Has anyone found any references to otk punishments on the friends reunited site or…dare i ask it! Has anyone any first-hand accounts? It was the sort of thing that was often threatened but something i never actually witnessed at school.
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Who was threatened and by who, were boys ever threatened with smacked bums, or was it always girls?
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There were certainly some male teachers out there that believed that smacking girls’ bottoms were favorable to caning, strapping, slippering them, etc. as it involved less pain and was mostly reliant on humiliation (especially when given by a man) which girls is far more of a deterrent than for boys. This also didn’t leave marks, And as said before it didn’t have to be entered into a punishment book as it wasn’t regarded as corporal punishment and more as just keeping class order. Of course, this was mostly only used for the younger girls probably up to fifteen, so I think most of the story’s of sixth form girls spanked bare bottom over sirs knee are pure fantasy, but who knows for sure?
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There was a really posh private High School for girls in town when I was an impressionable male teen and in those days, back in the 1960s, the girls at that school all wore a traditional school uniform including short black pleated skirts and white knee-high socks. It was a fact that the Headmaster there was very much of the old school and rumors about his disciplinary systems were always very much on the town grapevine. The suggestion was that a good few of his upper-class girls had spent time across his knee with their short skirts raised for the smack of firm discipline. I doubt very much that any of these stories were true but they fuelled many a teenage fantasy for yours truly.
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Miss Ross, was a teacher at junior school. It was she who would cure boys wandering around the classroom with a few mild slaps on the bottom. However, she would often threaten to warm a particular boy’s bottom for him or promise that the next child that spoke wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week. I can’t remember her making the threat to a girl but it was nearly 40 years ago.
There was a Mrs Lovell who taught English in the first year at senior school, who would threaten both boys and girls with the cane. Once she even produced it from her desk and brandished it at some terrified girl. She kept a close eye on me because i had written that the collective noun of fish was a can and she suspected quite wrongly that i was too clever by half. She would often promise me a caning if I did not hand my homework in on time.
The promise of a sore bottom was sometimes more of a classroom entertainment than a real threat.
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n my primary school days, I would say that CP was applied to girls and boys with perhaps very slightly more boys receiving it than girls.
In secondary school, after the first year, it was very uncommon for any girl to get the belt. I do however remember one girl in the second year complaining about the girls always getting lines and not the belt. Her wish was granted…by a male teacher…..and she took the 2 hard strokes better than some of the boys!
I have to agree with jay that in primary school we got hit around the ears, arms, legs, thighs, and hands with rulers, wee belts, big belts, and bare hands. It was just a different time then and so difficult to explain to folk that never lived through it.
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My experience was that girls and boys got it in almost equal amounts at junior school.
At senior school, the punishments were more severe and girls sussed out that the best way to avoid it was to behave. Boys being, in general, a little denser just took punishment as a “reward” for misbehaving like most boys do.
I don’t remember anyone enjoying it but there was some bravado involved.
A lad of about 15 who sat in front of me was sent out of class for accidentally dropping a book. The headmaster who was doing his rounds knocked on the door and indicated to the teacher that he would deal with him. He came back about 5 minutes later and was dragged into class by the headmaster in a real state and cried for the rest of the lesson. I never got to the “bottom” of it but he had obviously been caned.
He was a big lad but had been humbled in minutes. This was a real example, totally unfair and sadistic in the extreme but part of the scenario.
On the other “hand” we had two lads that were always in trouble. They would come back from the head laughing their heads off. They had discovered that they could do whatever they wanted, ie a day off down the betting shop and six of the best would square it up. One of these lads went on to be a world-famous jockey!
Each teacher had their own method, most had a treasured slipper. Some were a bit embarrassed by giving it but had to do so, some really loved it. It was mostly done in good humor and on the few occasions that we engineered a female teacher into a position of giving one of us a whack it was titillating in the extreme. we would volunteer slippers, and argue over whose she should use and how to do it. Some rather red-faced and flustered young teachers ensued, but you could see they were turned on.
Well enough for now, all true but difficult for younger people to believe.
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I once saw the Headmaster put a boy over his knee during a history lesson. He was messing about, unwise with the Head teaching I would have thought, and after a few tickings off he was called to the front and the Head stuck him over his knee and gave him 3-4 smacks with his hand over his shorts. I remember him grinning as he came back to his desk but I don’t think he played up during the lesson again.
