People who grew up in Scotland will probably remember that the idea of a boy wearing school knickers, while not an everyday thing, was not quite as extraordinary as it would have been elsewhere.
This came partly from the kilt and although some people say that the ‘real’ tradition is to wear nothing underneath, in my experience that was absolutely unknown. A boy would no more go bare under the kilt than a girl would go without knickers under her skirt. What one was supposed to wear were ‘trews’ (also known as ‘breeks’ – Ed), which were little woollen shorts, traditionally in dark green.
They looked not unlike bottle green girls’ knickers, except that they had a row of buttons up the front, and they were extremely uncomfortable. I only ever had one pair and I hated them, especially as they got smaller (shrinking in the wash) and I got bigger. Apart from that, can you imagine the procedure if you had to get your bottom smacked – standing at your mother’s knee while she fumbled under your kilt to undo the buttons?
A very reasonable, and much more comfortable alternative, was real bottle green knickers and that was what was generally considered as ‘proper’ wear with a kilt. But then you had to keep in mind that Scottish reputation for meanness with money. In those days, practically all schools prescribed navy blue knickers – except for the private schools, which would have green or maroon.
I expect that the quality of the knickers was exactly the same but it was only the ‘posh’ shops that stocked the green and maroon. Of course, the posh shops were more expensive and I suppose the private school knickers were more expensive too.
So a substantial economy could be realised by substituting the navy blue for the bottle green. And, if you had an older sister (and if you consider that you didn’t wear the kilt every day), then it was clear that a handed-down pair would serve perfectly well. And if the elastic was a bit tired or there were a few moth holes, then that didn’t matter, because who was going to see them anyway?
Of course, if your sister liked to have a ‘bit of fun, then you would find that all her friends would know that you were wearing her old knickers and she could flip up your kilt to show them the proof.
I had always found school knickers ‘interesting’, in the sense of liking to see them when the girls were wearing them. I knew all the places to stand when the wind was high and had a profound interest in girls’ netball, gymnastics and other sports. At some point, I moved from being preoccupied with seeing them to wanting to have them (and eventually to wearing them, this time by choice.)
As far as the wearing was concerned, initially, when dressed in a kilt, I would be dreading the thought of being smacked and my knickers being on show. Then, at some point, I found I was almost looking forward to the ‘surprise’ on the lifting of my kilt to reveal the knickers. And eventually, I would be preoccupied with the thought of trousers being taken down to reveal school knickers.
My history of ‘larceny’ began very innocently with the purloining of a pair of my sister’s new knickers and mixing them in with the handed-down ones. Eventually, by the age of 13 or so, I started my actual ‘life of true crime’.
The first time, I simply gave into a sudden impulse when an irresistible temptation was put in my way. I was walking home from the library one evening, about 7.30pm or so. It was winter, so it was dark. I happened to be walking down a road that faced the back of a row of newly-built houses. Because they were new, there were no fences.
Towards the end of the row, I passed a house where the washing line was full of clothes. As I walked past, it registered in my mind that there were six or so pairs of what seemed like school knickers on the line near the edge of the garden. The idea of helping myself to a pair popped into my head. I walked on, then I walked back, then back again.
I must have walked up and down a dozen times but couldn’t pluck up the courage to do it. I gave up and set off home. When I was almost home, I turned around, went straight back, stepped up to the line, unpegged a pair of pants, stuck them in my pocket and headed straight home.
They were navy blue, made by ‘Meridien’, marked ‘size 22’ and seemed pretty large to me. They had a tag inside with the name ‘T Gairns’. I always hoped to meet Miss Gairns, but never did.
That was the beginning and from there, I went from strength to strength. Mostly, I worked on washing lines but every now and then I would get something from, for example, a laundry basket in somebody’s house and a couple of times I would get a moment in the school cloakroom where some girls had left their sports bags.
My collection included Cherub, Meridien, Montfort, Nittona and Puritex (very interesting the last – ‘Puritex Hygienic Underwear'”, whatever that might mean). Eventually, I got up to about 20 pairs and of course that created a storage problem. One or two pairs of navy blue I could just keep in my drawer, as there was always a pair of two there anyway.
My main cache I kept up in the roof space under the insulation, but I would always have half a dozen pairs up at the back of the top shelf in the wardrobe, where (obviously) nobody would ever have reason to look.
Of course, eventually somebody did look. I came home from school one afternoon and found a neatly-folded pile of knickers sitting on top of the chest of drawers in my room. My first thought was that I must have left them sitting there myself, but I was soon disabused of that notion when my mother stormed into the room and demanded to know where they had come from.
My first line of defence was simple denial – I just had no idea where they came from, I was every bit as surprised as she was. Within a few minutes, my trousers were off and I was on the receiving end of an almighty walloping around the legs, and was soon in tears.
Now, it was not that I was especially brave, but I simply could not come up with a story and so I just stuck to denial of all knowledge. By the age of 13 and a half, I should really have been beyond having my bottom smacked but my underpants were duly taken down and I went over mother’s knee for an impressive smacking. I was a deep red from my waist to the back of my knees.
I suppose that the effort was quite tiring for my mum and eventually I was left in my room to ‘think things over’ while she prepared dinner – and that was a pretty silent affair. While we were clearing up afterwards, I could tell that my mum was boiling over with anger and frustration.
