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.’

Caning Girls Prussian Style

A caning session this time, by P.N. Dedeaux from The Prussian Girls
introducing the Duty caning of which more another time. Enjoy

The time was half past eight in the evening, and at nine the
Duty Mistress held her notorious session with those
unfortunates who had been put up on the Duty List.
This was one of the most dreaded moments of the
day, for all concerned.
The lovely girl sighed. She shifted her thighs. Under the
tight green knickers her bottoms felt shivery and
wobbly, and twice as big as usual. She wondered if
it showed, behind. A book dropped and she jumped.
It was the girl in the desk to her right. As the
book had fallen open near Monika’s feet she
reached to help pick it up. A note was stuffed
hurriedly in her hand. Two bright eyes caught hers.
Slowly, under carefully cupped fingers, Monika
read the single word scribbled in pencil – ‘Glück!’
Good luck. She ventured a quick glance across the
aisle, and caught her friend Barbara Mack’s eyes in
a sympathetic squeeze of commiseration. Then she
swallowed the morsel of paper, barely moving her
gullet as she did so. That had been decent of
Barbara. If they’d been caught, Fräulein Katte
would have given Barbara ten with the birch. At
least.

The door swung open and Monika’s world crashed
about her. For a second she couldn’t catch her
breath. A tall Prefect called Else Gundling
strode in, wearing her uniform of office – in her case,
of the same soft black leather as the mistresses’, but
the skirt in very short pleats falling over smoky
stockings, tautly hauled, and knee-length leather
boots. These clicked with precision as the eighteenyear-
old girl went up to the Monitor’s desk in
silence, curtseyed, and whispered something. Then
she was coming along the aisle to Monika, whose
heart began to hammer like a … like a …
‘Duty Mistress requires to see you. Follow me.’
Sickly closing her Caesar, Monika stood up and –
with nobody looking at her but everyone looking at
her – followed the Prefect out of the room. Once
outside Gundling led off smartly down long stone
corridors, lit by flares. She marched in martial
tread – left, right, left, right – and Monika had to
keep step with her, just behind. The girls were not
allowed to talk. The shadows fled over the strong
broad shoulders of the figure leading her, yes, to
hell. Round Gundling’s thick neck was the gold
chain from which hung a P, symbol of her office –
not for Präfekt, but for Pflicht, since she was Duty
Prefect for the day. The shoulders tapered to a
surprisingly narrow waist, caught in by a broad
leather belt, and beneath that the hips thumped
out lustily to either side, making the brief skirt
swing, as the heels struck down sharply at the
flagstones. Monika was feeling sicker and sicker – it
was all happening so fast, so irrevocably – she tried
to breathe in deeply, half tripped round a corridor,
heard an irritated ‘Come on!’ and was soon aware,
at the end of their flickering vision, of the long,
long corridor leading to the West Wing and the
little area, or parade ground, in front of the Duty
Room. Before she knew it, the Prefect had
reached this, turned completely round, standing to
attention with her back to the wall one side of the
door, and staring, expressionless, over Monika’s
shoulder.
‘Hurry up. Knock’, she hissed in a whisper.

Monika stepped up shivering to that plain deal
door whose vision had filled so many Prussian girls
with trepidation. She raised her hand. She had to
knock. But her fingers refused to function. She bit
her lip. She was going to cry. Perhaps to pee. After
all, it had been such a very little fault. Hadn’t it?
Speaking to a mistress without being spoken to. An
accident, as a matter of fact, a slip, but as in the
Army every accident at Rutenberg was treated as a
crime. How many then? Talking out of turn was
surely only six. It couldn’t be more than six, could it
… Wedell wouldn’t give her more than …
‘Oh come on’, said a voice and the Prefect beat
her own knuckles on the door. A low ‘Herein!’
resounded in a woman’s tone and Monika
constrained her fingers to open the door, enter the
room, close the door behind her, march to the centre
and curtsey to the two women standing there, one
slightly behind the other.

It was a large rectangular place with a wooden
floor of ebony black and a general impression, at first
always, of being furniture-less. Like some
gymnasium, or stripped prison antechamber. An air
of stern gloom hung over all.
This was not relieved, for Monika, by the sight
of the two mistresses. The one who stood closer back
to the fireplace was Fräulein Holz, of whom
Monika had inadvertently asked a question,
without being addressed, or raising her hand first,
that morning. Thus incurring mandatory
chastisement. The one in front was much more
impressive, however, since she was not in the
customary uniform. Fräulein Wedell, as Duty
Mistress for the day, did wear the gleaming,
creaking thigh-length boots, it was true, but above
these what she had on was no more than a most
skimpy tunic of spotless white, a heavy Tours silk,
caught in at the waist by the usual wide belt but
the skirt falling, in a slight flare, over the firm
slopes of her hips from which it depended briefly,
in suggestive reign, on the tops of her brilliant
boots. She had on the chain of office and a golden P
was embroidered between her breasts. At thirtytwo
Fräulein Wedell was a massive beauty with a
rather flat face, slumbrous eyes and a mane of brown
hair held back in a slide. Under her tense, gourdlike
breasts, whose nipples prodded like thumbs at
the stuff enclosing them, she bent a long and springy
Rohrstock or cane, yellow, highly polished and concluding in a
knob, at the grasping end. She looked as if she could
cane extremely hard, which she could, and enjoy
doing it, which she most certainly did.

All this had Monika’s gaze, fixed straight in
front of her like a soldier’s, taken in, as well as – to
her right – the outlines of a leather-padded
vaulting horse. These occasional punishments could
be treated in various ways. In this case they had
probably decided to take her over the horse. But
her thoughts were interrupted from further
speculation on her fate.
‘Monika Vorst?’
‘Yes, Fräulein.’
‘You stand accused of speaking to a mistress
without permission. Report of Fräulein Holz. What
do you plead?’
‘Guilty, if you please, Fräulein.’
‘Have you anything to say?’
‘No.’
‘Do you wish to appeal?’
‘No.’
This ritual over, Monika waited with bated
breath.
How many?
‘You will receive eight strokes with the cane.’
Eight!
‘Thank you, Miss’, she said hastily.
‘Strip’, came the command and again hurriedly,
as if there were suddenly no time, Monika reached
under her tunic and slid her tight green knickers down and
off, leaving them neatly folded on the floor. Then
she tightened up her stockings and folded her skirt
into her chain belt. After which she stood to
attention again.
Monika tried to keep her face as expressionless as that of
the hefty Wedell, as the latter wiped off her
fingers on a rag and raised the senior cane. Monika
gulped. It was an aching, soulless length of round
yellow willow, or ash, that the mistress was now
rubbing with rosin at its gripping end, obviously
capable of lashing out agony across a girl's naked bottom.
It was a thing of the reformatory rather than the girls’ dormitory;
its thumping whip would make a hardened harlot dance.
Eight strokes with … that?

