Asking for a good birch rod, the Colonel says he will show them the way a real expert would use it, whisking the birch about so that the trembling victim can hear it hissing through the air.
The Colonel continues: ‘Now the real art of birching consists, of course, in inflicting the greatest amount of humiliation and suffering, but without in reality doing serious damage; we have to consider how so to apply the rod as to effect some radical moral good in the disposition and mind of the culprit; how to make them feel the very dregs as it were of humiliation, degradation, and every kind of mortification. It is a curious fact that it sends the blood of a sensitive modest girl in impulsive rushes (especially to the face and neck) in the form of scarlet blushes, which pass over those parts in continuous waves, corresponding to each stroke of the rod; this is a curious psychological fact, which is puzzling even to anatomists.’
Letter from Mrs. Martinet on Slipper Punishment.
A slipper is a splendid thing to slap with, as it has such a stinging effect without cutting the skin, like a regular birchrod.
I should not write so fully as I do, but knowing you to be an amateur, and consequently interested in every incident of punishment, it gives a kind of freedom to my pen, as I know you can be depended on not to abuse my confidence.
My special penchant used to be for a good stinging bunch of real birch twigs, and I still think that is far the best thing to use for big girls over thirteen, but for little delicate chits under that age, there is nothing answers so well as a nice new slipper. A proficient disciplinarian would first give the delinquent a short lecture on the nature of her offence, then firmly insist upon the culprit herself fetching the instrument of punishment: to my idea, there is more shame and humiliation at having to bring the slipper to be flogged, than fear of the smart, which is always worse in imagination than fact.
A skilful flagellatrix will always prolong these sensations, as they effect as much good as the application of the slipper.
Flogging and Cruelty in a Glasgow Industrial School.
A case not unlike what has just been brought to light in London is reported in connection with the Glasgow Girls’ Industrial School. The charges against the matron consist of acts of cruelty when administering punishment to the girls. Here is part of an account given in a Glasgow paper of an interview with the matron regarding her treatment of a girl who had absconded from the institution. The girl was taken into the laundry with only her chemise and a petticoat on, and held by two girls while she flogged her with a taws. She knows that the girl’s garments got twisted in the struggle, but cannot remember whether they all came off or not. She is sure the girl did not receive more than twelve strokes, very likely not so many. After flogging the girl she went to her own room, she was so excited, leaving instructions to have the girl put under the spray-bath to cool her down. After whipping the girls she gave them the spray to revive them. Then a mattress was taken into the surgery and the girl was put in there. That very night she visited her in the surgery, and told her she had only punished her for her good. She taught her a little prayer, and then she prayed with her. The interview goes on to say: ‘You did not enter the punishment in the records?’ ‘No, for the girl had never been in the schoolroom, and the punishment did not form part of the ordinary discipline of the school.’ ‘You consider that the punishment requisite to break a girl in should not be entered?’ ‘Well, I go upon precedent. I was assistant to the former matron, and in a case where a girl was punished under similar circumstances it was not entered in the book.’
The matron mentioned above is also reported by the same girl to have confessed to stripping a girl naked before whipping her. This lady who was assistant matron, said she knew nothing about the rules. One of the teachers who has since left the institution said she did so out of disgust at the way it was conducted, and the cruelty practised in the punishment of the inmates. The resignation of the matron was accepted by the committee of management.