girl, whom I did not know, was clearly used
to the procedure. Her only visible signs of fear were
certain grimaces of the mouth, as she gradually
unbuttoned and undid her scant knickers and slid
them off. As she went to one wall where we had to
hang them on a hook, glimpses of alliciating white
underbuttock could be seen. She was not a tall girl
but had the same tantalizing liquid flesh of
Georgiana, albeit fuller of form than she.
‘Put her over tight.’ With a much less certain
look the girl approached the board. She stood to it
slightly astride and Hutchinson positioned her.
The feet went through two slots in the base,
about half a yard apart. They were then securely
stocked by bars behind the ankles. A further bar,
adjustable at the knees, made any flexion of the
legs impossible as well as undesirable. The top of
the board came about hip-high, but contained a
leaf which could be adjusted to various heights.
Atop this was a leathern pommel against which
you braced the pubis. Then an iron bar was adjusted
just behind, in the small of the back; loosed on
springs this bar then pressed there hard, cambering
the loins, an effect all the more brilliantly
produced as the monitoring Prefect then stood before
the girl and, grasping her wrists, hauled her fully
forward. Back curved, bottoms parted, tautened and
arched out for the whip, the culprit was ready to
suffer. And what a whip it was.
The Reverend Brocklehurst [the headmaster]saw to it that
nothing was spared in the severity of these
occasions and the Duty rods were those employed
with effect in boys’ reformatories. Yellow, shiny,
well-waxed their entire surface, they were longer
than the classroom canes and thicker at the tip,
though almost as whippy. I was to learn what such
minor modifications meant in intensification of
suffering. A sound Duty flogging and – I was
witnessing one – was something not even the
hardiest girl wished to repeat in a term.
Bared by no more than a contemptuous flick of
the cane under the skirt hem, the buttocks were
well spread and stretched for treatment as the
Prefect hauled on the culprit’s arms from in front.
After stepping the soles of her shoes in some rosin
at the side, the mistress measured aim and stood
back. She came about two paces forward, swinging;
the sleek stick slickly divided the air with its
drear whirr, then thumped into the underside of
the cheeks, which it visibly drove upwards. The
shock on the whole body attested to the gathered
velocity of impact, while the involuntary squirm,
and purple welt, affirmed its effect.
‘One’, said the Prefect loudly.
The mistress examined her weal. The girl in front
of me ran her tongue on her lips. She was shaking. I
caught her sick whisper, to herself, ‘Right in the
crease.’
There was a long pause whose silence was merely
underlined by the quickened breathing of the
sufferer, then two fell. A trifle higher, but a fullbodied
blow.
The mistress said, ‘Damn!’ Then, ‘Quite forward,
please, Hutch.’ The third followed deep into the
sulcal groove again and the girl gave a long
exhaled ‘Ooooo-uuuuh!’
Her head came up between her shoulders and I
could see her eyes tight shut. Fatty writhings of her
inner cheeks, pouting anus, poor pathetic wrigglings of the
wounded rounds together, spoke of her torment. She
gave a short cry at the fourth but was silent after
the fifth, her clenched mouth dribbling. The five
thick weals flamed at the very bottom of her
buttocks.
Miss Oakes looked appraisingly at these fat,
blood-thickened welts drawn full across the
underseat, for the Duty strokes were always
delivered low, into the tender sulcus if possible.
With a smile she unlatched the ankle-stocks and
the legs shot back, threshing and writhing.
‘All right.’ The Prefect released the sufferer
from before and she jumped up, face crimson and
contorted, grabbing at her inflamed flesh in rolls.
The pain was mounting up in earnest now. She
ducked a knee and mouthed an almost soundless
‘Thank you’ to the mistress and then walked, or
writhed, a-tiptoe to the side where she retrieved
her scanty undergarment.
‘Not bad, Jennifer’, said the mistress. ‘You can get
an A.’ And so the monitor duly inscribed it in the
book, each of our official chastisements being
graded for stoicism under the rod.
The girl made with ducked face to the door
without putting on her knickers, as was the form.
She looked thoroughly punished, through and
through.

Now it was the turn of pretty Teresa
Palmer, up for four. A thin girl she went to her fate
in demonstrable fear, whimpering at the board, ‘Oh
Miss … please, Miss … oh please Miss.’ She cried
lustily at the first but pulled herself together and
endured three more thudding strokes with no more
than panted gasps. She too was allotted an A. She
writhed like a dervish on her way to the door,
however.

