As editor you have been good enough to carry many of your readers’ letters concerned with petticoat discipline and corporal punishment for unruly boys, or whether unruly or not, training for these boys whose mothers or aunts wish to bring them up with gentle manners, good deportment and all boyish instincts of roughness, boisterousness, rowdiness and other unpleasant boyish manifestations completely suppressed.

I too favour corrective training for all boys until they are of age at twenty one. Indeed to my mind and to my sight, until that age they are indeed but children to be controlled, just as legally in the eyes of the State they are considered minors without the rights of adulthood. So I thought you might consider publishing yet another letter which will tell you of my methods with my own nephew.

I have three girls of my own, Kathleen 17, Susan 12, and little Rosemary who is 9. Robin (his full name is Christopher Robin, the name is so late Victorian and reminds me of tunics, bloomers, and curls!), became my ward when his parents were accidentally killed. He is sixteen. Not having a male child in the house, I did not see that I or the Nanny-Governess should be inconvenienced by making any changes in deference to a boy, and so from the moment he joined our family he has been treated just like one of the other children.

Not that he does not wear some boyish clothes at times when he is taken out, but even they are very childish and sissy, such as the girls themselves may wear. I may not cover everything, but I shall catalogue some items which will show that Robin is treated without too much regard for his sex, but being a boy, he has been given fewer privileges than the girls, which is just and right, since boys are more difficult and naturally inferior to girls. And again naturally his training is stricter and his punishment more severe.

Kathleen is old enough to have her own room at 17. Robin and the two younger girls still sleep together in single cots in the nursery bedroom. I considered Kathleen old enough to have her own room when she turned 16 and the other two girls will get their own rooms when they turn 16. Robin will continue in the nursery until he is 21. This means at that age he will be occupying the nursery with Rosemary who will then be 15. I am old fashioned enough to prefer little girls in pretty nightgowns rather than trousered pyjamas. So along with Susan and Rosemary, Robin wears a long white flannelette nightgown with ruffles at the neck and sleeves in winter, and lace-trimmed white cotton nightgowns in the warmer weather.

About bedtime for the children. Naturally Kathleen I consider as a girl who is almost grown up. She can go to bed when she pleases as long as she is reasonable about it. Susan’s bedtime is 8 o’clock, and Rosemary’s is seven. To show Robin that as a boy he cannot expect the same privileges as a girl, his bedtime is seven, the same as Rosemary’s. Oh he grumbled at first, but the swift and stern application of the back of a big wooden hairbrush upon his bare bottom over Nanny’s knee soon convinced him that he had better cooperate.

Naughtiness is always punished in my household. The girls get some little privilege withdrawn temporarily, or are not allowed to do something they wanted to do. I do not inflict corporal punishment upon them. Girls are such delicate beings. Besides it would be a lowering of their image in the eyes of Robin if he saw or heard them spanked. He is being taught that girls and ladies are very much superior in every way to mere boys and men.

With Robin it is different. Naughtiness is punished swiftly with a bare bottom spanking. There is a deferred punishment as well, for depending on his fault and the number of spanks he may receive with the hairbrush, his bed time will be advanced by so many minutes. Thus he may be put to bed even earlier than Rosemary.

To impress upon him his naughtiness, the wooden hairbrush which has just been used on his naughty bottom is hung by a ribbon around his neck to be seen by all for the rest of the day. Naturally both his Nanny-Governess and myself punish him for any fault. To impress upon him the inferiority of boys, both the older girls have the privilege of giving him a bare bottom spanking with their hands as well. As soon as Robin arrived to live with us, Kathleen was given the privilege as it does deflate the boy’s ego. He is so ashamed to be given a spanking by a girl just a year older than himself.

Now that Susan has turned twelve, she also has been accorded the privilege of checking the boy’s naughtiness with a spanking. It is lovely to see even more confusion and shame on the boy’s face when spanked by a girl four years younger than himself! It is making him utterly docile to the wishes of his cousins. I need not tell your readers that the girls really enjoy exercising their privilege, especially twelve year old Susan. I have made it a rule that neither Nanny nor I interfere when the girls are punishing Robin. Nor do we listen to any complaint from the boy. Naturally, the girls, Susan in particular, call anything he does naughty and deserving of a spanking, should he not please them or fall in with their wishes at once.

