Laura... Janina... Tania

Story from Janus 20.

Laura... Janina... Tania
Three cases of the illicit thrill
by Richard Manton

READ these two confessions from blushing brides and one from a young married couple. Then decide if the statements are:

(a) Fantasies of deluded readers
(b) Stories made up in the Janus office
(c) Cases cited by a medical authority

– 'I found I could bear any number of strokes with the cane on my buttocks. Although my heart beats with fear whenever I have to strip and lie over the table, it has also made my married life complete and happy.'

– 'I've been aware of this streak in me ever since school, where I actually began to enjoy my punishments. My husband would be terribly shocked if he knew about this.'

– 'We keep a thin cane in the wardrobe and she bends over the chair... It leaves us eager to get to bed.'

If you opted for (a) or (b), go at once to the bottom of the class. The cases are quoted verbatim in Sexual Stimulation in Marriage (1971) by S. J. Tuffill, Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons.

Now take a deeper breath. A bride may enjoy love-punishments, but surely no girl ever enjoyed a bare-bottomed judicial thrashing? Wrong again. The Female Husband of 1746 is an outraged account of the conduct of a young lesbian, Molly Hamilton, soundly birched by the public hangman on 10 October. Shrill with indignation, the account describes how the birching so roused Molly's 'monstrous and unnatural desires' that she urgently bribed the gaoler to bring her girl friend in for the night. Court records list Molly as getting herself birched three more times in eight weeks.

Girls who grow passionate under such punishment are unusual. A man is a fool to believe that 'all girls like it'. Most would simply yell and run. But if he thinks such girls never exist, he should ponder one or two painstakingly researched reconstructions of the past...

* * *

Imagine a summer afternoon, long ago in the days of the Austro-Hungarian empire. In Budapest, the crowds lined the smart boulevard of the Andrassy-ut, under the striped awnings of the shops. The entire city was agog to see the Archduchess Sophie driving from the station to the palace on her arrival from Vienna.

Well, almost the entire city.

Suppose you had been in Budapest on that day. You might have stood with the crowds in the beflagged streets and cheered the Archdukes. But perhaps you would have preferred to attend another ceremony – a matter of strict discipline – which is recorded as having taken place at the same time.

A small group of Hungarian aristocrats drove in their carriages across the graceful suspension-bridge, the broad Danube gliding away between converging hills. The old castle and the new palace stood high and sinister above the busy river. Among the group was a lady who afterwards described the events of that afternoon, in Aus den Memoiren einer Sangerin – the memoirs of a singer. She was referred to cryptically as 'Pepita'. It was rumoured that her real name was Wilhelmina Schroeder-Devrient, Wagner's own prima donna. Whoever she was, the conventions of the day obliged her to publish the details of this incident anonymously.

Armed with the permission of the civil governor of Budapest, the party arrived at the house of detention. They were admitted at the gate and shown to a room on the ground floor whose window looked upon the inner courtyard. Just outside that window stood a long low bench with a padded top. On the ground nearby lay a long tapering switch.

The culprit, sentenced to three months detention for petty theft, was a 17-year-old girl of medium height and slim figure. One can well imagine the light golden-brown hair in a long pageboy style, brushing the back of her collar as she walked. The attention of the men quickened at the sight of her softly rounded young face, its high-boned beauty and playful blue eyes, a charmingly tilted little nose and a neatly painted mouth which smiled easily.

In passing sentence the court ordered that Laura's punishment should be reinforced by a whipping every few weeks during her detention. This was quite a common condition of a sentence of imprisonment. The slim leather switch was to be used on the taut, apple-firm cheeks of Laura's bare bottom!

As the visitors watched, a small procession entered the sunlit courtyard. Apart from the girl herself there was the warden of the house of detention, the officer who would inflict the chastisement, and the civil governor of Budapest in person. Even the arrival of the Archduchess could not take precedence for him over tanning a pretty girl-delinquent. When the witnesses looked at the girl, their eyes widened. She had been dressed in a costume 'worn skin-tight over her lower body so that the shapes of her bottom-cheeks were clearly outlined'. In modern terms it was like a pair of jeans fitting clean and smooth on her slim young hips and thighs. The rear view of such a girl, swinging along with jaunty vigour would surely draw every modern man's gaze to the tightly-strained denim, the classic 'apple shape' beauty of Laura's firmly and seductively rounded buttocks.