The Duty Mistress came forward and for a second
inspected her naked front. Monika had a heavy
bulging mound adorned with strong curls rather
darker than her hair; her vulval lips were pulpy
and close seamed. Evidently satisfied the mistress
went behind.
‘Lean forward, hands on your knees.’
She palped and pressed the flesh of the young
buttocks carefully for a moment. Monika knew she
had marks from a previous beating behind and the
good Fräulein was feeling the extent of bruise left,
if any, in order to see if she should use the same spot
again. For maximum pain within the just limits of
allotted discipline was a sine qua non of Schloss
Rutenberg, as elsewhere in the kingdom.
Not content with examining Monika's buttocks, the
mistress ran her fingers up and down the lovely girl's
bottom crack and into her pouting anus.

‘Bend over there.’ The quiver of willow
indicated the caning horse.
It was a low one and Monika stretched over it in
the correct pose – feet astride, her belly on the
leather top, which inclined slightly down, her
arms in front of her, her hands gripping the wood at
the side. She stared ahead at a far wall, on which
was a rack of canes in parallel lines. She heard
Fräulein Holz come forward, the two exchange some
comments, and she heard the Duty Mistress step
well back and to one side.

Then she heard the sudden thumping pace and that tearing
of stretched silk which was the noise the cane made as it
whirred through the silent air about her, more
compelling a sound than any in her memory and,
indeed, more frightening than the little dry thuck
of its licky impact.
By then it had happened. The limber limb
thrashed round the fatted flesh of her bum low down, causing
her a blaze of excruciating pain. She gasped and
clenched her teeth, so as not to cry out.
Seven more.
There was a long pause, for these mistresses were
expert in the minutiae of physical chastisement,
knowing that the feeling of leisurely endlessness
was an essential ingredient, and timing their cuts to
succeed at the maximum moment of mounted
sensation.
Tthhhrrrrrllll-wuck!
Two.
Monika said nothing. She was being thrashed
now, and she knew it. She was a privileged member
of a master race, a race of gods and goddesses,
descended from the mists of old, ancestors of glory,
and she put her tongue between her teeth, bidding
herself bite through it rather than disgrace her
body and cry out. All she uttered were stomachdeep
grunts – ‘Huink!’
Three … four … five … you could get to five or six
with one of these light canes, but anything more
began to be a problem.
‘Lower’, murmured Fräulein Holz, from behind
her.
Phrrrrwuppp!
ONLY TWO MORE!
It was a good thrashing and, though low, well
spaced out so that the whole of her bottom stung,
hard. Wedell always had a lot of weight in her
cuts. If only she’d get these last ones over with
quickly.
Monika knew just what she looked like
from behind – a pair of welted buttocks which, try
as she might, could not keep from squeezing and
squirming and rolling, her buttocks well spread and
her puckered anus on display, the slotted oval of her sex shamelessly on show beneath. She jammed her
knees into the woodwork and found that her fingers
were scratching at the same in front.
‘That one made her jump a bit.’ There was low
laughter.
‘Anyone would think she wanted it … up her.’
Ph-ph-phrrrrrpp!
Monika lost and found her tongue – ‘Haïee!’
That had hurt very considerably indeed. Oh
God, how that beastly cane could sting. She shot out
a leg. Christ! Could she hold it for another! She
had to … for Brandenburg, for … Prussia. She knew
the Prefect outside would be counting the cuts,
which would come to her as thin flicks of air, and
she wondered if a finger would be under her skirt
working up a hungry tongue of gristle in her slit.
PHHHHRRWPPPPI
Over!
But this was the worst. The pain was at its very
worst about thirty seconds afterwards, and lasted so
for a full minute; she had to show her control by
waiting for Erlaubnis, the ritual word of permission
to get up, and then she had not to rub her bum after.

She tried to freeze herself to the caning horse, tried to
still the seething writhing of her ribbed cheeks in
her rear. Tears ran down her lovely face.

‘All right’, she heard.
She stood up a trifle unsteadily, clamping hands
to her sides to stop them wandering out of control,
made weakly for her knickers, which she
shiveringly pulled up. Having frantically tugged
down her skirt she approached the Duty Mistress,
dropped to one knee, said, ‘Thank you for punishing
my fault, Fräulein’, and kissed the tip of the cane.
To her dry lips it seemed somewhat warm. Then she
was blundering out.
The Prefect waiting outside, just under the
well-known Duty List, frankly grinned when she
saw Monika’s writhen lips and miserably fisted
hands at her flanks. Although she was not
supposed to speak, she said, ‘Good caning? I hoped
you were going to get ten.’

She started striding back. Monika stumbled into
step behind, but was now able to grab her beaten
buttocks and knead them beneath her tunic. The
Prefect walked fast, knowing (as knew mewing
Monika) that the pain was still mounting nicely in
the pair of whipped bottoms and that self-control
on re-entering the classroom was going to provide a
salutory task of will power. It was for that one went
to places like Schloss Rutenberg, after all.
‘Hey, keep in step’, she more than once turned
back angrily to declaim.

A good caning? Monika knew it had been.
Excellent. Eight sweeping strokes right under her
chubbiest parted person, a seething cauldron of
purplish weals that made her suddenly pant and
stop, squirming, her forehead pressed to the icecold
wall.
‘Please, Gundling. Just a second. Honestly.
Wedell cuts so tight.’
‘Come on. Or I’ll have to report you for
dawdling.’
The Pre was pulling at her tunic when, from an
intersection ahead, a mistress appeared. She was
young and pretty, with rather mousy hair, and
under normal circumstances they would have
detected her approach by the jingling of keys at her
belt. This mistress as yet wore none. She was new
this term and her name was Maria Daunitz, from
near Gentin. By chance she had got to know Monika
Vorst and came forward, smiling shyly, at the
already much-embarrassed girls. Stopping in
corridors was a caning offence. In some schools you
had to run in all passageways.
‘Poor Monika. Have you just been caned?’
‘Yes, Fräulein’, came the answer, after both girls
had curtseyed.
‘Let me see.’
The mistress parted skirt and panties and
inspected. The weals were thick and hard and hot.
Another caning across them could be agonizing, if
well applied. Which, at Schloss Rutenberg, it
invariably was.
‘Hurt a lot?’
‘Yes. I was j-just …’
‘Well, you’d better be on your way, hadn’t you? I
know the Head doesn’t approve of dawdling in
corridors. Any more than I do.’

She tapped the slabby butt and watched it joggle
out of sight, round another turn of the corridor, as
Monika followed the martial Prefect. As the latter
finally opened the schoolroom door for her charge
to enter she, too, smiled. The girl was doing well. It
might be interesting to find out one day, one night,
if she … and just which dormitory was Vorst in?
‘Thanks, Gundling.’
‘Just as well it was that new mistress. Or, she’d
have had both our hides.’
Red of face and wet of eye, but hands beside her,
Monika went up to the Monitress and requested
permission to return to Prep. It was granted and,
when she resumed her desk, stood at it, as was
required of any girl who had just suffered correction.
In the total silence of the softly ticking room, every
aspect of it proclaimed one thing and one only: I
have been flogged … I have been well caned across
the naked buttocks and it stung like such sheer hell
I wished I didn’t have any. Eight slow juicy strokes,
driving in just above the sulcus until I wanted to
scream and squirm but I couldn’t. I couldn’t, because
of my country’s honour. All the same the tip did eat in like
fury. She could feel it still.

