On discussing the demise of CP from western society feelings were mixed at a recent forum. One woman from Wisconsin rather matter-of-factly mentions being sent out back with her sister and cousins to cut switches ‘for a thorough application to our bare bottoms.’ This, she claims, when she was college age. ‘Not really much of a big deal back in the 1950s. Not sure if it did us any good, we were only ever sorry we were caught. Then again it probably did us no harm beyond a day or two of standing at the supper table. Embarrassing? Sure. Painful, my God, did I mention not being able to sit down?’

Around the same time 20-year-old Louis M failed to successfully bring a prosecution in England against her employer for spanking her. She was employed as a nanny and occasional maid. The court rules that as a minor (being under 21) and a dependent, her employer had a right, if not a duty to act in loco parentis and give her a spanking.

Miss M’s main objection seems to be that she was not only spanked on the bare bottom but ‘kept in for a week on her days off.’

A little further back in time (as recently as the 1930s) housemaids in Norfolk, England, were sent in little more than their short shifts out to the woods to cut birch rods. Reverend T.A. Martin notes in his memoirs seeing many a revealed bare bottom peeking out from the hedgerows as forlorn young girls gathered up the needful.

Another account from a little early sheds light on to how the ‘needful’ was  attended to.

Former housekeeper, Jane Ferris, wrote in her memoir A Country House, The footman and other males staff having been dismissed, the errant girls were scolded in the servant’s hall and then one by one made to bend across the table for a good swishing, applied of course to where it did the most good.