Laura was instructed to kneel at one end of the long bench. Then she was required to raise her hips and lie forward along the bench, almost as if on all fours. She lay with her head pillowed on the bench, her face turned aside towards the window where the onlookers stood. The high-boned prettiness, the innocent appeal of the blue eyes, the parting of the golden brown hair on her forehead made their hearts jump with anticipation.

Laura's bottom, its trim young cheeks tightly rounded and broadened by her posture, was presented as clearly as if in tight teenage jeans. The eyes of the visitors roved over the kneeling culprit, from the pretty face with the long pagestyle hair to Laura's bottom, to her face again and then to Laura's bottom once more...

It was an important part of her sentence that Laura should be chastised at regular intervals. This was by no means her first taste of the switch. It may have seemed strange that, though she kept her eyes lowered in the presence of the visitors, the girl, according to the account of her punishment 'showed not the least sign of fear' at the ordeal of 30 strokes. If, indeed, Laura 'lowered her eyes a little in self-consciousness', it was no doubt because she was required to slip her pants down so that the punishment might be inflicted on her bare buttocks. It was, technically, a private punishment, unlike the public canings or birchings which also took place in Austria-Hungary a hundred years ago.

It seems that the officer who would inflict the chastisement could hardly take his eyes off the pretty young face. At length he measured the long quivering switch across the slim bare cheeks of Laura's 17-year-old backside. It was not surprising that under the menace of the cold switch the girl's buttocks and thighs began to tense with anticipation. Yet as her lips parted gently and she let out a hall-suppressed sigh, she was not acting the part of a girl whose heart pounded with fear at the severity of her punishment.

The officer's eyes gleamed as he raised the switch and brought it down across the slim bare cheeks of Laura's bottom with a crack that made the courtyard stones ring. Remarkably, Laura did not scream, though her sighs became longer and harder. The astonished visitors looked and saw Laura's bottom cheeks quiver under a second impact of the judicial switch, her young backside continuing to squirm as the next stroke was measured.

The girl's face, says the account, appeared to be racked by anguish which was of a form indistinguishable from pleasure. Those who watched the punishment had naturally moved round for a full rear view of Laura's charming young buttocks. The chastiser smacked a wicked tapestry of switch-prints across the seat-cheeks of this 17-year-old nymph, each impact intended as a swelling line of anguish. Laura's bottom-cheeks and thighs squirmed and tensed with a strange ambiguous rhythm. Had she learnt to blot the punishment from her mind by the excitement of self-love? Even the thrashing was a spur to ecstasy.

The chastiser had dealt with Laura before and knew her tricks. He lingered over each stroke, ignoring Laura's breathless appeals to be finished with quickly. He paused often, stopping to inspect the smarting willow-pattern across such a very pretty young bottom as Laura's. The girl hugged the bench under her, tensing and gasping. He noted the squeezing and slackening, the rhythmic swelling-out of Laura's buttocks and their tightening until her rear cleavage was a thin pressed line.

Laura's bottom! How the eyes of the onlookers coveted it! The switch smacked down with vindictive accuracy across the stripes already printed there. Laura herself neither screamed nor protested. 'Her face was racked by more pleasure than anguish, the pleasure reaching supreme intensity at the fifteenth stroke. Her eyes rolled back, her mouth opened gasping, and she seemed to reach the summit of her heart's desire.'

'She should have made it last longer,' said one of the Magyar aristocrats with knowing amusement. 'Fifteen strokes still to come – and no more distractions for Laura now!'

The chastiser had triumphed in the end, as he was bound to, with his malicious sense of timing in allowing Laura to finish herself too soon. He touched the switch to her bare legs lightly, forcing the 17-year-old nymph from the depths of dreamy bliss to the cold fear of reality at what still lay ahead. There was consternation in the blue eyes of the girl who looked back at him imploringly over her shoulder as she lay along the bench. The slim cheeks of Laura's arse tightened at the cool switch-touch.

'Keep that pretty young bottom quite still, Laura!'