Across the aisle Barbara Mack saw sidelong the
little fatty quivers that shot through that jut of
rump. Her eyes were moist and gleaming.
Yes, it was still hurting a very great deal – as
each single breast, beating beneath those thin green
tunics knew. Monika herself bore no resentment.
Such a notion never even got near to her mind. She
was happy she had again ‘come through’, without
disgrace, and that was simply that. It had been a
routine beating, and thus another ordeal and
challenge to rise to. Like an athletic activity, in
many ways. She had broken a rule, and reaped the
consequences. She admired Wedell for making it so
painful, so ‘tight’, and knew she had got
everything out of her eight strokes she could. Once
or twice she had been a trifle wild, she had
‘overhit’ perhaps at the end, but by and large it
had been a methodical, calculated caning of the
type that made you feel corrected through and
through. Monika’s burning bottom now felt thrice its
size, heavy as lead, but she knew corporal
punishment achieved its goal. If she made that
same mistake again, she’d be more likely to get a
dozen. And anyway the worst of the smart was now
subsiding nicely, melding into a pervasive heat,
and sense of satisfaction at her centre. Relaxed and
torpid, she stared at Caesar’s rank prosaic prose
and knew she would have to borrow Barbara’s bone
thing from her again tonight.

Classic Birching

Pictures of girls receiving the birch are hard to find and the best known series is shown here. It is probably incomplete and I would certainly like to hear of any that are missing. The original pics are labelled Soho but I think they come from Nu West. The first girl to be birched I think is Debbie, a Nu West star from years ago.

I like to think that the birching takes place in a girls reformatory when corporal punishment of deserving girls was the norm. I like to imagine the girls have been caught in lesbian activity and face the mandatory punishment for this of twelve strokes of the birch across their bare bottoms, well secured in turn over the birching horse.

Take a look at the birch being used on the girls. It is not a bundle of twigs but a group of half a dozen or so thin whippy canes, bound together to form a handle. Just imagine how much that stings!

Beauty and the Birch

A beautiful young girl describes her punishment under the birch and shows the positions she had to adopt over the birching block. By P.N. Dedeaux, adapted here and there by me:

The birch, that clever instrument of corporal punishment, deserves, and shall have, a chapter of my modest memoirs to itself. For, if comparisons in the field of correction may well be considered odious, of all the items contrived to vex and cure me in those days I do declare it excited the most signal dread in my soul and skin. And my tutor Pelham was expert in its use.

The birch is a wood that absorbs and holds
water. Accordingly, the rods that I ‘put up’ each
afternoon were left to steep in long shallow glass
trays, on a sideboard in the library. The solution
was a concoction of the tutor’s, very vinegary, and it
toughened the twigs, in particular their buds,
considerably. These thin limbs imparted an
inconceivable sting, each one, and a single rod was
generally of five. Pelham never allowed more nor
seven, since they then tended to swing together and
dull the individual agony. The stone-hard buds,
with which each had to be furnished at the tip,
struck into the fat like fury, yet a good birch did not
bruise, though it cut and flecked and grazed the
skin intolerably. Perhaps it was a surface smart,
unlike the cane, and I suspect it died down more
rapidly than the latter. Even so, a protracted count
would soon be hellish, and any more than a dozen calculated to have the most hardened sinner howling. For this was an implement with which you could ‘go’ many, since it did not stun and dull.

My first ‘bill’ with Mr. Pelham was for fourteen
and the afternoon of the first Thursday I had ‘put up’
my rods, some five of them, I recall, under the
watchful eye of my tutor, who took me to the woods
and liked to keep his strength in by felling mighty
trees. To watch him with an axe, and then imagine
him using a rod on one’s person, was a trembling
terror in itself. Anyway, I showed him each limb I
cut for his approval, and he would hiss it through
the aching air, and nod, and say, ‘Good, but get
them longer if you can. More swing, and lash.’ Or,
‘If you cut me another without buds like this, young lady,
you’ll feel it round your legs.’ And I bound them at
the grasping end with stout twine, and laid them in
the trays so that all the sap should flow to the
tips. By a further knowledgeable refinement, the
two or three rods to be used of an evening would be
set to steep in buckets of boiling brine, some hour
before application, beside the block, in a further
toughening procedure.

All in all, in Lady B. Mildmount’s phrase of it,
the birch had ‘great charm’, and she liked to drop
by of a festive Friday evening, when my bill was
settled after dinner. The ceremony attendant on
these occasions was trying in the extreme, and
calculated to be so.

I would come down in a short blouse and stockings, otherwise quite nude except sometimes for a brief suspender belt, and stand outside the door of the library, situate at the far end of the mansion to The Squealery. There I would shudder a half hour or more till the company had had a sufficiency of port and nuts to please themselves to come along for my punishment.
Then they would enter past me, Lord Usher
carrying the black Demerit Book, Lady Julia often
with a playful pat under my blouse, behind, and
Pelham invariably without a word. The shut door
would again accuse my eyes, while the seconds
turned into great pangs of dread. My imagination
would run amok. I would see the block, the bent girl,the panther’s claws streaked across her base.

‘Come in.’
Mrs. Wilson it was who always opened that
door. The first and almost the only thing I could see
in that long, stately chamber was the block, and
the boiling birches beside it, at the far end, on a
small bare dais. For me they were all the furniture
it contained.

Lord and Lady Usher and my tutor would have
taken up comfortable poses in low chairs in front of
that dais, to which my trembling steps took me,
accompanied by the tartary housekeeper. Good
positions to watch the correction of a sinful girlchild.
Once facing them on the dais I would see Lord
Usher open the Great Book. He would read out my
fault, together with its date, and occasioning.
‘Commission of Insubordination’, he would
conclude. ‘Have you anything to say?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Do you wish to make appeal?’

‘No sir.’ I did not in fact know quite what this
constituted, but had been assured that a ‘failed’
appeal carried an aggravation of the dose. So never
tried it.

‘Fourteen strokes of the birch against the naked
buttocks’, he would continue easily. ‘Tardiness, late
for. . . .’ Etcetera.

Finally, there would be a long and, to my modest
mind, unnecessary lecture on my errors – ‘I am sorry
to see you in the bill so soon, Thomasina, but I am
certain you will already agree that the most
efficacious method of extirpating mistakes is to
make one dread their consequence. Which we shall
regretfully proceed to do. These fourteen stripes
will sit in your memory next week, and perhaps
help you to avoid their repetition by error.
‘Pelham’, he would say, with a foolish grin, ‘do we
have anyone here to birch a girl?’

