My name is Caroline Jameson but I have always been known as Carrie. I was born in Edinburgh in November 1965 and spent all of my early childhood in a small village in East Lothian. I was an only child and my father worked in a bank in Edinburgh while my mother was a nurse at the local cottage hospital in the nearby town. My early schooling was in the local village school, but when I was 12 my parents decided to send me to an all-girls boarding school in Perthshire. This suited me perfectly. I was keen on all sports, particularly golf, and I was a very sociable girl who loved the company of others.
I was pretty well-behaved during my school days, apart from the odd time when I was pushed too far and lost my temper. I had to be pushed a long way, but occasionally I would snap and behave in a way that was totally at odds with my normal demeanour. This was rare and, over the years, it was only on a handful of occasions that I would be faced with having to see Miss Malloy, our headmistress, for one of her weekly disciplinary sessions.
I believe that these weekly sessions were quite unique. Miss Malloy was fundamentally a kind person and my theory is that her sessions were designed to involve the minimum amount of actual punishment for her girls but, at the same time, maximising the element of deterrence. She believed that it was better to deter bad behaviour amongst her girls rather than continually punish to the point where it all became quite routine. From this starting point, what emerged would have seemed quite logical to her.
The system worked like this. Routine misdemeanours were dealt with by the school staff using a combination of detentions and withdrawal of privileges; nothing unusual so far. More serious offences would earn you a 'Disciplinary Chitty' which meant that you had to attend one of Miss Malloy's disciplinary sessions which took place in the school gym every term time Friday at 5.00 pm. Each session might involve anything from 2 or 3 pupils or, on rare occasions, maybe up to 10 girls. You had to attend in full games kit which consisted of a white polo shirt, short navy skirt, navy knickers, short white socks and trainers.
If you were given a chitty you had to keep it and have it ready to show Miss Malloy when you were in the gym. The staff chitty books came with a carbon paper insert so that the pupil had the original but a carbon copy would be handed by the staff member to Miss Malloy. The chitty detailed the date that it was issued, your name, your class and the offence committed. In this way Miss Malloy knew who to expect at each week's disciplinary session and the type of misbehaviour that each girl had been involved in.
So each week the girls involved had to line up outside the connecting door between the changing rooms and the gym, while Miss Malloy would access the gym via the door from the main school. She would then call for us all to enter the gym at the same time and check our names off against her punishment list for that week. Each time I was involved in this process I remember that the first thing that struck me on entering the gym would be that Miss Malloy would be holding a few brown leather tawses in her right hand. Tawses were mainly used in Scotland and they were effectively a leather strap divided into two or three thinner fingers. Any girl who had been strapped by Miss Malloy knew the secret as to why the tawse inflicted so much pain; it was the leather fingers that whipped around your bottom and stung the skin so horribly.
On the few occasions when I was in the gym on a Friday afternoon I couldn't keep my eyes off the contents of her right hand, imagining what it might be like to feel a tawse on my bottom. The gym was quite small, just large enough for one volley ball or badminton court, with a wooden floor and wooden wall bars on each long side which extended from the floor to just below the high windows which stretched from the top of the bars to the ceiling. When we were called in, Miss Malloy would line us up on the centre line of one of the badminton court sides and she would then stand in front of us with her back to the wall bars.
So far nothing of any particular note, but this is where the whole process became a bit unusual. Corporal punishment, even in the early 1980s, was still widely used in schools, so it was not this element of proceedings that would raise any eyebrows. But Miss Malloy's system relied on fear and suspense amongst those girls at each of her weekly sessions because they would know that only one of them would be selected to receive a strapping. The others would witness the one punishment delivered, and would have endured the suspense of not knowing whether they would be selected, but otherwise they would effectively escape unscathed.
So if you ended up in the gym, with several other girls, on a Friday afternoon you knew that only one of you would be getting Miss Malloy's tawse applied to your bottom. The others would witness the punishment with the idea that this would be enough to deter those remaining more fortunate girls from misbehaving in future. It probably worked. You really didn't know whether it would be your turn for the tawse or not.
