Mistress Gail's Blog

http://www.corpun.com/index.htm

This is an independent, non-profit, factual website devoted to the study of corporal punishment (e.g. caning, paddling, birching, strapping, slippering, spanking, flogging) throughout the world, in history and in the present day.

Its main purpose is to provide objective information and background about this social and cultural phenomenon which has been a significant part of life for thousands of years.

It is NOT designed to promote particular opinions about corporal punishment. It is NOT part of any campaign for or against anything. It has no connection with any organisation. Nor is it an interactive forum for on-line debate on the issue (there are plenty of those elsewhere).

As to whether corporal punishment is a good thing or a bad thing, readers must make up their own minds, but please don’t write to me about it.

There is also an expanding selection of video clips.

Spanking has different meanings in British and US English. In UK usage it has hitherto referred only to smacking the recipient’s bottom with the open hand. It certainly could not be used to mean paddling or caning or using any other kind of implement to deliver the punishment. In North American English, however, it is so used, and can refer to more or less any kind of CP. The American meaning is now beginning to seep into some British/European usage, but texts written by me will stick to the traditional British definition except where they are part of an article entirely about American CP.

Note however that “whacking” can mean different things in other parts of the world. For instance, when Singapore schoolboys talk about whacking, they are referring to beating each other up in fights; they do not use it to refer to school CP, which they always describe as caning.

Abbreviations. The one abbreviation used constantly throughout this site is CP, for corporal punishment. “JCP” means judicial corporal punishment. “SCP”, for school corporal punishment, has been glimpsed elsewhere on the internet but does not yet seem to have caught on, and is not much used here.

It should also be noted that the punishment cane used in British Commonwealth and European schools is/was always a thin, flexible one (typically of rattan). The modern use (especially in American English) of the word “cane” to mean a thick, rigid stick such as a walking stick (as in “white cane” for the blind, “candy cane”, etc.) seems to be leading some people to have the wrong idea about the nature of caning as a punishment.

The slipper is often a misnomer. A slippering in a UK school was sometimes a very informal and even jocular affair, but could equally be a punishment of the “semi-formal but unofficial” kind — in some cases as painful an ordeal as a caning, and in many schools a good deal more common than official canings. It was actually inflicted, more often than not, with a large tennis shoe or gymshoe, a much weightier implement than the domestic carpet slipper. The latter was mostly used parentally in the home.

Whipping was traditionally the word used in British legal texts to refer to judicial corporal punishment. It continued to be so used until JCP was abolished, even though the instrument used had long ceased to be a whip. In Britain itself, after about 1850, it usually in fact meant birching, and a distinction is sometimes drawn between “whipping” (with a birch) and “flogging” (with a cat). In countries of the former British Empire, “whipping” in legal texts usually means JCP with whatever is the local instrument — often a cane, as in Malaysia and several African countries. Singapore is unusual in having substituted the word “caning” for “whipping” in its more recent legislation.

A reformatory here means any residential institution for young offenders, whether or not the word forms part of its official name. Unfortunately, in some North American contexts, particularly in Canada, it sometimes seems to mean a prison for (young) adults. These latter are counted as prisons for the purposes of this site.

Readers should also note the peculiarly opaque term “Approved School” from 1933 onwards in the UK; these were always officially described as not being reformatories (I think this was because they were “open” and not secure, i.e. it was easy to abscond from them), but for all practical purposes that is exactly what they were, not schools.

Also, in a number of countries, including Britain and Canada, it can sometimes be difficult to discuss Prison CP separately from Judicial CP because the judicial CP (or anyway some of it) was carried out in prisons under the same regulations as the prison CP.

Countries. Much of the information on the site is organised by country. As a general rule, for the sake of simplicity I have used the present-day names of countries even where the items concerned date from a time when the country was called something else. This won’t always work for historical material from places where boundaries have substantially changed (Poland) or where a present-day country was once part of some other country that itself still exists (Ireland/UK; Pakistan/India). I have judged each such case on its merits and tried to follow the dictates of common sense.

Jurisdictions. In the case of fully federal countries like the USA, Canada, Malaysia, Australia or Germany, I have categorised news items under those names rather than under individual states or provinces, even if the individual states are for many purposes separate legal jurisdictions. However, where there is a lot of material and it seems particularly appropriate — as in the US school handbook pages, and certain information in the Country Files section — I have subdivided it by individual state. This is not always entirely satisfactory, but life is never perfect.

Technical and legal issues

This website is designed to load fast and to work on all browsers. Simplicity is the watchword. There is a deliberate absence of java scripts, pointless graphics, annoying animations, confusing clutter and silly gimmicks of all kinds. The site contains no pull-down menus (you should be able to navigate all my pages without a mouse, if you really need to) and absolutely NO FRAMES. What you see is what you get. If you get lost, you can always go back to the front page (”main menu page”) by clicking on the Corpun logo at the top left of every page.

No advertisingThere is no advertising on this site. There is nothing for sale. It does not seek donations. It generates no revenue of any kind. It is funded entirely out of my own pocket. This puts the fact that it is a non-profit site beyond doubt, which means that I can quote external material under the “fair use” doctrine without getting copyright permission. It also means that I am not beholden to anybody.

All hyperlinks are underlined, and everything underlined is a link.

The site contains over 2,000 external hyperlinks. These are all checked every three or four months and weeded or updated as appropriate. External links open in a new window. This symbol denotes an external link that will open in a new window.

http://www.corpun.com/index.htm