Dear Susan,

Love and best wishes from your girl in pink, in a very warm Turkey.

The part where I live is called the Garden of Turkey, it is surrounded by orange groves, lemons, apples tomatoes, melons and every fruit and vegetable you can think of, we have a market twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The fruit and vegetables are excellent; you can also buy most things including a great selection of cotton knickers at 50 pence per pair. In fact I have more knickers than Marks and Spencers.

Thank you for your interest in hearing about my life. I call this memoir 'A Girl from Strathyre'.

I was dressed and brought up as a girl from the earliest possible age, until my late teens. I think there may have been three reasons for this: discipline, training and good old Scottish thrift - it is easier to control three girls than two girls and one boy, and it is also easier and more thrifty to dress three girls the same way.

It was an all female household, a small country house outside Strathyre in Perthshire. The household consisted of a cook/housekeeper, three or four maids, our governess, my older cousin by almost two years, Caroline, my younger cousin by almost six months, and myself. The house belonged to my mother’s eldest sister, my aunt, who had inherited it because there were no sons in the family - only five daughters. My aunt and uncle stayed mainly in their town house in Edinburgh, while my parents lived in their house in Glasgow.

I enjoyed the life and never had any problems being dressed or treated as a girl. We did not have the lovely petticoats and frilly panties so often mentioned in your letters, it was not until I could choose and afford to buy them myself that I was able to wear such luscious undies.

The three of us were dressed the same: our clothes were ordered and delivered from the girls' department at Jenner’s, Princes Street, Edinburgh. We each wore a pale green cotton dress with a white collar and tied at the back, white or pink knickers (all girls' knickers at that time were cotton), these were worn with the legs about a third of the way down from the top of our legs, cotton vests, knee length stockings, black shoes with a strap over the instep and a button, and our hair was short in an Eton bob held with a clasp or Kirby grip.

On Sundays we each wore a kilt-style pleated skirt, with a white blouse, instead of a dress. In the summer we also had a printed cotton dress, white ankle socks and brown leather sandals. We would take off our sandals, tuck the hem of our dresses into the legs of our knickers and paddle in the river or burn and also do this when we climbed trees. We looked as though we were wearing rompers.

At bedtime we wore our knickers and a plain white ankle-length cotton nightdress. We also had a warm dressing gown and warm slippers. For outdoors we had a warm overcoat with a velvet collar, gloves and wellington boots.

In the winter time it could be very cold and I loved getting into bed with our governess and cuddling into her to keep warm; a governess whom we thought was quite old, but at the start was probably only in her mid twenties.

Our weekly treat was on a Friday morning if we had been good girls, when the baker (he sold everything from bread and cakes to fruit and vegetables, to clothes and haberdashery, to fishing tackle to wellington boots, and even shot gun cartridges) came from the village in his van, and we were lined up, and after Cook had made her purchases we were each given a penny lollipop. We were a little community of our own, with little contact with the outside world, but I would not have missed it for anything.

It is worth mentioning my parents were born in the last two years of Queen Victoria's reign and it was not unusual for the sons of the gentry in their early years to be dresses as girls in dresses, petticoats and frilly panties. In my case it lasted well in to my teens, I think because my parents saw I was happy, and I never objected or resisted.

Punishment was rarely used, on the other side of the river from the house was a tinkers camp, and my parents told me on a number of occasions, ‘If you don't behave, we'll give you away to the tinkers!' and this was sufficient to reduce me to tears and frightened me beyond words, so I tried not to incur the wrath of my parents. On reflection it is difficult to understand the thinking of my parents: how they could say something that made me so frightened, while our governess would just send one of us to a corner and tell to keep quiet.

Well made kilts, hand stitched, will last for generations. My kilts were made by R & W Forsyth in Glasgow, and they also had a beautiful shop in Princes Street, Edinburgh. When I received a new kilt it would come to just above my knees, and I would not receive my next kilt until the present kilt was several inches above my knees, so that when I bent down you could see my knickers.

We had a Daimler car, and a chauffeur called George, and when I was five years old my mother took me to the girls' department at Jenners in Edinburgh. I was dressed in black shoes with a strap and button, white ankle socks, kilt, white or pink knickers, white blouse with pearl buttons, a girls' overcoat with a velvet collar, and a clasp in my longish hair. My mother told the sales lady, 'This child requires knickers for five to six years.'