When the girls were all in line Miss Malloy would address them one by one. She would read out their chitty and give them a short lecture on where they had gone wrong. When she had completed this process she would fold up all of the chitties for that day and place them in a glass bowl that she had brought in with her. She would then swirl them around and pick out one chitty to determine who would be getting the tawse applied to their bottom that day.
It was a system designed to be traumatic for those involved and it certainly succeeded. But, except in rare and unusual circumstances, only one girl each week at that school was subjected to physical punishment. In the days when corporal punishment was widely used in schools, this was quite a low total.
However, for the girl who heard Miss Malloy read out their name this was no consolation. She would then call the one unfortunate girl forward and ask her to remove her underwear and skirt before instructing her to approach the wall bars and grip onto one of the bars that was about level with her hips. Miss Malloy would then ask her to walk backwards until her legs were straight and her back was horizontal with the floor. Her bared bottom, with legs together, would then be ready to receive the tawse.
The severity of the strapping would depend on the girl and the reason that she was there. I've seen junior girls get 2 or 3 fairly gentle swats with a small tawse while some older girls might get 6 strokes applied very firmly to their bottoms using a larger implement. This latter type of punishment would turn a girl's bottom red very quickly, but even a more gentle strapping would leave some marks. Some girls took it well while others, when they knew what was coming, descended into meltdown. The strapping was always delivered, though, even if a little bottom was dodging and weaving about while it was being punished.
As I said before, I was only involved in Miss Malloy's Friday sessions a few times. I can remember attending about 5 of them, which is not bad over a six-year school career. The first 4 were very nerve wracking, particularly on one occasion when there were only 3 of us involved. However, I had avoided getting the strap each time, so when I was given a chitty in my last year at the school for swearing at a teacher I thought, once again, that my luck would hold. I was so wrong!
As soon as Miss Malloy addressed me in the gym that day, I started to get that sinking feeling for no apparent good reason, given that my fate was, in reality, a game of chance. There were 7 of us on parade and I was the third girl to be addressed. My odds were good, but the way Miss Malloy expressed her extreme displeasure seemed to tell me that my good run might be coming to an end. A feeling of foreboding best sums it up.
“Carrie, I'll not lower myself in front of the other girls here to repeat what you said to Mrs Jones. But suffice to say telling her to 'F-Off' when she was asking you why you hadn't done your history essay is simply not good enough and not at all fair on Mrs Jones who was simply trying to help you. I know you claim that you said it under your breath, but if she heard you then you have no excuses. I accept that you then apologised to Mrs Jones but by then the damage was done.”
She addressed the remaining girls and then it was the dreaded moment when the names went in the bowl. She gave the chitties a good stir and then pulled out the crucial one. She unfolded it, read it, thought for a moment, and then declared the result.
“Carrie Jameson,” she said in a clear, strong voice.
My heart sank. I knew that I had been lucky before and this would surely be my last disciplinary session at school, and the odds were so very much in my favour. However, it had to be one of the seven of us and it just happened to be me. A proper horror show! You could sense the relief in the room for the other remaining girls. They had got their lecture but they all knew that they wouldn't be getting the strap that day.
Miss Malloy asked me to step forward, take up position in front of the wall bars, prepare myself for my punishment and stand with my hands on my head. With heart thumping I did as she requested.
After stepping forward I unzipped my games skirt and placed it on the floor, before lowering my panties down to my ankles. I bent down so that I could fold my skirt and then placed it on the floor behind me. As I raised my hands onto the top of my head I could feel my games shirt rising up my back. I knew that most of my naked bottom would be exposed for the other girls to see. Miss Malloy then placed one of her leather tawses in front of where I was positioned. I could still feel my heart pounding against my ribs. For the first time I was going to find out how much a tawse was going to hurt and, worse, it was going to happen to me in a few short minutes.
I was a tall, leggy girl in those days, who was considered to be a bit of a beauty, but my bottom was small and I feared that if I got a higher number of strokes then this would mean a lot of over-lapping. I was hoping for no more than 3 or 4. I'd heard other girls talk about the horrible sting that the fingers of the tawse inflicted on your bottom and again I feared that this would be worse for me as I didn't have a large soft bottom to absorb and dissipate the impact of the tawse.
