Many years ago, much to the annoyance of my mother, I used to run upstairs to my bedroom most evenings after school to change into my football kit. I usually ignored her warning of ‘do you want a smacked bottom?’ as she rarely put me over her knee when I was being naughty. However, one […]

My mother was a sixth grade teacher from the time she graduated in the 1970s until she retired five or six years ago.  When she began her career, corporal punishment was still very much an option and it could be carried out by the teacher in the classroom. My mother had a large classroom-style paddle […]

The following text is an introductory note and preface to Beatrice Reinhart’s 1937 book Back To Common Sense, a child training manual emphatically advocating the practice of spanking, and going into great detail as to how it should be done. As stated in our special report into the book’s background, it owes a great deal to a 1920s […]

Books offering advice on raising good, happy children have never exactly been in short supply – but two slim American volumes from the 1920s and 30s stand out starkly, not only for being firm advocates of spanking but also for going into great detail as to just how such discipline should be administered. The first […]

When I was a boy, my mother kept a strap that she would use to chastise me once in awhile. She usually gave me between 15 and 25 licks when she thought I needed it. The strapping was always done through the seat of my pants but even fully clothed, it still stung a lot. […]

I met Omolade [name changed – Ed] at university – we were both studying history of art at Cambridge. She was Nigerian and her mother was a quite prominent diplomat. For a long time we were just friends, but after getting drunk at a party one night, we spent most of the evening kissing and […]