A theme of innocence this week. The middle OTK picture is often seen, but this is of slightly better quality scan and without the annoying watermark. Does anyone know where it was originally from?

Here is the first in a short series of mid-week vintage and retro shots that have a candid or authentic feel about them. This doesn’t mean that they are real, but most of them were included within old Picture Post material.

The clack-clack of the typewriter filled the office as Amelia Travers picked her way through desks piled high with old tea chests. Many were over-ladened with business sundries and long dead accounts for transactions now  forgotten. She was a slight girl from the modern cut with a dark page-boy bob and a straight up and down dress that tried vainly to hide her curves and ended at the knees.

From the sound of the typing it was obvious that someone was having a time of it and was no expert.

“Hello,” Amelia called out.

The typing stopped for a moment and a tweedy young man with a pipe stood up from behind a wall of tea chests at the other end of the room.

“Who the Dickens are you?” he barked, taking a hard suck on his pipe and sending up a cloud of heavy blue smoke.

“Amelia Travers,” Amelia said brightly and then in her best head-girl manner straightened up and extend a very straight right arm.

The man regarded her suspiciously and took another pipe-drag.

“Your new secretary,” she offered as if that said it all.

“What do you look like?” the man said incredulously, the suspicion not having left his face.

“Oh, I’m a modern, it’s all the thing rather,” Amelia told him enthusiastically.

“Not a damn flapper,” he groaned, “I was hoping for a chap this time.”

Amelia pursed her lips. She had heard it all before.

“Well think of me as a chap then,” Amelia suggested. “I can type 80 words a minute and match it with my shorthand.”

“Can you make tea?” the man asked.

“At a pinch, would you ask a male secretary that?” Amelia’s nose crinkled.

“Damn right,” the tweedy young man shot back.

He wasn’t bad looking, if a bit old-fashioned. He was probably old enough to have served in the war, but apart from the severity of his eyes, there was nothing to suggest he was damaged in anyway.

“Then I’ll crack on with the tea,” Amelia said brightly.

“Yes and then you can finish typing this up,” he sighed.

“What about the mess?” the new secretary asked. As she spoke she retreated back to where she thought she had spied the makings for tea.

“Just moved in, new offices, hence the new secretary, namely you Miss Travers,” he said as he picked up a pile of papers and put them down again less than a foot from where they had started.

“Am I right in supposing you are Duncan Whittington?” Amelia called out from where she manfully juggled with the kettle and pot. The kitchenette was served only by a spirit stove and a row of earthenware pots which contained in turn tea, sugar and biscuit crumbs.

“Well I’m not the Archbishop of Canterbury,” Duncan answered.

“No, you only type like him,” Amelia countered.

“Does the Archbishop type?” he asked puzzled.

Amelia frowned. She hoped her new boss wasn’t going to be a dimwit.

*

Over the days and weeks that followed the office slowly took shape and they even had a telephone installed. Much of the organising had been down by Amelia, not that Duncan showed the least appreciation. It was almost as if he was treating the arrangement as temporary.

“Just what is your problem with me?” Amelia finally asked, rounding on him over tea one day.

Duncan frowned. “Well look at you, are you a boy or a girl? I can’t swear, I can’t talk about the cricket and I can’t date you.”

Amelia laughed, “Why not?” she asked.

“Why not what?” he replied.

“Well if it comes to that, all three, although I must admit I don’t know that much about the cricket, I am more an Association Football girl myself,” Amelia giggled.

“There you are then,” Duncan said sharply poking the air with his pipe, “What kind of girl likes football?”

“Don’t you like the way I look? Or is it the way I act? Or is it that I am a girl at all?” Amelia asked pointedly folding her arms.

“I’m the boss around here and you don’t even call me sir, you don’t… don’t…” he waved at her with his pipe and shook his head in lament for his loss of words. The filly was too smart for him and he didn’t like it. “Why if my sister acted and dressed the way you do I would put her across my knee.”

“Well Sir, that is soon remedied isn’t it?” she smiled. “I’ll call you Sir, but if you can point to a single thing I do wrong then you can spank me. How does that suit?”