‘I think so’, would come the reply.

‘Present’, said Lord Usher to me. And I had to
draw a rod from its bucket and ‘present’ it with a
curtsey to the tutor, saying, ‘I humbly request
correction, sir, for my great faults of Insubordination
and twice Tardiness.’


Then I would stand before the block until he had
doffed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves
sufficiently, and pronounced the gruff order, ‘Strip and go
over!’ – at which I would doff my blouse and Mrs. Wilson would delightedly secure me.



It was a beastly position for punishment. The block which Mr.
Pelham had so thoughtfully brought with him
that first day was properly black, but otherwise it
generally ceased to resemble the Eton version,
famous in fact and legend. It was bolted to the floor
in some manner. I set my knees on its sawdusty ledge
and bent right over.

The thighs were held vertical,
and strapped above the knees (slightly parted) to
the back – or was it the front? – of the horror. The
upper body then found itself lying fully forward,
the shoulders veritably on a level with the knees,
so strongly did the forward (or backward) slope
yield down. There was a belt at the waist, forcing
one over, two slender but effective straps that went
under the armpits, while the arms themselves were
strapped at elbow and wrist either side the base –
so that one had the paradoxical sensation of being
compelled to embrace this cruel and tormenting
lover. Needless to remark, all modesty must
perforce be lost to the sufferer, who found herself
fully on view; the twin hemispheres of her girlish bottom were nicely
separated, bottom hole on display, and set up for their whip.

The victim was in no mood to indulge such
picturesque semantical luxuries. Already the
longest birch had been picked out, dripping, having
been replaced there after its ‘presentation.’
Recognizable were the limber limbs one had culled
the day before, and seen slashed leather-hard into
a tree-trunk for testing and checking. Already the
tutor was drawing back, and instinctively oneself
was drawing in, and turning back a trembling face,
and

Hhhhhrrrppp!

‘One’ – from Mrs. Wilson, counting. (‘OH!’)

Hhhhhrrrppp!


‘Oh no!’

Hhhhhrrrruppp!

‘Oh no, sir … please … it’s … no, not …

NOOOOHHH!’



That man made me pay every second of each
count, until I was ‘taken down’, gasping and
grasping and grazed and ruddy, for he always
‘drew’ by a dozen or less. Many is the time that poor
shirttail was stained wet with my sins by bedtime.
And still I had to thank him on bended knee, after.



For each of us it is different, and to me the birch
was the most ‘profound’ of my punishments. Even
when all pain, or most, was strictly over, it left me
shuddering and trembling like a leaf with sheer
emotion in front of my mirror, terrified at my terror.

These would be the times Lady Julia would burst
impetuously in, her stride outlining her thighs
against the robin’s-egg velvet of her gown, her
high-heeled slippers clicking, while her own piled
hair, combined with the false, seemed almost as
tall as her bust was broad.

‘Poor Thomasina, all in a ruby dew, and no one to
comfort her. Diddums. Shall Auntie suck it better?’
Alas, it was one of her ‘comfortings’ later that
cost me one of my smartest ‘swishings’ of that
winter. For the birch-rod was not merely reserved
for Fridays. It could be called for at need, and was. I
was even ‘given’ the tormenting decision between
nine with the cane and fifteen with the birch. I was
birched a brilliant beetroot red for soiling my
clothes outdoors. I showed blue wales from the buds
and a blubb’ry face for failing to rise when Lady M.
came in.

I could get to six or seven of these stingy flicks,
but then it was all a steady agony of sin, of ‘Hou!’
and ‘Auee!’ and tattooing toes and tensening cheeks.
So firmly, indeed, did my poor feet beat on the floor
of that dais, after a dozen it was considered wise to
place a cushion under them there, whilst any
turning off of my right side only roundened it for the
rod. The very worst of all was when the tutor, at
Lady Mildmount’s thoughtful advice, ‘whipped in’,
the tips finishing between the cheeks. I sang most
lustily then, a song repeated I assure you on the toilet the following morning.

Masturbation and its Punishment

My usual ‘bill’ – if I was ultra-careful – did not
amount to more than twenty, but for masturbation I
was once adjudged thirty, and it was the stingiest
punishment I had had, until that time. It happened
this way.

There had been a Friday bill of sixteen and
somehow it had been singularly tight. Pelham had
cut me keenly and low and made me wait an endless
age for the last few stripes of the sum. Not to stain
my sheets (as I thought) I lay on my belly on my
bed, later, feeling my bloodied bum; for some reason
I had thrown myself down in my shirt with head
towards the bed’s foot. It was all I could do at first
to prevent myself rolling in pain. Whew! How he’d
hewed me.

That night there came a rattle at the door handle and in a
whispering rustle of perfume and lace Lady Julia
strode in; she had divested herself of her gown and
wore only her mules, stockings and a filmy Maline
slip that barely came to her thighs. She moved on
her magnetic errand with her usual emotional
speed.

‘Here, let me put some cold cream on them, pet.’

At once she was bent over me, breathing,
crooning, and humming, fingers sliding over my
streaked bum cheeks which she greased with needless
zeal, until they slipped around like bubbies in her
grasp. She was standing with feet astride at the
foot of the bed, over which she leant, to ‘comfort’
me, and by turning up my head I could see her rich,
fat, bushy twat. Then I buried my face in the
cushiony counterpane in order to concentrate on not
coming, for this voluptuous woman could bring me to
a climax quickly and as yet there was still too much
pain left in my flesh for me to reach that pure
pinnacle of pleasure only the flagellated can
fathom, from where it lies buried in the ocean’s
depths. All the same I was bucking up my arse and
generally heaving and moaning in response to her
feeling thumbs. What girl could have resisted
them, I wondered.

But after some apologetic and flushed cossetings, she
left me unsatisfied that night and as for me I could
bear it no longer; when she had gone the pain
had subsided enough to be purely provoking and I
squatted on the sheets and had at myself,long, liquidly and
unreservedly.

That this was the preface to one of the tidiest
hidings I ever had I was to know when prying Mrs.
Wilson entered The Squealery next morning with a
sheet over one arm – ‘Look at this, sir, look at this
now.’

Pelham considered the spot she showed him
with a look of distaste, while I pretended to be
immersed in my Livy.

‘What is this?’

‘Onanism, sir, It is nothing else.’

‘Girl, did you masturbate last night?’

‘Yes, sir.’ The evidence was too damnatory to
deny it.

‘We’ll soon put paid to that little habit’, my
tutor said grimly. ‘Cold bath and a birching last
thing tonight.’

‘Yes, sir’, said Mrs. Wilson with a satisfied tuck
to her lips.

