Tails of the Tawse

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You do realise that it will be very, very, painful," she said sincerely, leaving him in no doubt that she meant it, "I intend to cane you very hard, Thomas, very hard." Miss Sven­son stood up and walked towards her study win­dows. The win­dows revealed a scene of some dev­as­ta­tion: branch­es felled by wind and rose bush­es beat­en down by rain; she would have to tell Mr Jef­freys, the head gar­den­er, to take an urgent look at this, Miss Sven­son thought to herself. I was beginning to think that Lindsey's punishment was over - although five seemed an odd number of strokes - when I heard again the awful sound of that cane, but even louder than before. This somewhat surreptitious measure to conceal his own personal tawse, always provided him with a painful element of surprise for any pupil who may have erred in a given task, or who may have simply spoken out-of-turn. Fine I think,’ the lit­tle girl replied a lit­tle ner­vous­ly as she took her place on the chair and glanced at the Class teacher.

They’re not a bad lot all in all,’ replied Miss Pren­der­gast enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly, ‘but per­haps not all quite as well-behaved as Melanie.’

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I am definitely of the opinion, in view of the difficult type of girl which these Schools have to deal with, the fact that the Superintendent and Staff are human and not perfect, that it is necessary for the maintenance of discipline that the rule of the School should permit punishment of this kind as a last resort and that the girls should know it. Gri­mac­ing slight­ly the big boy com­plied. Because of his size, he was one of the few allowed to wear long trousers and con­se­quent­ly looked par­tic­u­lar­ly ridicu­lous draped over the chair with them around his ankles. The teach­ers were, how­ev­er, not unhap­py that he should feel addi­tion­al­ly humil­i­at­ed in thisway. Things really improved after that, but in my professional opinion I was not doing a good job. Discipline had recovered, but what to do about the education part of my job? I had access to transport; I had imagination and a supportive head of department pleased to sign off any idea as long as he was not asked to participate. And I had a cousin who managed a factory on the edge of Glasgow. It was a small factory but part of an industrial estate. So began the germ of an idea. We heard the sound of the assembly breaking up and fell silent. As the classes trooped by at the end of the corridor, several pupils glanced towards us as we stood unhappily outside the office. I knew that they would be imagining what would soon be happening to us. Delight­ful child,’ remarked the Head­mistress as the door closed. ‘Let us hope that the rest of your class live up to her example.’

After the second I was crying. I got three on each hand. Afterwards she gave me a hug, again said she was sorry she had to strap me, but she couldn't allow me to talk in class. She also said that if I felt I needed to be strapped again in the future she wanted me to come and tell her after class and not disrupt the class. She made me promise that if I wanted the strap again I'd tell her. I got another brief hug and was told to go to the bathroom down the hall to wash up and then rejoin the class.

You can keep my my money until I do," he replied at once, desperate to say anything to avoid any more strokes of the cane biting into his burning, throbbing bottom. It will be a severe pun­ish­ment, Miran­da, but I hope you agree a fair one. And, I can assure you, it will be admin­is­tered by me. Now go and fetch thecane!’ So help me, if you move your hands I’ll go straight into that class and tell your boys just what a coward you are.’ Well Miss Roberts, that sounds like a pret­ty good report to me,’ said Miss Sven­son. ‘But do you have any­thing toadd?’ Wham, wham, wham. She couldn’t remem­ber how many times he rained down the cane, nor the colour of the dress she was wear­ing, nor the weave of the fab­ric into which she clenched her fists, all she could remem­ber, she thought with a pang, was the sound of his cold, venge­fulanger.