Now poor Maud Morris, the answerer-back in the
changing-room, was called forward. Her two faults
were announced, she was sentenced to her awful
eight, and she impassively peeled the thin fabric
from her round bottoms. Bent over the board this
was indeed an impressive rump, sturdy, wellparted,
full of spring, with the afternoon’s cuts
clearly inscribed across the cheeks. Miss Oakes
seemed to want to make sure the maximal severity
permissible was inflicted, for any criticism of a
mistress was conceived especially heretical.
She bounded forward and lashed the young chubs
till they juddered again. Ferocious weals barred the
underneath proffered. With astonishing phlegm
the girl silently reached six, after whose
resounding whack she slowly stiffened, her cheeks
squeezing in with her agony.
Like a runner at the end of a race she gasped
back, ‘No, please … it is enough … dear God, to
punish me so …’
Miss Oakes smiled, watching the pain do its
work.
‘Relax’, she said gravely. ‘Unclench them,
Maud.’
The girl groaned. The Prefect pulled her arms
and the cane sang in again.
‘Seven!’
‘YOWWW!’
‘Eight!’
‘HOAAAW!’
Maud Morris writhed in perfect agony when it
was over. She walked from the room slowly,
holding herself and making dreadful deep groans.

‘Next.’
Wragg and Ponsonby were despatched in the
same businesslike way and suddenly the room was
whirling round me. I was there alone, facing the
now slightly smiling mistress on whose upper lip I
could see a droplet of sweat. It was happening, it
was happening …

‘Eyre?’
‘Here.’
‘Untidy. My report, Miss.’
‘Have you anything to say?’
‘N-no, Miss.’
I could not take my eyes from that frightful cane
whose tip was pressing and bending at the
floorboards before me.
‘Wish to appeal?’ On another negative the
mistress then said, ‘First time?’
‘Yes, Miss.’
She nodded. ‘Three of the best. Take them off.’
As I returned from hanging my miniscule knickers
on the hook my beaten buttocks cringed in
anticipation.
‘Over tight, Hutch.’
I was sick-throated as the monitor, first taking
off my UNTIDY button, put me to the board. The
leathern pommel came just to my height and, when
I was pressed against it with skirt up in front, felt
wet and warm from the groins of the previous sufferers. My
legs were stocked and straightened by the knee-bar.
I bent over. Released across the small of my back
the bar there, also padded with leather on its
underneath, pressed most strongly. Its spring was
very powerful, more so than I had expected and
made me arch out my bottom behind. The Prefect
then took my hands in hers. She did this by
gripping my right wrist with her right, and I had
to grasp hers back. Then the left was taken
likewise, in her left, and with hands crossed over in
this manner she hauled me forward. I realized I
was on my toes and quaking all over.
The mistress examined her meat, feeling out the
sulcal groove with a finger, since it was a tradition
that the Duty cuts were delivered here where, any
girl will tell you, it hurts most. Due to the friction
of the overhang the skin is more tender at this
point. Before I knew it I was cut.
‘One’, said the Prefect.
Ah, what a stroke! It fell with less sound than
I’d expected but jolted me forward with a grunt. A
savage wave of flame laved my lower person.
Heavens, how it stung. Suddenly, it seemed that a
second wave rose and joined this first, mounting
unbearably. I heard a breathless whine – my own –
and cringed in my cheeks, so rudely assaulted. I
held myself tense in spasm for what seemed
minutes, then, exhausted, let my buttocks hang
slack, and flaccid.
I was whipped again. This time I gasped aloud.
The monitor counted. The wave flamed. The pain
ate in. Oh this was strict, indeed. The Duty cane
doubled the agony. Again, a brief fury of rebellion
helped me endure – it was unjust to be made to suffer
so. Stocked, stripped, and given cuts to make a
convict writhe, right in the tenderest part of our
softest persons. But, where was the third?
‘You’re clenching’, said the mistress.
‘I cer-can’t help it, Miss’, I barely breathed.
‘Well, you’d better or you’ll get extra. Relax
them quite now.’
The third terrific stroke wrapped itself around
me.
I cried.
‘One extra for clenching’, I heard in the mists
above my head and behind my bruised back.
It was given. I prefer to pass over what ensued.
Somehow I managed to curtsey and leave that room.
I was awarded but a C. What I best remember was
the sudden access of pure white fire that attained
me outside the door and sent me spinning like a
dancer, grabbing great rubbery rolls of tormented
flesh, in front of the grinning great girls there, as I
tried in vain to pluck out the demon which was
continuing to burn into and under my being.
‘Hooouuu-aaaaah!’
‘Tight enough for you, Eyre?’
‘Why did you get four?’
‘Feeling warm?’