He ensured she did not 'enjoy' what followed. The courtyard sang with pistol-crack echoes of the supple switch across Laura's young backside. A wild look of panic crossed the pretty high-boned face and soon there was the weeping and pleading which ought to have occurred from the beginning. Under the naked smart of discipline the slim tight cheeks of Laura's bottom 'quivered and writhed frantically at every stroke of the punishment'.

Understandably, the chastiser disciplined Laura longer and harder for trying to cheat her sentence. The visitors who examined Laura's delectable young seat afterwards noted that 'the imprints of the switch were clear enough to enable one to count the strokes'. When they added them up, these enthusiasts looked at one another with astonishment and amusement – but no tales were told. Those who oppose such punishments might add that the chastiser's severity was excited by the prettiness of Laura's bottom and legs, as well as that of her face. Why did the pretty girls always get it worse?

The punishment over, Laura was led to a ground-floor room, where the female guests were allowed to visit her. This was not usually permitted, but the room was one with opaque windows, preventing anyone seeing from outside. If a woman official should enter, it would be natural to find Laura with her knickers down in the tiled room with its baths and basins.

The prurient curiosity of Budapest's ladies makes nonsense of the 'high moral example' set by judicial birchings. Laura was urged to kneel forward over a chair. Ringed fingers loitered and fondled under the pretext of examining the efficacy of punishment! 'You managed to enjoy yourself while you were thrashed, didn't you, Laura?' murmured one matron, 'More than once?' Laura, her voice self-consciously hushed, whispered that she could only do it once. Those who resist the moves to reintroduce judicial corporal punishment nowadays might rest their case on such evidence as this!

* * *

Supporters of judicial birching will regard Laura's aberration as exceptional. Here come the bad news for them. The diarist of Aus den Memoiren einer Sangerin and such tomes as Geschichte des Korperliche Zuchtligung record an even stranger incident in the Hungarian city of Raab. Our own prima donna's informant was evidently Madame Anna von Luft and the case was apparently that of a 19-year-old girl student, Janina. The story of Janina was passed down from one generation of Raab matrons to the next, their mouths pursed with disapproval but their eyes smiling!

Janina had a slay prettiness, a round fair-skinned face with the slant blue-green eyes of east European beauty. It seems that she had been involved in some kind of revolutionary political activity. This had led to a sentence of 12 months in the Raab house of detention with a public chastisement once a month. The regulations required that Janina's fair hair should be cropped very short, which gave the girl a perversely seductive look.

Janina was a girl with a softly rounded figure. Even the boyishly cropped fair hair would not have deceived a man about her femininity for two seconds. One might speculate on the motives of the authorities who took a girl of 19 like Janina, with her softly feminine figure, and then cut her fair hair to make her look more like a boy for her punishment! It was presumably thought that there would be less danger of the onlookers or the chastiser treating her leniently if Janina had a short boyish haircut rather than flowing blonde tresses!

At 19, Janina was of age to undergo public discipline rather than the private whipping given to 17-year-old Laura. Such public punishments were well-illustrated in Hungary's most distinguished film The Round-Up, where a naked blonde beauty undergoes the ordeal of chastisement. Anna von Luft confirmed that there were 'innumerable girls in regional and municipal prisons under sentence of a series of whippings'.

The scene in Raab would have differed little from those elsewhere. On the afternoon of Janina's first thrashing the cobbled market square was crowded. A space was railed off just outside the main gate of the house of detention where a low wooden platform stood. In the tall houses overlooking the square the windows were packed with watching faces, aged crones and young girls, old men and young alike.

Ten minutes or so before the hour struck, the wooden doors of the high fortress archway opened. Two officers from the house of detention carried a long low bench with a padded top and placed it on the platform in the shadow of the stone walls and towers.

It seemed as if the executioner was anxious that Janina should not be late, for she was brought out several minutes early. The executioner, by the way, was so-called merely because he 'executed' the sentence of the court, not the culprit. His interest was exclusively in Janina's tail rather than her head!

A hush descended on the packed market square as Janina appeared between the chastiser and his assistant as they mounted the few steps to the platform. The round pale face with its high cheekbones, its slant green eyes and cropped fair hair drew every gaze upon it. Janina was dressed in a short snug-fitting woollen top and a pair of tights in thin brown wool.