Thus he really is under their strict control. If he interrupts the girls they say he is naughty, if he refuses to play their games, he is naughty. If he is not extra polite with them, rising when they enter the room, opening doors for them, curtseying when he asks permission to speak, and all the other little niceties of conduct, he is naughty, The girls are really my best weapon to curbing his boyish spirits since I have given them spanking privileges over him! As they never want to play boyish games he must give in and play their games. Games like skipping, catch the ball, rolling a hoop, playing with dolls and so on. This itself is an effeminizing influence.

Little Rosemary teases him by telling him that she too will soon have spanking privileges. Not that she is left out now! She can make the boy, although seven years younger than him, do anything she wants only by threatening. Telling him that she will tell Kathleen or Susan that he is being and not obeying her, and that they will give him the spanking he deserves. I sometimes wonder if he needs his bottom covered at all, he spends so much of his time with his velvet shorts or bloomers about his ankles. Sometimes they stand him in a corner after a spanking, with his little red bottom exposed.

I do not know when he is more embarrassed. When Kathleen, just a year older, makes him stand in front of her while she unbuttons his little shorts from his shirt waist, then lowers his under bloomers and takes him over her knees. Or when Susan, with great excitement and gusto, four years his junior, does the same. It is even more amusing when he is in full petticoat discipline and either of them do the same. This time they embarrass him by lifting up his skirts and yards of fluffy petticoats and lowering his frilly, ruffled panties.

This brings me to the corrective dress discipline which should accompany any boy under strict domestic discipline and correction. I know your readers will be interested in my methods with Robin. I have already mentioned that he wears a nightgown just like the two younger girls. Of course, Nanny dresses him and undresses him as she does Susan and Rosemary, all in front of each other. Let us look in on a morning when Nanny is dressing the children. I shall deal with just the dressing part here. Susan, Rosemary and Robin are all standing naked, their nightgowns have been taken off and their toilets taken care of. I shall come back to this later. Now the three of them have little silk vests (they are identical) with a small lace trim at the neck, Nanny puts them on, then plain little cotton under bloomers. Now they are indistinguishable, and could be taken for three girls of various ages. Robin’s hair is longish, and cut in a boyish bob like the girls. As he is slight for his years he could pass for the oldest of the three.

As their Nanny-Governess gives them lessons each morning they are being dressed in their schoolroom uniforms. Before the rest of their clothes are put on, Robin is attended to first. He wears a special garment which the girls do not and he hates it with a passion. It has been the cause of many a smacked bottom, until he accepted it as his fate and that as a boy he needed it. Nanny laces him into a very tight small whalebone corset with eight dangling suspenders. Now he looks even more like a girl with his waist so slender and the flesh pushed out at the top and bottom of his corset, giving him rounded buttocks and respectable girlish breasts.

The girls are allowed the modern panty hose in bright green. Although they want to wear them without underpanties or over panties, I do not allow it. Robin wears the same coloured thigh hose gartered to his eight suspenders on his corset. It is good for a boy to feel the pull of taut stockings, reminding him of his bit of femininity. All three children then don white frilled knickers, then their red one-strap shoes. White petticoats with lace and embroidery follow for the girls and Robin alike. Their gym blouses are yellow. A green tie goes with their blouses. Finally, they don their regulation gym tunics in green. They all, including Robin, look like charming little schoolgirls.

They are ushered down to breakfast, where Robin suffers the indignity of wearing a pinafore like Rosemary, but not Susan. Susan was allowed to leave off the pinafore at the age of eleven. Rosemary will also not wear one after her eleventh birthday. Robin will probably be kept in a pinafore until he leaves the nursery, and that won’t be until he reaches 21. Usually Robin endures a further indignity which neither of the girls do, he usually has a pretty baby’s bib tied around his neck, over his pinafore to keep it clean. The reason why he is made to wear this article of babyhood will be revealed soon.