I got to the dormitory and put myself to bed, as
was the rule. Lying on my belly in the half-dark, I
felt those brutal weals, the skin all hot and taut
upon their bulges. I wished for the frame that
birched girls were given, to raise the sheets off
their flogged bottoms. The pain gradually dimmed,
dulled and I felt warm all over.
Presently the door softly opened and closed and a
figure approached me, that of Parker. Another was
with her, the monitor’s friend Crawford. Holding
hands by my bed they looked down at me softly
smiling.
‘Bad luck, Eyre, we heard you got a Duty.’
‘A real beauty’, said. her friend, ‘according to
Hutch.’
‘It did sting rather’, I said with assumed
bravado.
‘Can we see them?’
‘Oh all right’, I said with a petulant shrug of my
body.
My sheets were peeled down, my gown up and
cool air calmed my buttocks.
‘Phew! you certainly caught it on the right.’
‘You could put a ruler over the lot, I declare.’
‘Th-that one you’re touching now’, I said as a
hand pulled the buttock slabs up to examine well
under me, ‘that was the worst of all. The last one.
For clenching.’
I felt a curious quaint pride in having come
through and in having these great girls examining
my wounded person with such obvious respect.
‘You should never clench with Oakes. She
always notices’, said Parker, still feeling me.
‘Besides’, added Crawford, ‘clenching only
makes it bruise more. It helps against the first
sting, but not the second.’
‘It helps in birching, though.’
‘That’s why they fig you first.’
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘Ginger suppository up the anus. Makes you
spread like billyho.’ The girls giggled, then Parker
whispered something to her friend and Crawford
left the room. The Dorm head leant over me and
said a little breathlessly, ‘I’ll put some cold cream
on them for you, Eyre, and you’ll feel ever so better,
just you see.’
I was not averse. Actually I was beginning to feel
a pleasant heat in my soft and swollen lower lips.
Parker went up to her alcove and came back and sat
on my bed. She began to rub the cream into my
cheeks with slow squeezing hands. I panted at once.
Soon my hinds were so greasy they were slipping
under her ministrations, blubbery balls of flesh that
she churned together with her thumbs up their
insides.
‘Feel better?’
‘Ooooh yes. Ber-but I … oh Parker … I’m …’
She chuckled knowingly. ‘Relax. Let yourself go,
silly.’ Then, ‘You’ll have to cant your bum up a bit
so’s I can get at those lower weals.’
With grateful greed I did so, on my knees, my
loins arching of their own accord. I knew the
twinned apricot of my sweet slot was pouching
prettily back between the top of my thighs.
‘Oh thank you’, I panted. ‘This is lovely.’
She laughed again and laved into my cunt with
her greasy thumbs. I ooohed at once. I felt red-hot
down there, like a kettle about to burst. When one
thumb flicked my clit I groaned aloud. The ready
sentinel was stiff.
‘I … oh heavens if you go like that … I’m, uigh,
I’m afraid I’m going to squirt!’
‘Of course you are’, she chided. ‘Just let yourself
go. You’re learning something we all find out here
sooner or later. It’s five times as fine after a
whipping. There, you’re drippy as a sponge.’
All the while she had been massaging the
underside of my bud with the ball of her thumb. It
was irresistible. I said quietly, ‘I feel I’m going to
blow up now’, and I did. She jammed her thumb full
home, palming my belly, as I came, giving me
purchase on which to mash my hungry red dragon. I
jacked straight, gripping her wrist between my
thighs, and tides of ecstasy flowed, molten, over me
in wave on shaking wave. She was right. I had
never known such lengthening of bliss, finger myself
as I might at Gateshead. Finally, when I could look
back limp, I saw Parker sniffing her hand with a
smile.
‘You smell of violets in a hot sun, darling’, she
said. ‘Heavens, you certainly go a lot. Was it good?’
I wriggled expressively for answer.
‘Well, we shall have to wipe you off in the
wash-room, shan’t we, or you will be on the mat for
staining your sheets tomorrow. The grease won’t
matter so much, but if Matron sees your goo …!’ She
tugged at my shoulder. ‘Come on, idiot. Then you
can be nice to me behind my curtain afterwards,
can’t you, I’m certain you’ve a tongue like an eel.
Remember, I do have to give you three more in a
mo’.’
Suddenly I wanted to cry, and did so.
‘Wha-wha-wha’, I blubbered, keening. ‘We’re
all always being caned here … and it hurts so
much …’
‘Yes, but think what a lot of good it does you.’