Once again, such a scene belied the official pretext of providing a moral example. The softness of Janina's young breasts must have been delectably shaped by the woollen top. Below the waist, the thin clinging wool outlined the soft feminine contour of her thighs and hips. As she turned her back, there must have been sharp intakes of breath in the crowd at the sight of the soft weight of Janina's 19-year-old bottom-cheeks!

Dressed in this costume, Janina was required to sit on her heels, facing one end of the bench and with her back to the crowd. The uniformed officers who kept order ranged themselves round the foot of the platform as a form of crowd control. Janina was ordered to lift her hips from her heels and kneel tightly forward along the padded bench. The crowd held its breath. The girl went forward, her boyishly-cropped fair hair touching the padded bench, the round high-boned face with its slant green eyes turned wonderingly aside. Behind her, hundreds of eyes stared at the brown woollen seat of her tights, the straining material broadened and rounded by the fattened swell of Janina's backside!

Because the chastisement was public, Janina would not be bare when her tights were taken down. A form of thin cotton panties rather like stretch-briefs in consistency were worn for the punishment. To compensate for this, a more supple and whippy switch was used to increase the ordeal, and the number of strokes was added to. The custom was that when the hour struck, the girl's outer tights must come down. She then remained, presenting herself in the punishment posture, for half an hour. Then the thrashing was given.

The mechanism of the clock tower began to whir, the assistant took the waist of the tights as Janina knelt forward over the bench. In an expert movement, he stripped them down to her knees.

There was a shocked silence in the great crowd. A silence as profound and absolute as one might expect after a nuclear exchange. Anna von Luft was the first to hint at the reason for this.

UNDER HER TIGHTS JANINA'S BOTTOM WAS BARE!

The revelation was so mind-blowing that it took the crowd a moment to realise the implications. Those soft pale cheeks of Janina's backside faced the silent onlookers with a mute and innocent appeal. Yet the 19-year-old girl student had known that her tights would be taken down and that she would be required to show herself in the market square.

JANINA HAD DELIBERATELY LEFT HER KNICKERS OFF FOR PUNISHMENT!

As the second bombshell exploded in the minds of the crowd, there was a stirring in the square. The smiles began to broaden. Under the pretence that the chastiser's assistant was making her assume such a posture, Janina's waist was well tucked down at the back and she was showing her seat very fully to the crowd. Still incredulous, the crowd realised something else. Janina knew beforehand that the wickedly supple switch was officially regarded as too severe to be used except when a girl was wearing her knickers. Yet the executioner's hands were not the only horny thing about him. No leniency would be shown because Janina's arse was bare! The third bombshell burst in the minds of the citizens of Raab.

JANINA PREFERRED TO HAVE THE WHIP ACROSS THE BARE CHEEKS OF HER SOFT PALE BOTTOM!

The executioner stood to one side smiling quietly at the girl and recognising a certain hard wantonness in Janina's slant green eyes. His assistant intuitively sensed what the 19-year-old girl student needed and played her game. His mouth pursed in a smile, he assumed a stern voice and ordered her to kneel more tightly over the bench, to show her soft pale buttocks more fully, to open her knees a little. Seizing the pretext of having to obey helplessly, Janina did so. As Anna von Luft described it, the men and women in the crowd began to call to Janina from a few feet away at the barrier. What sounds the cobbles of the square might now echo if they could!

'Look at her! Just look at the young slut!... Show your legs and bottom a little more this way, Janina!... Oh, the wanton young whore!... You randy young piece, Janina! Executioner! Ten gold pieces to make her sing loud and clear!... Only five more minutes to wait, Janina! Then the whip across your plump bare bottom-cheeks!... Looking forward to a sore bottom, Janina?'

During this ribald chorus of insults, it seemed as if Janina was making slight thigh and buttock rhythms not unlike those of Laura. The thrill of being helplessly bare bottomed before the crowd, hearing its insults, waiting for the whip, caused Janina's self-excitement!

Those who believed that Janina's conduct was caused by the whip itself were proved wrong when the time for Janina's thrashing came. Turning her short crop of fair hair, she fixed her slant green eyes upon the chastiser full of imploring and trepidation. He measured the long quivering switch across the soft pale cheeks of Janina's bottom. There was a silence in the square, all eyes upon the 19-year-old girl so blatantly displayed for their edification. The switch rose and flashed down with a sharp crack across the plump writhing cheeks of Janina's backside.