To finish with the discipline of dress for Robin, he does have little boy sissy clothes of velvet and satin short pants, buttoning on to a blouse. The shorts, of course, without a fly and fashioned like at the sides or with a zipper at the back. He has sweet little boy sailor suits, complete kilt outfits for outings, but effeminized very considerably by him wearing frilly blouses, lace edged petticoats, knickers and long stockings. For indoors, besides school uniform, he wears identical play rompers and little girl tunics as Rosemary. For company and dress up he has a beautiful little girl’s organdy frock with a pink sash, exactly the same as little Rosemary’s. Of course he wears his frilliest undies with this frock. A pink ribbon was tied in his longish hair. All his hats have elastic which goes under the chin. His reefer coat has brass buttons and is identical with Susan’s, even buttons on the left side as a girl’s does. Naturally he wears gloves whenever he leaves the house. He is always escorted by his Nanny.

I said I would come back to the children’s toilets. Here again the superiority of girls is impressed on Robin. He wears a nightgown like the girls but while they use the toilet themselves, Robin is required to ask to go to the toilet. Nanny makes him use a child’s potty. As I do not believe in modesty, he is required to empty his bladder and bowels in front of the girls. Of course he may not invade their privacy when they are in the bathroom. His little thing will be dried by Nanny, which is shameful for a big boy. After a bowel movement he must turn around and bend over so Nanny can wipe him clean. These measures are designed to deflate his ego as a boy completely. He is of course bathed by Nanny and I allow to watch, but he may not watch them being bathed, not even little Rosemary. It is quite true that he may get glimpses of the girls' charms while they are dressing or undressing in the nursery.

A splendid chance happening enabled Nanny to reduce Robin even more in status and make him suffer the indignity of being pinned in nappies again just as if he were a baby. It seems that Rosemary had a lapse from being toilet trained and wet her bed for a night or two. It gave Robin the chance to tease his little cousin from whom he had suffered so much teasing himself. But it did not last long and Nanny soon brought him to his senses. She decided little Rosemary should wear nappies and rubber baby panties to protect the bedding until she got over her relapse. However, she came to me and asked if it would be alright to put Robin in nappies too, since Rosemary might feel ashamed to be wearing nappies in the nursery alone. I eagerly agreed since I knew that here was another weapon of discipline for the boy. Naturally any boy over sixteen would be utterly shamed at having to wear nappies and frilly waterproof panties when he went to bed, and at being seen having nappies pinned on and taken off by his cousins. I knew the girls would turn the teasing on him.

So Nanny pinned nappies and baby panties on Robin as well as on Rosemary. In his case she added rubber sheets for him to sleep between, saying that a big baby like him would have to have extra protection besides his nappies and panties. Nanny gave him plenty to drink to ensure that he would also wet his nappies like little Rosemary so that she wouldn’t feel so bad.

After a while Rosemary was dry again and Nanny naturally left off pinning nappies and rubber pants on her. By putting Robin to bed very early and making sure that  he had plenty of warm milk to drink, Robin continues to wake up every morning with soaking wet nappies. It was a very short step to treat him, the mornings he was wet, like a baby and put him in short baby dresses, make him suck a dummy, and give him all his liquids from a baby bottle. He has to wear a lace trimmed bib with a picture of a baby girl on it, and he is made to act like a baby, or the girls will  threaten him with a spanking.

Well, I have mentioned some of the corrective training that I impose on my sixteen year old nephew. These measures will continue until he is twenty one. He knows that he is doomed as a boy to be subject utterly to the orders, almost the whims, of five females, and that as a male he does not count in our household!

Mrs P. (Darlington, U.K.)

This is a rather long letter from the old 'Justice Weekly', which was probably the best source of petticoat and nursery discipline application ever published. This mother has certainly made sure that her nephew knows his place in an otherwise female household. I am not a great believer in spanking – I think it can be appropriate at first (in the over-the-knee nursery fashion of course), in order to help get a male into his pinafores, tights, and bloomers, but afterwards the clothes should themselves keep him nicely subdued. If he is sulky and fractious, then an over-the-knee spanking, not too hard, on his prettily pantied bottom, especially if there are girls present, will do wonders. And of course standing in the corner with hands behind his back is excellent for anyone – sons, husbands, etc – under strict petticoat discipline.
What do readers think?
Susan