A Musicmaster writes: ‘I have read the correspondence relating to the personal chastisement of young ladies in your pages with great interest; and as your correspondent who signs himself Rector seems to doubt its application, I just write a few lines from my own personal observation to convince him to the contrary. I am a teacher of music in five schools conducted by ladies, and in two of these the most strict discipline is kept up. When I am giving a music lesson the lady principal remains in the room, and the pupils keep coming one at a time to have their ciphering and writing books inspected; and if these are untidily kept or the pupil has not been diligent, she is ordered to hold out her hand, and receives several smart slaps on the palm with an instrument which I will proceed to describe. It consists of a leathern strap, narrowed at one end to fit the hand of the mistress, and divided at the other end into five tails. The consequence is that each strip of leather inflicts a separate blow upon the pupil’s hand; and the punishment, although sufficiently severe, leaves no bruise upon the hand, a great advantage over the cane. With this strap there is no danger of seriously damaging the hand, and the pain, though severe, soon passes off; and it has this advantage over the birch, that there is no exposure, and the age of the pupil is of no consequence. This, I think, is of great importance, as my experience has convinced me that it is not always the youngest pupils in a school who require correction.
I have frequently seen this punishment applied to the hands of pupils of sixteen years of age, and I am quite sure it is productive of the most beneficial effects. I am certain most of your readers will agree with me that the use of the birch is quite out of the question with young ladies of this age; and the most convincing proof of the utility of this kind of punishment lies in the fact that in both of these schools where corporal punishment is inflicted the lessons are invariably gone through better than in any of the other three where it is not used, and the behaviour of the pupils is much more ladylike. To my mind this mode of punishment is by far the best, and it is easily applied. The age of the pupil is not of much importance, and the palm of a young lady’s hand is sufficiently sensitive to allow of a tolerably severe punishment being inflicted; and my opinion is that punishment should be seldom inflicted, but when it is required it should be sharp and severe. It is very seldom indeed that I am compelled to report a pupil to the principal, but whenever I am compelled to do so punishment is promptly inflicted, and the girl is always more attentive at the next lesson. In conclusion, I must say that I cannot understand why this kind of punishment on the hand, to which boys are so freely subjected, should be considered inapplicable to young ladies.’
Medical Student writes: ‘With regard to the whipping of girls, I think that as this is the age of the ladies, there is no reason why girls should not be whipped as well as boys. But let me remind some of your correspondents that the days when Milton was whipped at Oxford are long gone by, and if the girls require to be whipped at sixteen they will require it all their lives. I suppose that their husbands are the only persons on whom the duty will devolve after they have left the paternal mansion. Now, as husbands are punished for thrashing their wives, why should not schoolmistresses be punished for doing the same by young ladies of sixteen committed to their care?’
Gratitude writes: ‘I own, as you see, one of the most honoured names in England, and call myself Gratitude because I am anxious to show my gratitude for the fact that I owe my present position as a useful happy English lady to the firm discipline I experienced at the very turning-point of my life. I was brought up in a loving home and had every possible advantage; but amidst it all I became sullen, self-willed, disobedient and idle. I was the grief of my parents and a byword to my companions.
However, soon after I was fifteen I most fortunately was sent to Mrs. —’s school for young ladies, in Brighton, where I showed the same evil disposition which I had evinced elsewhere, but where, most fortunately and happily for me, it was checked and cured.
In school and out of it, during the first month, Mrs. — and the other teachers reproved me, set me tasks and kept me in. But I only grew worse; and one night after I had refused to do an imposition, Mrs. — came and sat in my room after I was in bed and talked to me most impressively. The next day, however, the effect of what she had said wore off, and I was as bad as ever.
But a change was at hand, for in the evening, when we had just gone to our bedrooms, Mrs. — again came to me, and said: ‘Miss W., you will to-night occupy the dressing-room adjoining my room. I will show you the way.” I was half inclined to disobey. However, I followed my governess through her bedroom and across a small sitting-room which opened out of it into a room comfortably furnished, in which was a small low bed, and telling me to undress and go to bed, Mrs. — left me, locking the door after her. I had been in bed about a quarter of an hour when Mrs. — came to me, holding in her hand a long birchrod. Placing the rod and the candlestick on the table, she told me that but one course was now open to her after my behaviour, and that she was going to flog me, and I was to get up. But though the twigs of the birch stood out in ominous shadow in front of the candlestick, and while I noted the thin, closely wrapped bundle of that rod and its fanlike top, I never attempted to obey. Three times she told me to get up, but I stirred not. Mrs. — returned to her own room, and came back with a small thin riding whip, and said: ‘Must I use this?” There was something about her which quite awed me—it was more her manner than her tall powerful figure—and as she swung that whip about in her hand I at once stepped out of bed and stood before her. “Give me your hands,” she said, but I put them behind me, when slash across my shoulders came six or seven smart strokes of her whip, and screaming I put out my hands, which she fastened together with a cord at the wrists. Then making me lie down across the foot of the bed face downwards, she very quietly and deliberately, putting her left hand round my waist, gave me a shower of smart slaps with her open right hand—a proceeding which so surprised and humiliated my proud self that I could hardly believe in my own identity, and as I screamed and struggled, she merely said: “This is for not doing now as I told you, and it will not only punish you for that, but will increase the pain of the birching I am now going to give you.”
Mrs. — then, as I lay, spoke to me for a few minutes with great kindness and earnestness. She then rose, took the birch in her right hand, and stooping over me, pressed her left hand tightly on my shoulder so as to hold me as if I were in a vice; then raising the birch, I could hear it whizz in the air, and oh, how terrible it felt as it came down, and as its repeated strokes came swish, swish, swish, on me! yet I felt, spite of the terrible stinging pain, that I deserved it all—and it was painful! I was a stout fair girl, and very sensitive to pain. I screamed, I protested, I implored, but it was of no avail; Mrs. — heeded not my cries, but held me down and birched on till she had finished a whipping which seemed to have lasted an age, but which quite changed my character. At last it was over. I was permitted to rise, my hands were unbound, and, burning and smarting, I raised my tear-stained face to my true friend’s, on whose face no sign was visible of the slightest anger or passion. Calm and serene, she wished me good-night and left me conquered. Henceforward I was a different girl; and though a few weeks afterwards I relapsed, yet another night spent in Mrs. —’s dressing-room and another similar application by her of that wonder-working birch—I did exactly as she told me this time—sufficed finally to cure me. I became cheerful, obedient, unselfish. My parents and friends the next holidays could hardly believe that I was the same girl. I stayed three years at Brighton, leaving when I was nineteen with much regret. I am now twenty-four, and hope to be married at Easter to the best man in the world who never could have loved me had not sensible wholesome discipline changed my evil nature, as the means under God of doing so. I am thankful to publish my experience, and so to express not only my gratitude, but confirm what others have so well said and told on this subject.’
Emma writes: ‘A while ago I undertook to bring up two nieces of the ages of twelve and fourteen. I soon found them to be most stubborn tempers and impudent. Thus they have often caused me much trouble and annoyance. Though not an advocate of corporal punishment, I was much struck with the description by A Schoolmistress of a most ceremonious method of inflicting punishment that I determined to follow exactly the same method and try it the same morning.