It took place in my bedroom as ordered, and only
Pelham and the housekeeper were present. After
sitting in a tub of water, into which ice had been put
expressly, I was ‘horsed’ for the first time. Mrs.
Wilson took my two arms over her shoulders and
leaning well forward inclined me over with her,
placing her feet solidly apart to support and steady
me. I was buck naked and three birches steamed in
readiness. Furthermore, I was still tender at the
seat from the tight tanning of the night before, so
that atop my dangling legs it must be excused me if
my darlings were all in a dither.

‘How many, sir, how many?’

‘Further over, Mrs. W., and further still. I mean
to get under her.’

‘Yes, sir. Take your time, I can hold her like this
all night.’

‘How many, sir, please? Oh please not more than
a dozen.’

And then I wished I hadn’t asked – ’Thirty cuts
for playing with yourself.’

‘Thiiiiirty!’ I wailed, in despair.

‘Make it a round three doz, sir, I can hold ’er for
ye firm.’

Zzzzzsccch!

‘OW!’

‘One’, said Mrs. Wilson, breathing firmly.
The man whipped me with a will. For the first
ten agonizing slices I confined myself to little Oh’s
and Ah’s and throwing out of my legs. At ten he
changed his birch and went lower, changing his
tempo and bringing me up to sixteen very fast. My
squirmings merely spread me better for the twigs.

I was now making fish-like leaps about Mrs.
Wilson’s back, her fingers digging firmly into the
flesh of my shoulders now. My own, I freely confess,
wandered freely; used as a rule to scratching and
writhing at the sides of the block, they now felt
firm flesh and I believe I occasioned my ‘horse’
some strange moments as I helplessly palped her
big breasts with my hands.

‘Uuuugh ... owww ... nooooh!’ And so on.

He went to twenty-three with this birch, which
he changed again. I was then in VERY HELL! The
last cuts were accorded at amazing intervals, each
one tighter than its predecessor, while I heard Mrs.
Wilson’s whispered commentary in one ear – ‘Yes,
sir, that’s how … twenty-four … yeees, that’s how
to give it to her, so!’

Whether she excited herself to
ecstasy I know not, but when it was over and I
danced an unstately sarabande for their
delectation, she was very red in the face indeed.

That night I slept with my offending hands
manacled to the head of the bed behind me and
when I awoke the lower sheet was stuck to my
bottom on the right. It was not a correction I cared to
repeat. Forty-six cuts within twenty-four hours. I
assure my gentle readers that such induces a most
malleable spirit in the recipient thereafter.

My Knickers

To save time it had sometimes been Pelham’s
recent habit to cane me clothed – that is, over my
tightly stretched thin knickers – of a morning.

Theoretically, material modified the cuts I
received but I do not think my gossamer covering
did so. There were even times when I truly
considered that birch or cane bit and stung into one
worse when knickered. The flesh was held firm;
the cuts ate in like fiends. Furthermore, unbuttoning
had to be careful and considered. The command
‘Take down your knickers’ at meant freeing
twenty pearl buttons with plenty of time for
reflection, before peeling the fabric from the loins.
Knickers could be examined at any time, and often
were, and any soiling, before or behind, meant
punishment.

To say this style of girlish knickers were
skin-tight would be an understatement. They were
absolutely ones skin, and entirely but only covered
the swelling cheeks. The sulcus was not shown,
except at the side of the thigh of some especially
fatted girl. The ‘leg’ ribbons were taut and tailoring
and tension were such that the cleft of the cheeks
was completely followed. They made the buttocks
stand out separately, in fact, firming and ripening
their surfaces for the juicy cuts of the rod. These
could indeed be clearly seen through the thinly
textured covering.

Of course the wearing of knickers for punishment did
offer one advantage, that of not having my bottom hole put
on display as it invariably was when I was bared. The humiliation
of having this my most private part exposed to the gaze of my tutor
was a part of my punishment regime that I remember with
embarrassment to this day.

One morning, ordered an eighter for Idling (plus ‘Idle
Excuses’), I surreptitiously tucked a small ladies’
pocket handkerchief – kept for ‘blubbing’ into – up into
the right side of my knockers. Of course this stood out clearly against the splittingly tight fabric after I had bent. Lo and behold, the offending protection.

‘What’s this? Padding? Were you thinking of
padding, child?’

I burst into tears. ‘Padding’, it seemed, was
considered among the most heinous of offences, in
the young. It never carried less than double the
original count, plus a lively dose of the briniest
birch as a ‘reminder’.

The Ushers heard of the mortality of my crime
at luncheon, after I had suffered a simply scalding
eight. That afternoon, in their presence, I had an
excoriating two dozen of the birch at the block and,
all quivering and cut into behind as I was, had to go
over the schoolroom punishment desk for a final
eight, this time with the ashlar. It was a terrible
correction and left even Lady Julia without a word,
at sight of me after. I simply rolled on the floor of
The Squealery, moaning, while Pelham looked
down at me.

‘That was quite a tight ’un, Plum’, came Lord
Usher’s verdict, also subdued.


The tutor was breathing hard. ‘No pity. It is
important to show no pity’, was all he would say
and, staring pitiably up at him as I now sat at his
feet, holding my blazing bum, I saw the immense
cock-head for which he was known at school, it
seems, rampant up one side of his trouser leg.

Birching

The daughter of an independently wealthy courtesan and a perennially
absent sire, Sally Brindle was never far from strife. Raised in a
swank bordello and schooled in the boudoir, Sally was a buxom, comely
lass and always destined for a colourful career. Indeed, a sizeable
measure of her seemingly endless tribulations may well have been
avoided were it not for her unconscionable good looks.

Midway through her sixteenth year, the sassy, brown-eyed blonde had
made the first of her many appearances before the municipal Sessions.
The kindly old magistrate, lenient on that occasion, had, in
consequence of her tender years, awarded her only a token seven days
detention. No detailed account of her punishment exists, however, and
that she was probably whipped during her confinement we may only
surmise.

Whatever the case, the experience seems to have marked a turning point
in young Sally's life and from this time onward her name begins to
appear amongst the records with increasing frequency. At seventeen, a
conviction for soliciting led to a term at the local Bridewell. Once
again, unfortunately, we have no documentary evidence of corporal
punishment being administered. Nonetheless, given the general tenor of
the Bridewell regime, we may safely assume she emerged from her
incarceration no stranger to the birch.

A year later Sally met a petty blackmailer and part-time pimp named
Jasper Thryng and her ruin was assured. In the Spring of the following
year, Brindle was apprehended yet again for soliciting in public, an
activity which, considering her relatively secure, affluent
circumstances, she had no real need of pursuing. Such was Thryng's
pernicious influence over the girl. Under questioning, it was revealed
her lover had become involved with a secretive enterprise bringing
stolen gems into the country and a search of his lodgings turned up a
veritable treasure-trove of ill-gotten booty. Sally, as a reward for
her co-operation and valuable information, was charged with being an
accessory to the crime.