At one point, she announced to me that she had had enough of wearing herself out smacking my bottom like an infant, and that she would take the belt to me. I thought to myself: “Thank God we don’t have one” – although I reckoned that it meant she would soon be getting one, and that was not something that I was looking forward to.
Several of my friends had already gone through the introduction to the belt at home, and it sounded like a major escalation over a smacked bottom.
When the clearing up was finished, mum started to rummage through the utensil drawer in the kitchen and produced a big wooden spoon. I was curtly ordered ‘upstairs’ – she followed me up – and then ‘get those trousers off’. I unfastened them and let them fall.
She swiped me on the side of the leg with the spoon. “I said off – get them right off!” Then: “And the underpants, right off too!” I was pushed over the bed and she started to lay on the spoon.
Now, I had always had the reflex of bursting into tears as soon as she ever touched me, and I had actually been crying on the way upstairs. Once she started laying on that spoon, I was screaming.
At this point, she was not asking me any questions; she was just walloping and telling me to keep quiet. After some time, she pulled me upright and started questioning, demanding to have the truth.
I tried a few pathetic stories about they were my sister’s (obviously not, since she had no green knickers). I tried: “I found them”, and eventually confessed: “I took them.” Smack by smack, I gave the full story of raiding washing lines.
But the awful thing was, she didn’t believe it. I think that in her mind she had decided that I had been up to some ‘dirty nonsense’ with a girl – or girls. Eventually, I think, she was just tired out and told me that I would stay in my room until I was ready to tell the truth – and I was also told that she would keep thrashing me, if she had to take the skin off my backside until I did.
The next day, she was taking another look at the little pile of knickers when she came upon a pair with the name tag ‘G Walker’. Gillian was the girl next door – she was a couple of years older than me and very attractive, but certainly not at all interested in me.
My mum evidently decided that I had been ‘messing around’ with Gillian and was, in a sense, pleased to find that somebody else’s child was involved in my ‘wickedness’ – kind of sharing the burden. So she marched next door with the incriminating knickers and confronted Mrs Walker with them.
Unfortunately, over the course of a few weeks, I had made off with three pairs from next door and they had been missed, so mum was finally confronted in the most embarrassing way with the proof that I really had been stealing, as I had confessed.
I gather that her reaction was to start in about what a leathering she would give me and that she was going right out to get a belt. Mrs W then offered the loan of hers, and the offer was gladly accepted. When I got in from school that afternoon I was called into the living room.
My eyes were immediately drawn to the sight of the belt lying on the coffee table. It was something I had seen often enough, as it was in regular use in school, given generally on the hands and occasionally on the seat of the trousers. The thought of an angry mother applying that with my trousers down turned my knees to water.
In case anybody is not familiar with it, the Scottish belt or tawse is a fearsome implement explicitly and specially designed solely for the application of corporal punishment. It is a strip of leather about 24in long, with the end divided into two or three ‘tails’. It can be as much as a quarter of an inch thick.
I do not know how the leather is prepared, but it is practically as stiff as a board – if you hold it out by the handle, it hardly bends at all. I would contend that for application on the bare bottom, there is no other implement that compares with it for severity. The cane might be slightly more effective over trousers but on the bare bottom, I would say a two-tail tawse is like two canings and a three-tail tawse is like three.
Mum picked up the tawse, looked at me for a moment, then said: “Get stripped.” She didn’t mean naked, but for me to take my trousers and underpants off.
There was a bit of awkwardness then, as neither she nor I really knew how I should be positioned, but I was eventually maneouvered over the arm of the sofa (upper body on the seat, bottom over the arm and my legs down the side).
Then I got it. I thought I would die. Mum generally did not count when she smacked me; she just went on until I cried and then went on until I had enough. I have no idea ever of how many smacks were in a good smacking but it was a lot.
I counted 15 strokes of the belt and there were a few more after I lost count. It took a fair time, because I couldn’t keep in position. I would get one or two, then struggle out of position and be wrestled back into place.
Sometimes mum would try to hold me in place with a hand or even her knee in my back. Then the strokes would fall lower down, on my right thigh. Then she would step back and lay on a couple of full-blooded strokes in the centre of my bottom.
Obviously, I was crying in full flood throughout the whole proceedings, and also letting out a loud scream as each stroke fell. As I yelled, mum said a few times: “That’s right – let the whole street know what you’re getting!”
When it was over I was sent straight up to bed, where I had the chance to inspect the damage. My whole bottom was a deep purple. The right side of my bum had the characteristic raised marks where the end of the tails of the strap had landed, and there were several clear imprints of the strap low down on my right thigh.
So that was my introduction to the tawse. A week or so afterwards, we went on the bus to the shop of Mr Dick, the traditional maker of the official straps, and we came home with the tawse that then came into use for the next few years.
One of my big worries was the story going around of me stealing Gillian’s knickers. Actually, I was lucky on that front. She knew the story of course, but the next day she sat beside me on the bus and told me that she knew and had heard me while I was being belted – she thought it was funny and said it sounded like a really good leathering, especially for a first one. But she added that if her mother had given it, it would have been worse.
Gillian’s knickers disappeared, so I assume they were returned. I never dared to take any again from so close to home. The other pairs that had been found were left in my drawer and the next year, when my sister left school, hers also were handed down and after that, I almost never got any new underpants.
I think it was partly the final element of being taught a lesson and partly just traditional Scottish economy. After all, why let perfectly good underwear go to waste?
Contributor: Mike