According to Anna von Luft, Janina did not 'enjoy' her punishment. The executioner was inexorable and severe. Not a voice was raised in the crowd to ask for a reduction of the punishment. With such a softly appealing girl to be dealt with, it was unthinkable that the chastiser would be content with less than the full penalty. For some reason, a girl like Janina whose hair has been cropped to make her look more like a boy, seems to get it worse. So it proved, the executioner also inspired by having Janina's bottom bare!

Janina's pale bare buttocks jumped and quivered under the smarting strokes of the switch as the executioner wove her a seat of fire. Her face, turned desperately to the crowd, was a tragic mask of brimming eyes and wide distended mouth. The switch produced its 'plum-coloured tracery' and then touched up the 'buttock tapestry' again and again. Janina 'screamed and gasped' under the punishment of her bottom, said Anna von Luft, who was undoubtedly one of those women who had hired a window for the occasion. At last, what Anna von Luft called Janina's whip-marked bottom-cheeks had received their full punishment. She was led down from the platform and back into the building. There was a stir of activity in the market square as the crowd broke up and life in Raab resumed its normal course.

The drama was not quite over. Madame von Luft was one of those privileged aristocrats before whom all doors opened. On this occasion she was admitted to the house of detention and allowed to take her turn at the judas-hole through which Janina, now alone, could be seen.

Janina's pants were still down but she was not weeping as brokenly as might be expected. Naturally, Janina's buttocks had been amply and vividly patterned by the punishment. Yet she did not attend to that. She stood with her back to the long mirror, her short crop of fair hair turned, the slant green eyes above the high cheekbones staring with admiration at her mirrored rear view.

She did not enjoy being whipped. The desperate writhing of Janina's bare bottom-cheeks, Janina's screams and pleading alike are evidence of her ordeal. Yet now she knelt over a convenient piece of furniture in the punishment-posture, able to see her chastised buttocks in the mirror. With soft sighs and tensings, Janina relived her punishment, the excitement of hearing again her own frenzy and the reprimands of the chastiser, as well as the voices of the crowd who mocked Janina as a slut and promised her a pitiless punishment. Her case was entirely different from Laura's. Janina, playing with herself, enjoyed her discipline only as a fantasy of recollection – an enjoyment repeated nightly.

* * *

Slowly the pattern becomes clear and one disentangles myth from truth in the stories of girls who 'enjoy' chastisement. Laura perhaps did not enjoy it at all. Unable to escape 30 strokes with a switch, the desperate 17-year-old girl did the only thing she could to distract her mind from the anguish and to offset the effects of punishment. Janina did not 'enjoy' one moment of her tanning. Yet in order to provoke a drama which would feed her erotic fantasies for the future – for she would certainly have no other sex life in confinement – she deliberately left her knickers off, despite an appalling price to be paid in extra pain.

Janina would certainly not have been resolute enough to incur such extra anguish during the chastisement. The first stroke would have changed her mind! She knew this. The girl student left her pants off while still high on a masochistic thrill of self-excitement. Too late to repent when Janina was bare-bottomed on the bench! An extremely poignant predicament...

Some alleged cases, close to our own times, are more complex still in the vexed field of female masochism. The Denning Report of 1963 and the trial of Stephen Ward, revealed the existence of parties held by England's top people 'at which girls were whipped'. Rest assured, they were not innocent girls dragged screaming from the streets lo be flogged in front of cabinet ministers. They were volunteers. A letter to the press from one of the girls in March 1966 revealed that these 'parties' were held in specially equipped premises – not your average front room – and that the girls came there for their own reasons. We are now on territory much closer to the cases of Dr Tuffill, where the girls submit to chastisement as part of sexual drama.

One case, half revealed in the press, illustrates this. The girl in question was 19 years old and we will call her Tania. She worked in one of those boutiques which dotted the great cities of the 1960s.