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Hi, I saw similar things all the time at primary school, but I remember once a girl who was constantly talking got called to the front by the teacher(male) and told to bend over his knee, she would, ’t so he grabbed her and pulled her over him and smacked her bottom a good six or seven times hard before sending her back to her seat, this ws in the last year of primary just before the summer holidays, I remember the teacher muttering that she’d had it coming all year, the girl was bright red and as soon as she was back to her desk she hid her face in her folded arms and cried the rest of the lesson.
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At primary, where most teachers (all but 1 in mine) were female, there was little differentiation between boys and girls. If you broke the rules you were belted – your sex did not come into it. The situation was different in secondary. The higher proportion of male teachers may have had something to do with that as may the increasing physical maturity of girls. However, it was not unusual in the later seventies for girls to be given a choice of getting the belly or a written punishment. Some, perhaps a surprisingly large proportion chose the belt and often took it better than the boys. Why? It was quick, it got it over with, it left you free to do what you wanted at night – for some these were more important considerations than the pain. For the record, we are not talking here about fantasy 6 or more strokes, but rather the far more normal 1 on each hand.
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Here are two real-life cases for you.
1) Mrs Hanratty, a second-year infants teacher at St Mary’s, Coventry. Often threatened or acted out an over-the-knee spanking but only in a playful fashion. Had the rest of the class in stitches. Left around the time of a famous murder case involving a man of the same name but probably no connection.
2) Mr Terence Edward Sherrin. French language teacher at Ullathorne Boys Grammar School, Coventry. Signed himself ‘TES’ after his initials but we all referred to him as “Sherrin the ‘Mo”. (Few of us realized at the time that “‘mo” was a contraction of ‘homosexual’). Routinely whacked boys across his knee with his hand. His titillation was probably enhanced by the fact that girls returning from lunch at the neighboring school could see right into our classrooms.
One day he went too far and offered some boys a reduction in punishment if they agreed to take their trousers down. One boy ran and told the headmaster (Father Dermott O’Dowd) who called the police. Sherrin was convicted on four counts of indecent assault and asked for fifty other cases to be taken into consideration. He was sentenced to three months in jail but as in most such cases, this was probably reduced to a suspended sentence plus a fine on appeal.
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I went to five mixed schools throughout my education and never once witnessed or heard of girls being subjected to corporal punishment in the seventies or eighties. I cannot comment in respect of earlier decades.
I do remember one case however at the Rodney school for girls where the headmistress caned the girls. There was a documentary about this on television I think it was a TV nation micheal Moore program from memory. Perhaps
someone could enlighten us to the exact program title. There is a TV nation clip on u tube in relation to this too. This is one exception. There may be a very few others but I doubt if there are many
Given the above, I still believe that Sara is right to say that by far it was the boys who received corporal punishment at school and not the girls.I am speaking from experience Having moved very often to several different schools throughout my childhood.
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I went to five mixed schools through my education and never once witnessed or heard of girls being subjected to corporal punishment in the seventies or eighties. I cannot comment in respect of earlier decades.
Bacon’s School in London had canings of girls galore through the 1970s and into the 1980s, 204 canings of girls in the school year 1976/77, verified by no less than the Inner London Education Authority!
You mention Rodney School. Another school where both sexes encountered the cane from its foundation in the late 1940s right through into the 1990s. However, neither of these schools appear to have gone in for ‘Over the knee punishments’ which strictly is the topic of this thread! Not surprising, because apart from some infant schools I doubt if very many schools did.
Bacon’s seems to have caned on the hand or the bottom in a fairly conventional manner, and at the Rodney School Ms Joan Thomas, the school’s founder often combined the two when punishing girls, at the same time incorporating other features to make the procedure suitably memorable for the unfortunate participants!
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How did she get away with it in 1991? I’ve no idea. It was rumored that Rodney School was possibly the scene of the last legal schoolgirl caning in the UK. I find the little additional of the sports clothing requirement reminiscent of what seems to have been the procedure in the 1950s in the senior section of the school I attended as a junior, and of which I posted a largely second-hand though partly personally verified account elsewhere in this forum. Maybe it was a Nottinghamshire thing! No fun at all for the unfortunate girls though I would guess.
