Hi Susan,

For a personal reason that I disclose below I was looking forward to your ‘Schoolgirl Special’ in 'Petticoat Discipline Monthly' magazine, but it never materialized. Did you shelve it?

You see back in 1956, when I was 10 years old I lived in Edinburgh, my widowed mum, who was a schoolmistress and quite strict - she kept a school tawse, at home and I remember well occasions when I was disobedient or cheeky and she brought me back into line with a lecture followed by one or two school-style strokes of the strap across my hands. For example, one day she had a neighbour in for a cup of tea and had sent me to tidy my room. On discovering later that I had failed to carry out her instructions but been playing instead with my train set, she quickly fetched the tawse from the dresser in her bedroom gave me one on each hand and left me with the warning that I had half an hour to avoid a further dose. Needless to say, I had my room spick and span in the allotted time.

My mum also discovered that I had been skipping Sunday School on bumping into the teacher, whose name was Miss Christie. The offence, and all the lies I had told her, made Mum very angry, so for my immediate punishment she ordered me to take down my shorts and underpants and bend over the arm of the living room sofa, and then proceeded to administer six spanks to my bare bottom.  She delivered me to Sunday school the next week, and she informed Miss Christie fully of the details of the chastisement.

But if Mum’s words to Miss Christie left me with a bright red face they were not the only reason for embarrassment on my part. Because as Mum passed on the information I was standing beside her dressed in my new Sunday School outfit - a kilt, and as if that was not bad enough, underneath that kilt I was clad in a pair of bottle green girls' school knickers!

For if I had thought that the spanking was the end of the matter, I was in for a rude awakening when Mum took me to a well-known school outfitters and acquired for me a kilt for Sunday wear. What’s more, she eagerly took up the shop assistant’s suggestion that though the shop did not stock tartan trews for boys, many mothers found the navy blue or bottle green girls’ school pants, that the shop did stock, an excellent alternative for wear by boys underneath a kilt - “practical, and good for discipline” I think was the assistant’s advice. She obviously knew all about petticoat punishment for naughty boys. Mum needed no persuasion, and off the lady went to fetch two pairs of bottle green girls' knickers from the girls’ schoolwear department.

From then on I always spent Sundays in my kilt plus knickers, and over the following few years I collected a number of Sunday spankings over my mother’s knee with my kilt upturned and my knickers on display. On one memorable happening the performance took place in front of a female cousin of about the same age as me, who sometimes stayed with us on holiday. I admit that I had been cheeky but at 14 an over-the-knee school knickers-revealing spanking in front of a goggle-eyed female cousin was no joke for a boy!

The annual school uniform expedition provided an opportunity for Mum to update my Sunday uniform underwear, and one year, when the shop had run out of bottle green, I got navy blue instead - what I lucky boy I was, as the mockingly smiling assistant commented! She did not relent until I had left school to go to university, but unknown to her by that age I had got used to wearing school knickers and, although I am a heterosexual man, to this day I prefer such knickers to men’s underpants - would you say my Mum is to blame?

I do worry that if I get into an accident the nurse might feel uncomfortable if she discovered a pair of navy blue knickers on under my trousers. About five years ago I separated from my wife after 14 years of marriage, and I am now divorced, and it is since then that I have resorted to my favourite undergarment.

Anyway perhaps now you understand my interest in the schoolgirl special and what happened to it. I would also welcome any other comments you may have on my tale of maternal correction, particularly if you think she was too severe on me or otherwise.
Yours truly,

David

David, my apologies to you and many others about the Schoolgirl Special. Now I am publishing quarterly I think I can do it in the next few issues. In fact if any readers have letters about petticoat punishment in schoolgirl uniform and knickers, could you please send them in?

I do think that the spanking with a strap was too severe; I am not a supporter of corporal punishment. Do you know one of the origins of petticoat discipline for badly behaved male children? In the early nineteenth century, children were beaten severely, with little account taken for their small build and sensitivity to pain. Petticoating was by many thought to be a very 'progressive' alternative; the sort of punishment that, in today's terms, a university-educated and 'Guardian' reading mother might use. This was because it did not involve physical punishment, and made the boy less 'boyish' and more respectful and deferential towards his sisters (this of course has always been a major reason for petticoat punishment).

It would not be considered cutting-edge, civilised, child upbringing today, but that was how it was often seen in the Victorian times.
Susan