An unmarried woman facing the unsympathetic, misogynistic courts of
the day, could expect very short shrift from the men who would hear
her case. Furthermore, she would be unrepresented and totally
unfamiliar with the proceedings taking place around her. In this
respect the trial of Sally Brindle was unexceptional, and it took the
court a little more than ten minutes to convict the frightened,
confused prisoner of the charges brought against her. We can only
guess at the thoughts racing through the mind of the pretty young
culprit as she was led down from the dock to stand facing His Lordship
at the high bench.

"Tis a pity for you, Sally Brindle, that you find yourself before me
this day," the black-caped, periwigged old bailie admonished. Sally
shifted nervously and stared at her feet. The portly, grey-haired
magistrate glared at her, pitiless and implacable. "We have had
dealings with you prior to this, young madam, and the court is sorely
displeased to see you here again! I am inclined to believe you mock
the King's Justice with your insolence!"

"Oh no, My Lord! Not I!" she stammered. "I beg you, please! Have
mercy!" Unmoved by her ravings, His Lordship continued, "Your impudent
mendacity and astonishing paucity of contrition serve only to
exacerbate and compound your already precarious standing with the
court. Sally Brindle, you have been adjudged guilty of being knowingly
concerned in the commission of a felony. Accordingly, you shall be
given over into the custody of the Bridewell for a period of ninety
days, there to be taught a useful occupation, and to receive such
other correction as needs be."

At this announcement Sally paled visibly. Ninety days!

"In the matter of enticement to commit unlawful fornication," the
judge resumed and Sally's heart leapt in her breast. Being an
accessory after the fact was one thing. A pretty nineteen-year-old
caught a-whoring was another matter entirely! She tried to stand
straight, to appear calm, but her legs felt like rubber, her palms
were clammy and a cold thrill of fear had taken hold of her like the
dread hand of Fate upon her woebegotten soul. "Oh God," she whispered,
closing her eyes.

"I have examined the facts," the judge was saying, "And I am of the
opinion that you represent a conspicuous and persistent vexation to
good order and public decency; a low-born young vixen who, having
forsaken her scant modesty for the fruits of unrighteousness and,
worse still, having willingly sacrificed her maidenhead at the
shameful altar of turpitude, now stands before us begging her pardon.
Humbug! Gammon and humbug, girl! It is the sentence of this court that
you be taken, at a time convenient to the Governors, to the square at
St Margaret's, there to be whipt with birch rods upon your naked
breech. Forty lashes! And may God grant you the courage to endure your
stripes with patience and humility. Take her away!"

Sally said nothing .. then fainted.

A woman, on being delivered to the Bridewell, was first given a bath -
a form of corporal punishment in itself for some! Then, when she had
been scrubbed clean, she was put to work, beating hemp, knitting
bonnets or some other menial task. On Board morning each week, the
Governors convened to decide the fate of new arrivals as well as those
poor souls unlucky enough to have drawn the attention of their
fastidious overseers, either by ineptitude, stubbornness or as a
consequence of some petty infraction of the rules.

When her turn came, the prisoner was brought forward by the attendant
beadles - a kind of semi-official municipal constabulary - and
judgement given forthwith, usually to the effect that she receive
immediate and present chastisement. She would then be stripped of her
clothing and summarily punished in full view of the court. Married
women and those of mature age, being considered deserving of some
small degree of feminine modesty, were generally whipped 'supra
dorsum' - over the shoulders - with a thonged lash. A young, unmarried
woman or teenaged girl would be punished 'infra dorsum' with the
birch; that is to say she could expect to receive the stinging strokes
across her bare bottom and thighs. Twelve lashes were given to an
adult first-offender, six to a juvenile.

A prisoner under sentence of a more exemplary correction was usually
spared this Bridewell 'welcome' pending her chastisement by the public
executioner - but there was no way out. The best a girl could hope for
was for someone to pay off the hangman. This way she would,
ostensibly, receive a relatively gentle whipping, and, after a few
hours, she might even be able to sit again without undue discomfort.
The marks, too, would soon fade. In return she would remain hopelessly
indebted to her benefactor until such time as she was able to
extricate herself from the arrangement.

The alternative was too horrible to contemplate, and, isolated in the
Bridewell, Sally had no way of knowing her fate till the first blow
fell. Her mother might not, after all, come to her rescue. There had
been disagreements of late, and warnings. Then there was the business
of the brooch she had taken!

On the other hand, there was little doubt she would fetch a fortune in
fees amongst the rich and powerful men who frequented her mother's
plush chambers in the mews - provided, of course, she was not 'cut up'
or otherwise damaged by the attentions of her chastiser in the
performance of his Christian duty. For the most part, Sally comforted
herself with this thought, though little could make up for the sense
of shame and degradation attendant to the approaching operation.

The morning of her punishment began like any other at the Bridewell,
with the booming of the drum and the pounding of hammers. Sally yawned
and brushed aside the straw from her face. Reluctantly she opened her
eyes. There, to her instant and overwhelming horror, stood three of
the blue-coated beadles, peering down at her where she lay on her
palette. "Come with us, missie," one of the men grunted and took her
by the arm, pulling her towards him. "No!!" she cried, but a second
pair of hands got hold of her and she was dragged untidily to her
feet. "The third fellow, a swarthy brute named Bellows, then indicated
the girl should be brought out and taken to the south portal from
whence she would be transported the half-mile or so to St Margaret's.

By the time the huge iron gate clanged shut behind them, Sally and her
guards had been joined by a tall grey-bearded officer on horseback and
a spotty, grinning youth with a side-drum and a pair of wooden
beaters. "All is in readiness, I see," Bellows announced, then,
turning to his two subordinates, said, "You take her, Simpson. You'd
be the strongest. "Suh .." replied the lumpish, red-headed young man
and, loosing his grip on the terrified, dumbstruck prisoner, turned
his back and squatted.

Meanwhile, the lad with the drum had commenced a slow resonant tattoo
that rattled and reverberated along the cobbled thoroughfare, bringing
curious faces to unshuttered windows and frightening the pigeons from
the low, shingled eaves. "Step to, young lady," Bellows ordered and
gave her a shove. "Fuck off, you!" Sally squawked, and bared her
teeth. Bellows shoved again, harder. "Give him your hands!" he
commanded and Sally, though not without some hesitation, shuffled
obediently forward and allowed herself to be taken by the wrists and
horsed up onto the broad, muscular back of the obliging Mr Simpson.
With a grunt the big man rose, drawing the helpless girl up with him,
so that, when he stood erect, her grimy, unshod feet dangled a full
eight inches above the pavement. "Heyyy....yuppp!!" cried the horseman
and the small company began its slow, noisy procession down towards
the market square.