As I’ve noted elsewhere I might well have found myself at Rodney school if a family friend had been a little more generous or my parents’ financial means a little larger. I wasn’t at all keen on the idea at the time because I didn’t fancy boarding. I had no knowledge then of the school’s CP reputation, which I’ve since found was already well-established and well-merited.
How different things might have been if I’d gone to Rodney School! I would almost certainly have been a veteran of several canings instead of escaping the cane altogether throughout my school career. Far more important though I should have had a considerable fund of stories of authentic schoolgirl canings with which to earn my keep on this estimable Forum! Fate can sometimes be so cruel! 
As for your suggestion regarding Ms Thomas marrying the blessed Wilfred Ing, I can only say that if there is a CP heaven, that marriage would certainly have been made there!
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Though we will probably never know now, I reckon 12 strokes for an 11-year-old is grossly unreasonable. Had that gone to court in 1991, there would only have been one verdict, I feel.
Just and reasonable chastisement was the litmus test when these things got to court & it is hard to see how anything done here merits 12 strokes. Particularly with the gating alternative-which should have been enforced rather than 11-year-olds being “offered” an alternative to get it over with.
Particularly nasty was the insistence on one layer of clothing only-bet the girls weren’t told that when the alternatives were put to them. Quite remarkable Miss Thomas got away with it. Where are lawyers when you really need them?
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A case of caning at the school was reported in the National Press in March of 1992. Five 14-year-old girls were found in the boys’ dormitory at night. Their parents were contacted and given the choice of allowing their daughters to be expelled or severely caned. All of the parents opted for caning, and so on the day after the incident, all five girls changed into the Rodney School indoor P.E. strip of the burgundy vest and white cotton shorts, with nothing to be worn under the thin shorts, and reported to Miss Thomas’s study for their punishments.
The girls were caned both on their hands and their bottoms. Nicola Whitely, who received two strokes on each hand and four on her bottom commented, “I had to agree that I had been in the wrong. I deserved the caning”. The girl who admitted to being the ringleader, Joanne Gilmore, was given the most severe punishment. She received two strokes on each hand and then had to bend over Miss Thomas’s desk for eight strokes across the seat of her cotton shorts. Joanne’s comments afterward seemed to show no ill will toward the school or to Miss Thomas. “Miss Thomas was just doing her job. Twelve strokes took a long time and I thought it would never be over with, but it is now thank goodness. I admitted what I had done in planning what happened and I felt sorry that I had helped get the other girls caned. It hurt, it still does a bit, but I can’t deny that I deserved what I got. Now it’s in the past and I can get on with school. The Rodney School is a great school, and it’s even better if you can stay out of trouble and keep the rules”.
Ms Thomas seems to have been very happy to be interviewed by both press and television concerning CP at the school and there are a number of reports extant concerning a variety of incidents, one of which was the ‘girls in boy’s dormitory’ case which I think the picture refers to. I would have expected 14-year-olds to be more likely to be involved in that sort of exploit than 11-year-olds, and the girls certainly look older than 11. However, if you have the clipping with the picture and the ages are given as 11 it may be that the account I’ve quoted above has the ages wrong. Unless of course the girls tried it first at 11 and then repeated it at 14!
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I went to a private religious school in North London that used corporal punishment right up until 1998. Boys and girls were in separate buildings but girls were sent to the headmaster for punishment.
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OTK spankings were administered quite often at my primary school mostly by female teachers, although boys were the main recipients girls also received it. The headmaster also punished OTK but he only punished boys and it was usually administered with our trousers down for more serious offenses
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At my Junior school we had a female teacher who would spank girls on the backs of their thighs OTK but for some reason chose to slap boys on the arm. At the same school, the headmaster would take certain girls’ OTK and use a ruler in the privacy of his small office. I have described these activities in previous posts. At the same school, there was a male teacher (Mr Thompson) who was considered by many to be a bit scary. He greatly favored the OTK position on both girls and boys. He would also cane boys on the hand. He was quite proud of his reputation. When in charge of morning prayers I recollect on more than one occasion (to show he wanted obedience) him asking all those in his class who he had “whacked” to put up their hands. He would then say now just the girls who I have whacked put up their hands..several did. I saw him in action a few times and he certainly whacked hard.