Tania was a girl of average height with a soft prettiness of face and figure. There was a coquettish innocence about the brown curls clustering over her forehead and cut short at her collar. She had a pert, slightly olive-skinned face with a tendency to dimples at every half-concealed smile. The high cheekbones made her blue eyes seem rather deep-set and shadowed. Yet Tania had a straight little nose and a demurely tucked-in chin.

Tania's working clothes, a snug white sweater and the pale blue of tight jeans, showed her soft young figure to perfection. One might see her leaning over the counter on her elbows, chin cupped in her hands, cigarette between fingers as she read a magazine. Dozens of gentlemen with no intention of buying would browse in that shop. Tania's cropped brown curls and slightly dimpling prettiness had an attraction. Yet as she leant forward, lounging over the counter, the short white sweater moulded her proud young breasts like firm hanging fruit. A surprising number of men browsed on the shelves behind her. By pretending an interest in some item there, it was easy for them to enjoy a rear view of her for 15 or 20 minutes as she bent over the counter. The straining denim jeans-seat presented Tania's broadened bottom, making her look completely irresistible.

Tania's bottom was one of her most seductive features. She would bend with her waist tucked downward. This caused Tania's 19-year-old arse to broaden and swell more suggestively, its cheeks lewdly parted under her jeans-seat. The men who viewed her also saw a clear outline of the seat of Tania's panties. Tania's knickers were a pair of stretch-briefs clearly visible in shape through the splittingly taut denim of her jeans.

Tania was a very appealing 19-year-old, polite and eager to please. Yet through her infatuation with Kurt, she was drawn into a strange world of sexual drama and fantasy. One evening he collected her from work and drove her directly to the place where the drama was to be enacted. No time to pop home for a bath, despite Tania being very self-conscious about appearing spick and span before the others when her rear charms were unveiled.

The audience, if one can call it that, consisted of a score of men and two women. The scene was a school detention room presided over by a middle-aged mistress and an assistant master. There were six delinquent girls, all of them but Tania in school uniform. The scenario was that each would be punished for some offence committed during the detention class. Then the headmaster would arrive – played by Tania's lover – and true retribution would be handed out, principally to Tania herself.

The effectiveness of the drama lay in the way it imprisoned the actors and actresses by its power. This detention class lasted for about two hours with no excuses and no permission to leave the room. The mistress began with the junior girl, a nymph with solemn blue eyes and fair tresses. 'Slip your skirl and panties off, Rachel. Bend over the desk. Twelve with the strap for being late. Ah, you're getting a bottom like a real young lady, aren't you, Rachel?'

The strapping seemed to be for real with tears and squirmings. Tania's turn came soon with a punishment for her outrageous conduct in arriving for detention dressed in jeans. It was no easy matter for the mistress to bend a girl of 19 over her knee. Yet Tania's cropped brown curls were soon bowed and her seat presented. There was much handling of the tight full cheeks of Tania's broadened jeans-seat. Then the 'assistant master' undid them and drew them off.

Tania's panties, the white stretch-briefs, were taut across the broadened swell of her young bum.

'Not wearing regulation knickers, Tania? Let me have a really close look at the seat. Such a tight fit between the legs, Tania! And how the leg-hole elastic dents those soft pale bottom-cheeks, Tania! These are more like honeymoon panties, aren't they, Tania? I'll cane you for that presently, when your mistress has finished.'

The spectators were enormously excited at the sight of 19-year-old Tania sprawling over the mistress's knee like an over-grown schoolgirl. So would you be. The cropped brown curls, the light olive-skin and high cheekbones all added to the piquancy of Tania at 19 being made to lie over the woman's lap like an awkward child.

'Twelve with the strap across the seat of your knickers, Tania!'

'Six! It was six!' The gasp of shock indicated the first departure from a prepared script.

'Twelve with the strap across your bottom, Tania, you young slut!'

'No!' Tania's blue eyes widened. 'I've got to be caned later!'

Broad smiles of amusement broke on the faces of the spectators. The grim-faced mistress brought the strap down hard across Tania's full-cheeked bottom. She aimed fairly low where Tania's knickers did not completely cover her buttocks. Tania sang out loudly.

Two! Three! Four! The blows of the strapping cracked down.

'Don't try to squirm, Tania. Tighter over my knee! Keep the seat of your knickers towards the audience, Tania, or we'll start again!'