There are some moments in life when time seems to stand still, and years later you can picture a scene with every detail still very real and vivid in your mind. Waiting for my bottom to be strapped that day was one of those moments for me. My attention was wholly focused on that brown leather tawse laid out on the wooden floor in front of me. The whole implement was about 12 inches long and split into three fingers with each finger cut into a 'V' shape at the ends. One detail that has never left me was the makers name clearly stamped into the handle of the tawse; 'John McGregor, Glasgow'.
And it was in front of me because it was going to be used on me.
“Bend over, Carrie,” I heard Miss Malloy say to me.
I knew what to do without being asked. When my feet were in position I tried to be as upright as I could get away with as I knew that a more upright stance would mean that the small amount of flesh on my bottom wouldn't be stretched too thinly. I'd seen it with other girls. The tawse on a more ample, fleshy bottom seemed to be taken better.
However, Miss Malloy appeared to be happy with my position. I was bent over in the most embarrassing of situations but, by then, I was past caring about the other 6 pairs of eyes fixed on my naked lower half. Out of the corner of my left eye I could see Miss Malloy taking up a wide stance with her tawse in hand, raised above her shoulder. She said nothing more before she started to deliver my punishment.
She gave me six. Having seen other girls strapped, I can tell you that they were six hard ones. The first one took my breath away. The sting from the tawse was incredible. The three fingers were grabbing at my skin and inflicting such terrible pain. I hoped after 4 that she would take pity on me but no, two more strokes were inflicted. It was all that I could do to stay in position and I can now see why the procedure demanded that girls being punished should have a wall bar to grip on to. It was the only way that I could have remained in position. I'm ashamed to say that I couldn't take that strapping without crying out in pain after every stroke, and by the end I was in floods of tears.
If that was intended to be a warning to the other six girls then it surely must have worked a treat. I was a mess after that thrashing. I was still crying when I got back to the changing room. My two closest friends had held back to make sure that I was OK and it took them a good 15 minutes to calm me down. Eventually, I began to recover and the three of us inspected my bottom to assess the damage. Very red and we could clearly see the marks where the fingers of the tawse had done their work, particularly on the far right side of my bottom.
That was my last visit to the gym on a Friday afternoon, but thoughts around that experience have been with me frequently since then. I have become fascinated by the whole adult corporal punishment scene and the use of the tawse in particular. I sometimes wonder what happened to Miss Malloy's tawses, given that corporal punishment in schools was abolished shortly after I left.
I'll never know the answer to that question, but a few weeks ago I did learn a bit more about where Miss Malloy's tawses came from. On a whim, I googled 'John McGregor Glasgow leather' and surprise, surprise, came up with a perfect match! The company is still in business as manufacturers and retailers of leather goods with a shop on Sauchihall Street, Glasgow and a workshop in Clydebank. Their website looked quite impressive and I decided to catch the train from Waverley to Glasgow Queen Street so that I could pay them a visit.
When I got there I could hardly believe my luck. The shop was a short walk from the station and when I entered I was greeted by an elegant lady in her early sixties. She was tall and fit with a look that suggested that she might have been a very pretty girl in her youth. I soon discovered that this was indeed Mrs McGregor. We instantly hit it off. When I told her about the reason for my visit, and that forty years ago I had been punished with one of their tawses, she was in peals of laughter. She wanted to know all about what had happened which did cause me to blush a little even after all this time.
She could remember Miss Malloy very well. She said that she was a regular customer and wanted a full range of different tawses to suit different girls in terms of age, size and how painful she wanted the experience to be. She also remembered that she used her tawses on bottoms rather than hands, which was a bit unusual at the time. Mrs McGregor recalled that when Miss Malloy came into the shop to buy her tawses she always wanted some insight into the likely experience that recipients would go through during punishments. Mrs McGrogor seemed to think that being able to help Miss Malloy on this point was an important reason that she kept coming back to them for her tawses.
The End
© Julie Baker 2024
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