I think the use of the OTK position on teenagers at school was very rare. It occurred at Helston and Colin West used it but I suspect these were not the norm. It did occur sometimes at school camp and I am aware of one Art teacher at a school in Hackney East London who favored otk with short straight canes which he made himself by using rope and LX tape to put handles on lengths of basket making rattan. He also apparently used art class paintbrushes on a girl and boy girls he discovered skylarking about sword fencing with said paintbrushes. He is also reported to have used a choice system favoured by our American cousins whereby instead of taking a caning the pupil could opt to write a 500-word essay on an obscure subject chosen by him. I have heard of no other instance where teachers offered options but other forum members may have info to the contrary.
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At school you would get OTK ones up until 3rd or 4th grade, depending on the teacher. After that, it was either touching your ankles, over a chair, or over Uncle’s spanking desks in his office.
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I’d not imagine that any normal school had special furniture for positioning youngsters over for CP. In my UK grammar school, the 1950s/60s, there was, in the head’s office, a low-backed armchair. A ‘tub chair’ with a back and arms of the same height. It was fairly light so could easily be turned around when a boy was about to be caned. It was already turned to face the wall when the headmaster first caned me. Still in that position from the previous bad lad!
I have no doubt that any parents that came to talk with the headmaster sat in that chair, facing the right way of course! I doubt if any of them realized that boys bent the very same chair to take a caning, their own sons perhaps.
The deputy head’s office had a chest of drawers, it was of desk/table height with long shallow drawers. I’ve since learned this type of furniture was originally intended for the storage of maps/charts etc. I remember on a visit to the deputy head being required to stand at one end of it and to bend over the top of it gripping the far end. Once in this position, I heard a drawer in it being opened, the perfect piece to keep a cane!
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Any ‘specialized’ spanking furniture in a UK school would have been seen as most odd I think. Not the sort of thing to show visitors! Even canes tended to be kept out of sight, Same in families, if parents kept a slipper or strap, especially for the family discipline it would be hidden away somewhere but in a place, it could be quickly at hand if a youngster misbehaved. The only exception to this I knew was at a school friend’s house and even then it wasn’t that obvious. His parents used a strap that was kept hanging in their hallway usually undercoats.
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I just can’t imagine any school in the UK in the last 50 years having the need or the space for such items of furniture of this type. Eton perhaps being the exception but that was tradition. Even when I started at grammar school in the late 1950s there weren’t that many canings given in the headmaster’s office. He utilised a ‘tub chair’ turned around. With its arms and back of the same height it provided the right position for most lads, a bit high for younger lads perhaps.
The first time he caned me was for missing my first proper school detention, I didn’t understand the rules about having to be there. That was no excuse in his eyes, I should have found out! He caned several other boys before it was my turn. The chair was already turned around before I went in. Other times he’d spin it around with ease, a well-practised move.
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Does a teacher have a right to spank a 19-year-old or a senior that stayed back a year? True, she is an adult in most states but Mississippi happens not to be one of them. Most schools show their folks their disciplinary record even if the don’t call them before or often they paddle and for what reason. Why would a nineteen-year-old be spared swats while her eighteen-year-old classmate would bend over? She certainly wouldn’t want to miss her prom as an alternative.
Those that receive swats refer to their punishment as spanking but never in a domestic manner as shown below. No jury of Mississippi peers would be hearing this case never mind deliberating unless her grievance was egregious that it would be judged excessively cruel any lawyer would show this poor young lady in the last link.
Things that are unthinkable in white middle-class suburbia outside the south hardly raise eyebrows elsewhere. Two different worlds in the same country.
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I mentioned a 3rd-grade (1959) over-the-knee spanking that occurred on a girl that I surreptitiously ascertained her having no memory. I remembered the spanking for it was the only one. Perhaps the mean nun thought it was less severe than getting the stick and was doing her a favor.
This advertisement came from 1959 in the link below. Why do I know that? Between third and fourth grade they changed the flag from 49 to 50 stars. January 1959 (Alaska) and August 1959 (Hawaii) became states. Should I be a detective? USA not Belgium.
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Merry Christmas Nevada style. In 1879 the school trustees received a suggestion for a Christmas present. A big paddle to be used on big girls with dresses too big to be worn for girls their age. The male teachers would presumably turn the boys and the girls over their knees. It is a grammar school so it would not have been a Herculean task. Paddles are made by students in the USA in 2019 for male teachers to spank female students but in a more dignified posture.
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