‘What colour, Madam?’

‘White and pink please’, said my mother matter-of-factly. Mother bought two pairs of white and two pairs of pink; at that time all girls' knickers were soft, fleecy cotton. Then we went to the Tea Room for afternoon tea, and then I was taken to the ladies' toilet. When I was out with my mother I was always taken to the 'Ladies.'

My mother having been so successful in dressing me and having me brought up as a girl, decided that I should always wear knickers, and every birthday and Christmas I would receive two pairs of pink knickers, and also at any other time of the year when my mother felt she wanted to impose her authority, and to give me pleasure. I think she guessed by then that there is nothing to beat the pleasure of the knowledge that one is wearing proper girls' knickers.

I was always very girlie and feminine in my appearance, small feet, small hands, small head, slim, no body hair, and lots of dark brown curly hair which could easily be turned in at the ends to be a very girly ‘page boy’ style. When I was 16 took part in two Gang Shows, singing and dancing and acting in several sketches, and was then asked to join a repertory theatre company to play the part of a schoolgirl in some sketches.

This I was pleased to do, an older actor in the company took a fancy to me, and backstage enjoyed putting his hand up my skirt and rubbing my bottom, and when we were sitting he would put his hand on my leg and work its way up my skirt to my knickers. He offered to give me a lift in his car and invited me to his flat, but I didn’t go - I always preferred the company of girls.

During National Service I shared an office with two girls from The Women's Royal Army Corps. The girls gave me a pair of army issue knickers which they wanted me to wear; they were the same as I had been wearing all my life: cotton directoire style, except that they were khaki in colour. I had already told them that I had been brought up as a girl, so the three of us in the office were wearing the same army issue knickers.

A little later one of the girls went to the quartermaster's stores and reported two pairs of her knickers had been stolen, so she was the issued with a further two pairs, which she then gave to me. I suppose this was a case of girl power, or petticoat control.

My cousins Caroline and Constance and I were tutored by our governess until it was time for us to go to school to finish our education. The girls went to a girls' boarding school in England, and I went to school in Scotland.

A lady friend of my parents telephoned, saying her daughter would be going to school at the same time as I, and it would be company for each of us if we traveled together. We were going to different schools, but they were not far from each other, and we would be going to the same railway station and we could travel together in the same train.

We traveled First Class and had a compartment to ourselves. Her girls' school uniform was an emerald green gym tunic, a cream blouse with a choice of white or matching green knickers, and a blazer and felt hat. I wore a kilt with white knickers, and once we were on the train the girl produced a mirror from her bag which she then placed on the floor of the compartment, and we then took it in turns to stand over the mirror, so she could look up my kilt and see my knickers, and then I could look up her gym tunic and see her knickers.

This continued for the few years that we travelled to school together until she was 17 years old, and was then rather reluctant to let me see her knickers - but was most insistent that she saw my girly knickers, and she always insisted on checking that I was wearing girls' knickers.

It was yet another case of ‘girl power’ or ‘petticoat control’.

I have been reading the autumn issue of PDQ, and would like to add one more thought. I have just read and enjoyed, and agreed with, Julia in her article 'Petticoat Punishment or Petticoat Pleasure', and would like to hear more from her on the subject. I think many boys and some men would derive much pleasure in being dressed as girls or in feminine attire – although of course this would depend a lot on how the mother, aunt, or wife made the approach. I think the female would need to have a feeling that the boy or man was going to be responsive, and not be embarrassed or humiliated, but if petticoating is done in a loving and caring way, then I think it is a very good thing. I think this was shown in 'A Girl from Strathyre,' and also when the two WRAC girls gave me their knickers and wanted me to wear them: they knew I was receptive. and in no way embarrassed or humiliated.

May I wish you a very Merry Christmas, and ‘A Guid New Year.’
Much love and all good wishes,

Fiona
'A Girl from Strathyre'

In each Christmas Annual I aim to publish something that has a tinge of real nostalgia; something that is a delicate memoir of past times, as well as being a letter about youthful petticoat discipline. In the 2002 Christmas Annual I published 'A Frilly White Dress for John', a very evocative memory of Sydney, Australia in the early 1950s.

'A Girl from Strathyre' is this year's special memoir. I especially enjoyed the memory of the two minxes in the army, who made sure that Fiona had regulation army-issue knickers to wear!
Susan