The following is taken from Confessions and Experiences by the infamous spanking enthusiast Edith Cadivec. This book is currently out of print, so we present an extract here for our readers…
My stepmother was a lady of 35. When father took her home, she had just become the widow of a 78-year-old doctor, to whom she had been married for four years. Formerly, she had been the governess of many children in socially prominent families.
Outwardly she was pleasant, without actually being pretty. Practical, materialistic, and clever as she was, she had married father only for reasons of security. She was a model housewife, a good cook, a foe of dust and of stockings with holes and tyrannised the whole house with her inveterate love of order. She shook me out of my daydreaming and urged me to take up needlework. Gabrielle had to help with the housework and knit stockings. We were no longer allowed to be idle and go play.
We sisters quickly discovered that our stepmother was a lady of great energy and sternness who always knew how to make her will prevail. She demanded prompt obedience, good behaviour and an iron industriousness from us. When she was angry and bored through us with her looks, her cold steel-green eyes could look at us with a sternness that made hot and cold shivers run down our spines. Our freedom was limited and now we had to come home punctually, on the minute.
Despite her zeal in child rearing, our stepmother did not show the slightest affection for us children. But she was ostentatiously affectionate with father. He was happy at her side, wholly henpecked.
A few months after the entrance of our stepmother into our lives, it happened that Gabrielle, now 13, did not come home punctually at one o’ clock for the midday meal. It was served and eaten as usual and when she did finally come home, around 1.30, she was served afterwards and had to eat alone.
My stepmother darted angry glances but did not utter a word as long as father was present. Gabrielle excused herself to father, explaining that she was late because she had accompanied a school friend home, and believed that her explanation had settled the matter.
When father had left the house, our stepmother came into the room where Gabrielle and I were busy with our homework. She went directly up to my sister and, flushing red, angrily demanded: “At what time are you supposed to be home?” “At one o’ clock,” answered Gabrielle calmly. “And at what time did you get home today?” “At 1.30, because I walked my friend home.” “Yes indeed! But you know I have insisted again and again that you be home at one o’ clock on the dot. Now come with me!”
She grabbed the resisting Gabrielle by the arm and dragged her to the bedroom next to the room in which we had been sitting. It was clear to both of us that something terrible was now about to happen. I stared into space, stiff, as if paralysed in every joint. My heart was in my mouth and the air was laden with an oppressive mystery that took my breath away.
Gabrielle began to cry, plead and promise that she would never do it again. But stepmother did not listen and silently dragged Gabrielle along with her. After they disappeared into the bedroom, she locked the door.
The surmise that a thrashing was in the offing became a certainty. An oppressive stillness prevailed all around me, so that I could hear every sound coming from the bedroom. I heard the sound of a chair being pulled out and then I heard my stepmother.
“Now, little girl, my patience with you is at an end! If you will not hear what I say, you must be made to feel my anger. Now you will taste the birch on your naked bottom. Maybe that will have some effect!”
Immediately the bedroom resounded with urgent pleas and imploring for forgiveness. Gabrielle’s promises to mend her ways were desperate, her weeping grew louder and louder, her screaming ever more heart rending. A convulsion went through my body and I trembled like an aspen leaf.
Gabrielle, in a shocked fear ridden tone, whimpered and squealed “No…no…you can’t unbutton my drawers! I’ll be good…good and punctual…I won’t do it again. Don’t take down my drawers! No, no!”
A piercing shriek ensued, confirming that her pleas were in vain and that Gabrielle’s bare bottom had received the first blow with the birch, and marked the first time that our stepmother had given a birching in our house. Indeed, it was the first time ever that Gabrielle had received a taste of the rod – but it was not to be the last!
I listened in state of frantic, tense excitement to the whistle of the birch as it came swishing down, blow after blow, on my sister’s bared bottom. On and on and on it went. So many were the blows that descended on Gabrielle’s bottom that it seemed the birching would never end. I will never forget that day – my soul inflamed and my blood raged as in a fever.
A whole new epoch was ushered in by this event. From then on, our stepmother thought of no other punishment for us children than the birch, and always on the fully bared bottom. From that day, hardly a week went by without my sister or me being summoned into the bedroom for a whipping.
Gabrielle, who was older, always had to unbutton her own drawers whereas my stepmother pulled mine down. When I received the rod for the first time, I could hardly endure it. The blows, which had the effect of molten lead on a naked bottom, singed my flesh like an infernal fire.
We were never birched when father was at home, but we lived in constant fear of inviting a punishment. One day Gabrielle complained about our stepmother to father because she, now a big girl of almost 14, had been birched. She did not want to put up with this anymore. But father merely answered: “You must have surely deserved it, my child!”
That day, when father left the house, our stepmother summoned Gabrielle to the bedroom and birched her once again, this time so soundly that she never again complained to father. Hereafter, she meekly submitted to her punishments.
I always waited for such events with taut nerves. I observed my stepmother’s features searchingly and tried to read in them the riddle of her inner being. Never did her eyes beam more brightly, never did the smile around the corners of her mouth play more happily, then when she could belabour the bare bottoms of her stepdaughters with the birch. She would beat with a slow deliberation, and the strange sensations I felt filled me with awe.
Later, when I recognised the nature of my own being, when my eyes and mind had been opened to the sweet pleasures of the rod, the image of my stepmother often cropped up in my mind. Then I would see her glowing cheeks, her flashing eyes and I understood the zeal with which she sought excuses for calling two grown girls into her bedroom for punishment. No doubt it was my stepmother’s greatest enjoyment.
In the evening, of course, I was bent on finding out whether traces of the birching were still discernible on my sister’s bottom. At bedtime, I made her lift her nightgown and, with horror, I saw a number of clear, reddish streaks. Especially noticeable were the yellow-blue spots on her right buttock which was precisely where the points of the birch had landed.
It was understandable that such a sight should excite me and fill me with quaking fear. Which of us would be next to have her naked bottom birched so soundly? Numberless times, I too was stretched over a chair like Gabrielle and received the birch on my bare buttocks. In the beginning, both my sister and I found it puzzling when stepmother came into the room, motioned with her forefinger, and called out: “Edith, come here!”
Little by little, however, we understood what it signified: the birch rod, the rear flap of the drawers pulled down to bare the bottom. She laid such careful emphasis on the word ‘naked’ when rebuking the culprit and one felt like crawling into a hole in shame.
At the time, it seemed that a complete transformation had taken place in my soul. Until then, I had been but a small schoolgirl. My thoughts were divided between homework, my playmates, my sister and my home. Now, since the introduction of birching and a strict regime, a new and exciting element had been added to my education, a feeling my sisters never grasped in the same way.