"Hear ye! Hear ye!" Bellows called out above the clattering of the
drum and the steady 'clop-clop' of hooves on the pavement. "Sally
Brindle, lately seen about Saint Bride's Well, goes to face the King's
Justice! Hear ye! Hear ye!" The second constable, one Charles Buckley
by name, then took up the cry : "Sally Brindle, felon and fornicator,
punished by order of the Assizes! Make way!" Soon, heads began to turn
and small groups of men and women could be seen congregating in
doorways, or making their way surreptitiously down to the square. A
group of ragged boys, startled from their play, had joined in the
parade, pointing and giggling, and mouthing ribald quips as the party
bumped and trudged its way along the street.

In the square by the old stone church, a raucous unkempt mob had
gathered in anticipation of young Sally's arrival. An area to one side
of the pillory had already been roped off and a group of men were
busying themselves with last-minute preparations for the upcoming
entertainment. A broad space had been cleared, about which were laid
out the various instruments and apparatus of the executioner's grisly
task; the bench, the bucket, and, of course, the birches, soaked and
ready for use.

In the midst of this activity, an attractive, junoesque figure of a
woman quietly detached herself from the throng and made her way,
unchallenged, past the barrier. Engaging herself in conversation with
the one man who, by virtue of his very idleness, identified himself as
foreman of the aforementioned judicial crew, the woman said, "Mr
Crabtree, I presume,"

"Aye. That I am," the man replied gruffly. "And you would be Mistress
Brindle, if I not be mistaken, come to save her little girl."

Just then the punishment detail from the Bridewell, along with its
rag-tag retinue, rounded the corner and began pushing its way up
through the milling crowd. "Make way! Make way!" the cry went up and
soon a path had been cleared for Sally to be brought into the square.
What'll it be then, Mistress? Quickly now!" Crabtree urged, thrusting
out his hand. "Tip, lady!" There followed a brief, whispered exchange,
the clink of silver, then a satisfied grunt from the hangman. "Make
way!" the roar went up again and Sally Brindle was carried, limp and
half-exhausted, out into the open. "Mother!" she wailed, Help me! Help
me!" but the woman had melted back into the surging crowd.

Hiram Crabtree was, in truth, the very stuff from which hangmen are
fashioned. Crude, coarse and rat-faced, he had made himself a rich man
on the gifts and bribes he extorted from his terrified victims and
their fretting kinfolk. People loathed him. He drooled and spat and,
when he spoke, his foetid breath, a miasma of vile putrescent decay,
enveloped the listener in a cloud of stench like the morbid exhalation
of some dank cthonic vault.

"Get that poxy 'orse o' yours outa here, Macgregor!" he snarled,
though it was clear the two men were well acquainted. "Christ! Whadja
thing I am, Francis of Assisi?" Chuckling to himself, the bearded
rider dismounted and handed the reigns to the nearest beadle, saying,
"Look after this, Buckley," then turned again to the surly
executioner. "I shall speak with you later, Crabtree!" he said and
moved around beside the bench. "Bring her here, Simpson!" Moments
later, Sally found herself plumped unceremoniously down in the place
indicated. The officer regarded her sternly and said, "You will take
your punishment, Sally Brindle. Strip!"

"Oh, Sir!" she gasped, to which the man responded, "Bellows! Simpson!
Disrobe her!" and the oafish beadles once again laid their rude, rough
hands about her, seizing her wrists and tugging at her clothes. "Get
her arms behind her back," Bellows suggested. "Good! Now ..."

The front of the shabby prison dress parted with a rending shriek of
torn linen and a pitiful squeal of dismay from the pinioned Miss
Brindle. Another tug and the flimsy garment fell away completely,
leaving the big busty girl, with the pouting lips and the come-hither
looks, stark naked and shivering in front the assembled multitude. The
order was then given to prepare her for punishment and together the
three men, Bellows, Simpson and Crabtree, proceeded to forcibly lay
the lass, cursing and kicking, face down over the whipping-bench.

When she had at last been sufficiently restrained, her wrists were
bound securely to a block affixed at the front. Finally, a thick roll
of hessian cloth was wedged underneath her lower abdomen and a broad
leather belt drawn down tightly across the small of her back, so that
her hips and buttocks rose sharply in mute compliance with the firm
stricture. Macgregor had produced a sealed parchment from beneath his
jacket. This he passed to Bellows, with the words, "Be so kind as to
read the proclamation," adding, "Loudly, please, so that we may all
benefit from His Lordship's wisdom."

"I shall try, Sir," Bellows said as he broke open the wax seal and
began to read from the scroll. "Hear ye! Hear ye! Let it be known, the
prisoner, called by name Sally Brindle and arraigned in the general
sessions of Wednesday last, the twelfth, is sentenced hereby that she
be brought in shame before the good people of this parish of Oakwood,
there to be duly chastised in accordance with Law and in the manner
prescribed. By order of His Lordship, the Right Honourable Sir Crispin
Prendergast, Lord Provost in Council. God save the King!"

Macgregor nodded appreciatively. "Quite rightly!" he said and
signalled for the punishment to begin. Crabtree, meanwhile, had armed
himself with a thoroughly frightful-looking birch and had taken up a
position directly behind the prisoner. The executioner drew a deep
breath then, swinging the birch around at arm's length, brought it
whistling down diagonally across Sally's squirming, jiggling rear.

There followed a breathless, momentary silence throughout the square;
then, as the pain began to spread outward from the point of impact, a
long, high-pitched squeal rent the air. Macgregor called out, "One!"
and made a mark in a small pocket-book he kept for the purpose. A
young woman at the front of the crowd covered her eyes and turned
away, shaken and disgusted by the spectacle. Crabtree's evil,
toothless grin broadened and he whipped the birch down a second time.
It landed with a loud hissing 'thwackkk!!' that seemed to make the
very stones ring and Sally let out a great yelp of pain, wriggling her
hips from side to side in an effort to rid herself of the awful sting.
"Two!" Macgregor shouted and she squealed again, "No! Nooo..!! Not so
hard! .. Pleeeeeease...!!!"

The fiendish contrivance of the whipping-bench had forced her firm,
well-developed posterior up into a position whereby she was presented
fully exposed, and, as a result, desperately vulnerable to the
executioner's powerful ministrations. Accordingly, at the fall of the
third stroke, Macgregor signalled a stop in order that the prisoner's
fearful struggles might be allowed to subside. Less than a dozen paces
away, behind the rope barrier, a hundred pairs of eyes watched in rapt
fascination as the bawdy drama of chastisement unfolded. "Turn it this
way, Sally!" a young man yelled, hoping for a fuller glimpse of her
soft, pulchritudinous charms. "Ooohh! You naughty young thing!" cried
another. "Showing yourself like that!"

Certain, now, that the officer was wise to his game, Crabtree leaned
forward over his victim and whispered, "If I was you, missie, I'd keep
my legs together and my tail up. That is, if I knowed what's good for
me, hehe.." Sally was a big girl now, and she knew perfectly well what
was good for her. Like it or not, she was going to have to play this
game too.

