In the year of our Lord, nineteen hundred and fifty-three, the matter of corporal punishment was regarded with a certain solemnity and, indeed, a sense of duty. It was not merely a corrective, but a moral lesson, administered with a firm hand and, one hoped, a loving heart. In those days, the rod was not spared, nor was the child, and the world seemed all the better for it—or so the grown-ups declared.
(short pause) It was during the Christmas season, when the air was sharp and the scent of coal smoke hung over the rooftops, that my family, a sprawling collection of aunts, uncles, and cousins, converged upon my grandparents’ house—a grand, if somewhat draughty, Edwardian residence in the heart of a respectable English suburb. The house, with its peculiar arrangement of rooms—kitchen and parlour upstairs, bedrooms and storerooms below—was a veritable playground for the young and a sanctuary for the old.
(pause) The grown-ups, resplendent in their Sunday best, gathered in the upstairs parlour, sipping tea and discussing matters of grave importance, while we children—myself, my cousin Thomas, and Robyn—were left to our own devices, which, as any sensible adult might have predicted, was a recipe for mischief.
(short pause) The older cousins, being of that superior age which regards all things childish with disdain, ignored us entirely. The younger ones, mere infants, were beneath our notice. Thus, we three—Robyn, a year my junior, and Thomas, two years younger still—formed a natural alliance, united by boredom and a shared sense of injustice at our exclusion from the adult world.
(pause) Having exhausted the amusements of the lower rooms, and finding the garden too sodden for play, we petitioned our mothers for leave to visit the park across the road. The request was granted, for the park was plainly visible from the parlour window, and the road, though cobbled, was not much frequented by motorcars.
(short pause) At first, we occupied ourselves with a game of football, but the novelty soon wore off. It was then that Robyn, ever the instigator, proposed a new diversion—what she called “knock-down-ginger,” a practice of knocking upon the doors of unsuspecting neighbours and fleeing before they could answer. The very naughtiness of the scheme lent it a delicious thrill, and, after a moment’s hesitation, we agreed.
(pause) We crept from door to door, rapping smartly and then darting behind hedges or parked bicycles, stifling our giggles as bewildered householders peered out into the wintry dusk. Most, finding nothing amiss, returned to their firesides, but the excitement of the chase was enough to keep us at our mischief for some time.
(short pause) At length, the game lost its charm, and we returned to the park, flushed with triumph and quite certain of our cleverness. But our victory was short-lived. From the balcony above, our mothers summoned us with voices that brooked no delay. We trudged back to the house, expecting nothing more than a telling off.
However, when we got back inside the large entrance hall, we were met with three stern looking faces, asking us what we had been doing. It was clear we had been rumbled. Protestations of innocence quickly became partial and then full confessions after our mothers contradicted our accounts with their eye witness testimony – we had forgotten just how well everything could be observed from that upstairs living room.
Thomas and I were taken into one room by our mothers, with my aunt taking Robyn into another one. We were told how disappointed they were, how it could scare an elderly person coming to the door to find nobody there, and how much we had embarrassed them.
Getting a smacked bottom was not an absolute inevitability at my age and until now, I had held out the hope that I would just be told off. However, the tone of voice my mother used made that hope vanish – as did the fact that my aunt told Thomas he was going to get one now – my mother could hardly let me off a smacking in the circumstances.
We were both soon put over the respective maternal knee, each mother having a hairbrush to hand.
They seemed to be in competition with each other; as if by having had their own parental skills called into question by our misbehaviour, the only way to redeem their ‘good mother’ status was to thoroughly redden our bottoms.
I can’t count recall how many smacks Thomas and I both got, but it was certainly sufficient to have us crying and truly penitent. We were then both sent to opposite corners of the roomto think about what we did.
Our mothers left the room and during that time, the crying subsided to sobs and vision returned from the blur it had been. It was at that point, the embarrassment started to rise.
The one blessing was that the room was not used much – it was used to house a few of my grandfather’s special belongings in ordinary times and to sleep one of the families at New Year but otherwise not much happened in the day.
After what seemed an age (but was probably no more than 20 minutes), our parents returned. We were both ordered to turn around. We were told that the punishment should serve as a reminder, and given threats of worse to follow if anything happened again. Then we were ordered to go back upstairs to rejoin the rest of the family.
Before we did, we spent a little time trying to reduce the evidence of our crying as best we could, and discussed how ‘unfair’ our punishment had been.
Worse was to follow, though, when we returned sheepishly upstairs. There were more than a few knowing looks – it was known what we had done and very obvious, if not explicitly state, that a humiliating price had been paid. We both felt like pariahs and very ‘babyish’ for having both been spanked and our punishment being known.
The final straw was seeing Robyn happily talking to some of our older cousins, as if she was an equal to their exalted teenage status. She had merely been told off and given a lecture on why she shouldn’t do it. I later found out from her that her mother didn’t believe in spanking, and that she was ‘far too old’ for it anyway.
It took a while for either of us to forgive her after that. A smacked bottom is embarrassing enough, but worse if a younger peer is exempt from it.