Duncan opened his mouth to answer and then coughed to hide his discomfort. He was being manipulated again.

“And just who decides when you do something wrong, that is what I would like to know?” he said sharply.

“Well you do, you’re the boss after all,” Amelia said pleasantly.

“And if like my sister I decide to spank you on the bare bottom and send you to the corner for an hour after work…?” Duncan countered, calling her bluff.

“You can send me to bed without supper if you have a mind to,” Amelia said reasonably, “I am quite a good sport you know Sir.”

“Well what if I said you are all wrong and that I don’t like flappers or moderns as you call them, what then? Perhaps I should spank you just for being a rebel as the newspapers advise?” Duncan was on solid ground now; he would soon shut her up.

Amelia’s heart skipped a beat and she had the decency to blush.

“May I lock the door first or do you intend to shame me in front of the post boy should he drop by?” The idea thrilled her to the core, but she felt a little sick all the same. What if he called her out on it?

Duncan’s palm itched, but a sense of justice prevailed. “Alright, perhaps I wasn’t being fair. But one thing wrong you say? What a typing error or forgetting the biscuits?” he put forward doubtfully.

“When have I ever forgotten anything and as for errors…” she frowned as if trying to remember, “Have I yet made any Sir?”

“Well just don’t, that’s all,” he harrumphed, “Now get on with your work.”

*

Duncan sat intently writing on a pad on his knee. His pipe was set at a jaunty manly angle, although it had long since gone out. But Amy could tell at once that he was annoyed about something from the tense way he sat and his failure to acknowledge her arrival, even with his usual look of disapproval.

“Is there something wrong?” Amy asked brightly.

She had just got back from lunch and despite being 10 minutes late she was well on top of her work.

“You tell me,” Duncan growled without looking up.

“You mean I’m late?” Amy asked, now ready to apologise.

Duncan looked up at the clock and raised an eyebrow.

“I hadn’t noticed,” he muttered.

“What is it then?” Amy pressed him.

Duncan whipped the pipe from his mouth and used it to point vigorously at a pile of papers. Then he returned to his scribble.

Amy tentatively reached for the paperwork he had indicated and carefully turned it right side up from her point of view. There was nothing wrong that she could see…

“Oh…” Amy blushed and suddenly got a sinking feeling.

Turning over several letters she saw the error. The last was addressed to the previous, and there seven such misaddressed letters.

“Oh indeed,” Duncan said sharply.

Amy sighed. “Well I can soon fix that, it won’t take me half an hour.”

“Is that all you can say?” Duncan growled.

Amy shrugged. “What do you want me to say? I’m sorry, I’ll stay late if I have to.”

“That’s what I thought,” he muttered, adding, “Bloody girls.”

Amy frowned and slipped off her coat before heading for the kettle to make tea. She hadn’t got 20 feet when the penny dropped.

Ten minutes later she returned with a tray.

“Biscuits are there?” Duncan muttered, still engrossed in his work.

“Not yet,” Amy said enigmatically. “I brought you another selection first.”

“Eh?” Duncan said, now looking up.

He had to think for a moment about what he was looking at, for on the tray was a hairbrush, a ruler and woman’s canvass tennis shoe.

“I had to improvise,” Amy said, “I hope you can manage with these,” she added ruefully, “With just one of them hopefully, but that’s up to you I suppose.”

“What the Dickens?” he spluttered.

“I told you I was a good sport,” Amy told him with a hint of apprehension. “I mean you are going to spank me aren’t you? That was what we agreed?”

“Ah… hmmm, yes I see,” he said uncomfortably.

“You’re not wet are you?” Amy asked, now sounding surprised.

Duncan’s demeanour became stern again and he gave her a look. “Certainly not,” he said sharply.

“Well?”

Duncan tried to remember how they did it at school, but there was no cane to hand. Then he remembered his sister and her little talks with his father.

“Yes, well… you know how this is done…” he found a commanding voice from his army days.

Amy made a grimace and answered through a row of closed teeth, “Up or down?” she asked.

Duncan frowned.

