Maman Special Report
We recently received an intriguing email from an English contributor named Chris. Its contents contained the text of a letter Chris and his cousin Richard found while sorting through the effects of Richard’s mother after she died in 2008.
The letter is dated October 2, 1959 and is apparently a reply from the school’s headmaster to earlier correspondence from Richard’s mother. Richard was 12 years old at the time. We have redacted all other names in the interests of privacy. Here is the text of that letter…
Dear Mrs ________,
Thank you for your recent letter requesting that your son Richard receives corporal punishment on his bare buttocks.
By law, I am only allowed to administer bare buttock punishments if I am directly requested to do so by a parent, guardian or an officer of the law. As your letter has made such a request, I can confirm that as of the date of this letter, Richard will now receive all future corporal punishment on his bare buttocks, and this will be indicated on the ‘Notification Of Corporal Punishment’ note that he will be given to pass to you for signature.
I can confirm that all canings are ‘of the best’.
Finally, I would gladly allow you and your sister to witness one of Richard’s punishments to ensure that you are satisfied with how it is administered and to decide whether you would like the number of strokes he receives to be increased. I will contact you the next time Richard is reported for punishment to arrange a convenient time for you and your sister to attend.
Yours Sincerely
________________, Headmaster
The ‘sister’ mentioned in the letter, incidentally, is Chris’s own mother.
We did ask Chris whether he still had the original of this astonishing communication for us to scan and include but sadly, he replied: “Unfortunately I don’t have the original. I saw it when my cousin and I found it and he kept it. He now lives in Australia and sent me the transcription a few years ago.
“We both found the letter very amusing and Richard remembered the day when his mother and mine attended his school to witness his punishment. Fortunately for him, they decided that six strokes on the bare bottom was a sufficient caning.
“Both our mothers were very strict and we were both caned at school and at home. My father had died when I was nine years old and about a year later my mother started to use a cane to punish me, after I had had my first caning at school.
“She regularly caned me on the bare buttocks at home up until 1976 (when I was 24 years old), when I got married and moved out. My wife thought it hilarious that my mother still caned me but approved of her doing so. I started to become sexually aroused by caning when I was about 15 years old – luckily for me, my mother never noticed; or if she did, she said nothing about it.
“My wife took over as my disciplinarian and kept me in order right up until her death in 2017.”
Maman wonders how many strict mothers of the 50s and 60s requested that their children were disciplined on the bare bottom when required! Thank you, Chris, for a most entertaining contribution.