When the strapping was over, the woman slid Tania's panties down and off, making the girl show her cherry red seat fully and broadly.

'Your bottom towards the audience, Tania! You're here to show it!'

Presently it was the turn of the assistant master as Tania stood with her cropped curls bowed, bare from waist to heels.

'Tania! Bend over the teacher's table, Tania! At once! So reluctant, Tania? Six strokes of the cane for wearing non-uniform knickers. Yes, you have been strapped, haven't you? Such a full blushing pair of bottom-cheeks, Tania! Yes, indeed, you're going to get 18 with the cane from the headmaster later on for being a little thief. Perhaps six now will get you in the mood, Tania! Bend tighter. Let's have a broad-bottomed view of you, just like over the shop counter! Afraid you won't be able to bear all your punishments, Tania? You should have thought of that when you put the wrong sort of knickers on!'

A tearful few minutes in Tania's part of the drama was to be followed by more preliminary reprimands and punishments, as each skirt and pair of panties lay discarded. 'Sandra Williams, bend over the desk! Twelve with the cane! Take your hand away from your bottom, Sandra! Touch your toes, Monica. I can't believe you've never had the strap before! Kneel forward over the chair, Carol Jones! You'll soon find out what the whistle cord is for!'

A good deal of this is only verbal drama, but not all of it. The detention class ended and various girls were allocated to the patient onlookers for chastisement as 'teachers'. Their offences were derived from the classic mythology of schoolgirl eroticism. 'Sandra Williams, bare-bottom spanking for whispering in class! Carol Jones, bare-bottom birching for having secret sex-fun! Susan Webb, bare-bottom caning for unpunctuality! Jacqueline Grant, bare-bottom birching for impudence! Sue Webb, bare-bottom birching for rudeness!' The litany was endless but Tania was 'it', as the letter to the press revealed.

Tania's imagined crime was to have stolen the mistress's jewel case and hidden it away somewhere. She was due to bend over the table for 18 strokes with the 'headmaster's' cane before being asked where the case was hidden. If she then confessed, all would be forgiven and forgotten. She was required to bend over the table tightly with her back to the audience, her cropped brown curls bowed until the spectators saw Tania as only a backside and a pair of legs!

Dozens of men had gazed yearningly at Tania's broadened, 19-year-old bottom-cheeks in tight jeans as she bent with thighs parted a little to some shop chore. The sight of her now would have stopped them in their tracks! Though the flush of the strap had faded, it was visible that the six with a cane had been given for real across the statuesque young rounds of Tania's buttocks!

The 'headmaster' saw this as he flexed his own long slim bamboo.

'You've been in trouble during class, haven't you, Tania? I'm glad you've been caned for it. Don't expect me to be lenient with you because of that. You'll gel it all the worse! Thai's a promise!'

The preparations for the caning were carried out 'as slowly as possible'. There was 'a lot of talk' about Tania's bottom! What a broad young seat, he said, what a shame it had not been caned hard and regularly – but that would change from now on. There were instructions to Tania to bend tighter, to stick her bottom right out towards the onlookers. Then the cane was measured across it, long and repeatedly.

The cane flashed down across the bare broadened cheeks of Tania's 19-year-old bottom. Her gasp grew to a cry as she realised how ferocious the smart of the bamboo was when the impact began to swell. Smack! Whip-smack! Crack-smack! Whip! Whippp! Wh-h-i-i-p!

'Don't twist your backside away from the cane, Tania! You'll get extra for that!... Your bottom, Tania! Round it out more fully!... Let you wear your stretch-briefs for the rest of the caning, Tania? Certainly not!... Don't even think of straightening up, Tania! Not unless you want to be put bottom-upwards over the desk for the punishment to start all over again!... Don't clench your seat-cheeks like that Tania or you'll have it on your legs instead. And the strokes won't count either!... Contain yourself, Tania! You can't possibly have 18 across your buttocks without some of them hitting the same place twice!... Tania! Really! What a thing to do in front of us all!... Bend tighter, Tania! No need to be bashful. With two ladies in the audience you're well and truly chaperoned!'

The dramatic entertainment may have been carefully planned beforehand but Tania's wild cries, her gulps and sobs during it and afterwards were real enough. The use of the cane on her beautiful bottom was cruel and severe and the bamboo prints were raised and blazoned across the broadened young cheeks of Tania's arse!

