My mother was a schoolmistress in a small village primary school in Scotland in the 1950s, when the tawse was considered a piece of equipment essential in the maintenance of classroom discipline. It was not surprising, therefore, that she was an enthusiastic practitioner of corporal punishment not only in school, but also in the home.
At school, although my mother did not teach me, I knew that she would get to hear of serious misbehaviour. Only rarely did I qualify for the strap for offences such as not paying attention and poor homework and there is no doubt that in my case, such correction was very effective and made me respect the teacher. A stroke of the tawse on the palm may not seem severe but it was sufficient to waken up my ideas and make me concentrate on my lessons.
At home, however, there were certain differences. For example, I did not have to hold out my hand, as my mum preferred domestic use of the tawse to be on my bottom and the minimum number of strokes was two, up to a maximum of six.
I did not, of course, go out of the way to merit a dose of the strap and a leathering was a rare event. Over-the-knee spankings were a more regular feature and often occurred on Sundays. On that day, I wore a boy’s kilt but with bottle green knickers underneath and I think my mum liked to combine mild correction with the additional embarrassment of a knicker-revealing display as she upturned my kilt before a spanking commenced.
The most memorable leathering came when I was about eleven years old and in the last year of primary. Some larking around in the playground climaxed with me raising the skirt of a girl called Shona, a girl with whom I was on friendly terms, so that I could see her knickers (they were the usual navy blue and not anything I had not seen before in the gym or at outdoor games).
The incident passed over as Shona threatened to get her revenge next time I was wearing my kilt (she knew about the bottle green knickers) but, unknown to the pair of us, my mother had witnessed the escapade from her classroom window.
When I got home from school that day, my mother questioned me about the matter and it did not take long for her to obtain a confession to, in her opinion, a misdemeanour worthy of ‘six of the very best!’
As she fetched the tawse from its place in a kitchen cabinet drawer, I took down my school shorts and bent over the arm of a chair. On her return mum tapped the seat of my pants with the strap and said: “We’ll have these down as well, please!” Any protest would have been pointless and I quickly pulled down my ‘last line of defence’.
Soon she had me howling as six times she hoisted the three-tailed tawse high into the air and then brought it down with deadly accuracy on my unprotected buttocks.
After completion of the chastisement, I was required to stand in a corner for half an hour with my hands on my head and my very red (and very sore) bottom on display. How I wanted to rub my rear end, but this would have simply given my mum an excuse to administer a resounding smack to my stinging posterior and make things even worse.
That evening, mum sat me down at the kitchen table and I had to write a letter of apology to Shona, to include a full description of the leathering I had received as a ‘reward’ for my misconduct. The task completed to mum’s satisfaction, I was then sent to bed early. I was not looking forward to tomorrow!
The next morning was a Saturday but I found my ‘Sunday best’ kilt (plus bottle green knickers) laid out and reluctantly got dressed in the outfit as I did not wish to risk a spanking with my bottom still smarting from the previous evening.
After breakfast, mother marched me round to Shona’s house and, with Shona’s mother also present, I was made to read out my apology. As soon as I had finished, mum spun me round, lifted up my kilt, pulled down my knickers, and said: “I don’t think this naughty little boy will find sitting down a comfortable experience for the rest of the weekend!”
Needless to say my face was, if possible, even redder than my bottom as mum ordered me to pull up my knickers and get back home, where she had plenty of things for me to do to keep me out of further mischief.
The reader will not be astonished to learn that I rued the day when a brief glimpse of Shona’s school bloomers had resulted in such disastrous consequences. Shona had been given a sight not only of my ‘Sunday knickers’ but also of my bare and very red bottom.
However, when we got a chance to discuss the matter, Shona was very sympathetic and said that her mother could be very strict and sometimes she got spanked across the seat of her knickers with a hairbrush. “It may not be as bad as the strap,” she said, “but it is jolly sore and I hate it when I get spanked.”
Shona and I remained friends and she never told any of the other kids about my punishment – or what was worn under my kilt on Sundays.
Contributor: David