'His sister, who is over a year younger, and has never worn pinnies, has proved herself to be a very competent little supervisor, and my friend and I are sometimes intensely amused at the way she orders her former bully to do this and that. Any act of misbehaviour or seeming revolt reported by her about him is met with severe punishment'.
(Quoted from 'Bully Cured by Pinafores' by Millicent)

This book is the latest publication by Peter Farrer, and is, I believe, the best to date. It is more than 350 pages long and concentrates on petticoat government correpondence, as well as female masquerade and impersonation (there are a number of fascinating photographs from plays produced by the students of the Cambridge Amateur Dramatic Club), and unusual cases of boys being fully brought up as girls.

The order card reads, 'This is a truly exquisite book on patterns of cross dressing from the nineteen twenties and thirties. As always with Peter Farrer's books, it has been meticulously researched and superbly crafted. The result is an outstanding and definitive work which is also an excellent and wonderfully enjoyable read'.

This description is promotion for the book of course, but every word of it is true. The book is beautifully produced, strongly bound, and features a quite striking green cover which makes it stand out from  the rather muted covers of Peter's previous books. As usual, the letters are thoroughly indexed and annotated, to assist the reader in following through threads of correspondence. There is, as usual, an excellent Introduction.

'London Life' was one of the very greatest publishers of petticoat punishment correspondence, but its office and archives were destroyed during the blitz, and after the war it never recovered. Of course the British Library still has a set, and there is even a 'London Life Appreciation Society', active on both sides of the Atlantic, in which members discuss the letters and illustrations to this day.

Any reader of 'Petticoat Discipline Monthly' must have a strong interest in petticoating correspondence. That is precisely the tradition that I am trying to maintain. And if you do have that interest, then your library is incomplete without a full set of Peter Farrer's books: they are the only books which offer a detailed and scholarly study of a fascinating and enduring practice.

The titles of the old letters here reproduced speak for themselves: 'Nephew Brought Up as Niece', 'Admires Starched Collars and Undies', 'Do Boys Prefer Kilts?', 'In Praise of Pinnies', 'Believes in Woman's Dominance', 'Pinafores for Boys', 'How to Dress a Husband', 'Naughty Boy Controlled by Velvet', 'Pinafores and Mackintoshes', 'From Breeches to Skirts', 'Petticoat Prisoners', and so on.

The book's price is twenty five pounds, and it can be ordered from Peter Farrer's web site, which is listed on our 'Links' page. Peter is currently working on a dissertation, 'Petticoat Punishment in Erotic Literature', which is being published for the first time in the pages of 'Petticoat Discipline Monthly'. Part One was published in the Christmas Annual, and Part Two follows next month.
Susan MacDonald