When the punishment ended, the scenario required Tania to confess the hiding-place of the stolen jewel-case. She did so and the mistress was sent to fetch it. Then there was a departure from the script. The woman came back, trying hard to hide a smile.

'It's not there,' she said firmly. 'The little madam is lying!'

Tania's consternation was unmistakenly genuine and moving by this point. It seemed that she had willingly – if perhaps a little reluctantly – entered the amateur theatricals of chastisement. Had she expected this development – or was she now trapped in a nightmare?

'Very well, Tania,' said the headmaster. 'You know the price you must pay. Over the table again! Eighteen with the cane was the penalty, I believe? I shall leave you to the attention of the assistant master while I go to fetch a suitable instrument to chastise such wilful misconduct. I hope you decide to tell us the true hiding-place before I get back, Tania! Though perhaps on second thoughts, Tania, I rather hope you refuse to...'

Since the action of the drama had been made up, it was quite impossible for Tania even to guess at an alternative place. The events of that evening and the part which Tania's bottom played in them are perhaps best left to the imagination!

* * *

Those who debate the issue of judicial corporal punishment and those who discuss the myths of female masochism should ponder such cases as these. Laura, Janina and Tania might be put together as strange aberrant creatures. Yet each one is different, as each girl is different. What types do they represent?

1. Laura certainly appeared to enjoy her punishment. Yet one might just as easily conclude that her squeezing and squirming was a desperate effort to counter the ferocious smart of the switch across her bare bottom by having a nice time elsewhere. Would supporters of judicial tanning permit such things? Could they prevent them? Or would they impose extra punishment?

2. Janina, aged 19, presents an even more knotty problem to those who support such punishments. Few disciplinarians would complain if Janina presented her bottom bare for caning rather than in a pair of stretch-briefs! And how on earth would they prevent punishments given to support law-and-order from being used as the raw material of the girl's erotic enjoyments? Anna von Luft made a final revelation about the girl. Janina, she said, 'deliberately committed and confessed to several misdemeanours for which the inevitable penalty was a spell in the house of detention, a series of public birchings and the shame which resulted from them.' Hence Janina's delightful exhibitionism!

3. Tania, like the other two, did not enjoy the discomfort of the cane. Yet she derived an excitement from being enveloped in a dangerous drama of chastisement. If judicial birching were ever restored, a man who had to deal with Tania would face an extremely difficult though intensely interesting subject!

There is much pressure in public and in parliamentary circles to restore the birch – a great majority of the country supports it. In the climate of sexual equality, girls could not be exempt. Some of us are sceptical of the moral or disciplinary value of restoring such discipline. Yet we would respect the views of many Janus readers who, like most of their countrymen, think otherwise.

Make no mistake, the problems posed to the silent majority by Laura, Janina and Tania are more complex and adult than the defiance to punishment by an adolescent reformatory tomboy like Elaine Cox. A youngster who defies the cane merely in order to keep her prestige among other girls is not in the same league. Our disciplinarian readers assure us they would find her no problem. With the young rebel kneeling over the block and a good flexible cane to hand, they would guarantee truly exemplary discipline across the full pale cheeks of Elaine Cox's fifth-form bottom!

Yet a girl like Janina defies her chastiser in a very different way. Increasing the number of strokes will probably make no odds. The same secret, perverse thrill, will capture her afterwards. That may also be true of Tania. Let us put the advocates of judicial tanning on the spot by asking you to tell us how you would solve the following problem.

Judicial chastisement has been restored and you are one of those appointed to administer it. At regular intervals you visit an institution which houses Laura, Janina, Tania, and – if you like – Elaine. You know the problems presented by each. It is your duty to ensure that punishment means just that and is not a girl's way of self-enjoyment or maintaining prestige by defiance. How will you prevent these four young ladies resisting, exploiting or defying the chastisement you give? Here is your chance to win us over!

This surely is a problem worthy of mature, adult consideration, more complex than any presented by bare-bottomed Elaine to her master. At the beginning of this feature you may have got the wrong source for the quotations and been sent to the bottom of the class. Such disgrace can be overcome by a neat piece of homework...