"Mr Executioner!" Macgregor broke in, and Crabtree resumed his
position at the rear. Then, to her lasting credit, as well the
considerable delight of the gaping, leering mob, the mortified young
woman perched whimpering and trembling atop the whipping-bench,
obediently assumed the modest, submissive posture Crabtree had
indicated. "Cor! What a peach!" a loud voice proclaimed. No one
disagreed and Sally's chastisement commenced anew.

The cruel judicial birch, over three feet in length and wickedly
supple, lashed down again. "Four!" Macgregor counted and made another
mark in his book. Five and six followed, and so on up to ten,
whereupon the officer called out, "Stop!" for a second time, ordering
that the girl be further restrained with a rope at her ankles. When
this had been done, and the prisoner once again admonished of the need
for her heartfelt contrition and humble acquiescence in the execution
of her sentence, the whipping re-commenced with renewed vigour.

Thwackkk!! .. "Eleven!"

Thwackkk!! .. "Twelve!"

The atmosphere of the town square had, by now, reached a fever pitch
of excitement, with men and women elbowing and pushing each other and
craning their necks for a better view of Sally Brindle's writhing,
whip-marked derrière. A preacher, filled with the fire of the spirit,
railed and ranted, brandishing his bible in the air and screaming,
"Repent! Repent! O ye venomous whores and vipers! Repent!!" A bloated
old schoolmaster, drunk on wine and his own wild imaginings, forced
his way to the front, shouting, "Give me the birch, man! Give me the
birch! I'll show you how it's done!"; and all the while, as this was
going on, Sally bucked and howled on her perch as stroke after
scalding stroke was laid about her.

Thwackkk!! .. "Fifteen!"

Thwackkk!! .. "Sixteen!"

The birch rose and fell in a measured, steady rhythm until Macgregor
called out, "Nineteen!" whereat Crabtree flung down his splintered,
denuded instrument and stumped across to select a suitable replacement
from the bucket which stood to one side of the clearing. At this, the
crowd gave a loud cheer of approval and a fat, pie-eyed old woman
shrieked, "Plenty more where that came from, Duckie, hahaha....!!"
After all, what is a birching without at least one instrument being
broken up in the process of its administration?

Much has been said, and written, regarding the psychological and
emotional effects of strong physical discipline on the person of the
adult female, with some authors even claiming the entire business of
the feminine masochistic instinct to be little more than the lurid
construct of some patriarchal, sado-erotic abuse fantasy. Others point
to the numerous historical instances of the phenomenon, from St
Theresa of Ávila to Madonna; while many a tale is told, from real
life, of the girl who really did ask for it! The theatre too abounds
in cp and cp imagery from Chaucer down to Shakespeare and on to Ally
McBeal.

Formal, judicial-style cp, whilst being somewhat more severe and
uncompromising in its application, has also had its affectionados
amongst the fairer sex, and the extraordinary case of Sally Brindle
does not stand alone. Researcher and cp anthologist, Richard Manton,
acquaints us with "The Female Husband" of 1746, an "outraged account
of the conduct of a young lesbian, Molly Hamilton, soundly birched by
the public hangman on 10 October. Shrill with indignation, the account
describes how the birching so roused Molly's 'monstrous and unnatural
desires' that she urgently bribed the gaoler to bring her girlfriend
in for the night."

Sally looked up from where she lay draped across the whipping-bench,
her face wet with tears and perspiration, and her teeth bared in a
twisted mask of contradictory emotions, such that the observer had no
way of telling whether it might be pain or pleasure she was feeling.
"Please, Sir" she gasped, in a hoarse, breathy contralto. "Please be
quick." Hearing this, and seizing on the pretext of righteous moral
outrage, Macgregor said to the executioner, "Methinks the wench too
eager by far," to which the former replied, "Aye."

Macgregor, smiled wryly and said, "The sentence is specific," then,
consulting his dog-eared little almanac, told him, "Twenty-one to
come. Mr executioner! You will do your duty!" Crabtree moved back into
position, saying, "Aye. That I shall," and the flogging resumed.

The twentieth fell with a sharp, resounding smack and, when the stroke
had been duly counted and recorded, Crabtree hefted up the birch and
struck again - Thwackkk!! Sally let out a long tremulous sob, "Oh!
Ohh! Ohhh...!" her hips arching and twisting in a lewd, grinding
display indistinguishable from the contorted throes of carnal ecstacy
itself.

Thwackkk!! .. "Twenty-two!"

Thwackkk!! .. "Twenty-three!"

Thwackkk!! .. "Twenty-four!"

"At the cry of "Thirty!" Sally gave vent to a huge, bellowing cry, as
though an enormous bolt of electricity had been passed through her
body. Her wild, bloodshot eyes rolled back in their sockets and her
head lolled from side to side as she struggled to get her breath. "Uh!
... huhh! .. oohh ..! God! God...!" Bouncing and shaking, her big
bottom arched skyward, the plump, rotund globes crisscrossed with a
burning red lattice-work of welts and abrasions that covered her
ample behind from hip to hip and halfway down her thighs.

Thwackkk!! .. "Ooooooohhhhh .....!!! Ooooooohhhhh .....!!!"

"Thirty-one!" Macgregor snapped and drew a cryptic mark in his tally.
"Continue, Mr Crabtree," he added with a sly wink. "There will be no
remission."

Thwackkk!! .. "Thirty-two!"

Thwackkk!! .. "Thirty-three!"

The prisoner jerked and moaned as he flogged her, though it was plain
the girl was entirely spent. Thirty-four and thirty-five came at the
same slow, leisurely pace, punctuated by the officer's strident cries
and by the hoots and reprimands issuing from the unforgiving mob.
"Look at her, will you!" a woman bawled. "The randy little strumpet!"
and another shouted back, "'Tis the devil in her, I say!" - and, all
the while, Sally continued her urgent, tearful pleas for a speedy
conclusion to her long ordeal. The time between each stroke seemed an
agony of waiting, a fearful eternity of pain and trepidation. "Oh,
please, Sir!", she sobbed, "It hurts!"

Thwackkk!! .. "Thirty-eight!"

Thwackkk!! .. "Thirty-nine!"

At last, the officer called out, "Forty!" and the punishment ceased.
Closing his book, he said, "See to her!" and Simpson, Bellows and the
redoubtable Mr Crabtree set about the task of releasing the blubbering
prisoner from her chafing bonds. When this had been achieved, she was
helped painfully to her feet and allowed to retrieve what was left of
her clothing. "Clear the way!" Macgregor shouted. "The wench shall
walk!" and, to the sound of the slow 'rat-tat' of the drum and the
jibes and catcalls of the fast-dwindling crowd, Sally was marched
stiffly out of the square and into the high-street to begin the long
tramp back to the Bridewell and the waiting ward.

"A word with you, Crabtree," the officer said when the commotion had
died down. "Eh?" the hangman replied. "What's that?" Macgregor smiled
and thrust out his hand in the universal gesture of greed and avarice
and said, "Ha! Spare me the trouble! Tip, man!"