“My… you know, my smalls, my under things?” Amy said, her voice trailing to a whisper.

“My mother and father favoured down for my sister,” Duncan replied, not sure if it was quite done.

“So did mine,” Amy agreed miserably.

Before Duncan could comment Amy blushed and turned her back. After some fumbling under the hem of her skirt she said, “Oh bother.”

She shot a look back and then shrugged. In short order her slip and then her brief bloomers slid south to her ankles and she daintily stepped out of them.

“They got tangled,” Amy explained.

“My mother used to pin my sisters skirts to her waist up at the back,” Duncan said casually, he wasn’t sure yet if that was the thing. “You know… as a shaming to-do,” he explained quickly when he saw Amy’s look of consternation.

“Oh… oh yes I see, I get that… but pins are so fiddly and…” she thought of the risks of being pricked by him or worse being fumbled in a way that would be injurious to her dignity. “It was much the same at home, you know, when I was younger… the shame part I mean, but my sisters and I just had to take our dressed off and petticoats if… well that doesn’t matter…” she was babbling.

“Well then…?” Duncan wasn’t sure this wasn’t going too far and he was beginning to feel a cad.

“Look, here,” Amy said with a sigh and with her back still turned she quickly unfastened her dress in back and stepped out of it.

Duncan gasped and averted his eyes. Amy’s bottom was alabaster smooth, like one of the three graces in the museum. “I say,” he said.

“There doesn’t seem to be a spare corner,” Amy said hesitantly her hands cupped before her even though she hadn’t turned to face him. “Shall I just face the wall here?” She felt her face burn, and it was a sure thing that her mother would have fainted dead away in the same circumstances. But Amy was a modern and would show some spunk.

“Yes, good idea,” Duncan said, now finding his resolve. “And put those hands on your head.” It was something his sister always had to do.

The question was, how long should he keep her there before spanking her? He sat down and free of her gaze let his eye surrender to the art of her half naked form. No rush was there, at least half an hour.

*

Amy fitted across Duncan’s knee easily and with her maidenhood safely tucked from sight she almost took comfort in the warmth of his thighs.

“How… how many?” Duncan said more to himself than her.

“That’s rather up to you isn’t it?” Amy said, feeling out of sorts and all at sea with embarrassment but determined not to show it.

“Yes quite,” he said sharply swatting her upturned bottom with a sting.

“Ooh,” Amy squealed.

Duncan spanked her again and put some weight into it.

“Ah,” she gasped but for the next dozen spanks she limited herself to making faces he could see and managed to hold her tongue.

But little by little she became breathless and after two or three minutes began to pant as she might playing tennis and her heels kicked up as she squirmed.

“Oh, ummm,” she grunted, now getting ever more vocal.

“Not such the clever little miss now are we?” Duncan laughed, now warming to his task. His gentleman was certainly standing up and taking notice.

Amy felt him rise too, but decided fair was fair and it was better not to mention it. It was certainly something a modern should be prepared for in life.

Duncan’s hand burned and he could see from the deep red cloud staining both Amy’s bottom cheeks that she was sore too. But he sensed she wasn’t yet all in. So taking up the pump from the tray he laid it against her bare bottom.

The first swat got Amy’s attention and she yelped. Thereafter all resolve retreated and the rest of the spanking was a vocal affair that left her both breathless and on the edge of some genuine tears. In fact if he could but see her face he would know that her eyes were now two pools about to overflow.

“Alright, you can go back to face the wall now,” Duncan said with a final spank.

“Yes Sir,” Amy said ruefully.

“A half an hour to contemplate your sins and then we will attend to that hairbrush,” Duncan said brusquely.

“But…” Amy gasped her eyes and mouth perfect Os as she half turned to gape at him.

“Well you were 10 minutes late,” Duncan said reasonably.

“Oh… yes, I forgot,” Amy winced, “Darn it.”

This time she faced the wall and thrust her bottom at him as if to show how much of a sport she really was.

“You know, I am beginning to like you,” Duncan chuckled.

Amy giggled. “I am beginning to like you too Sir.”

The cartoon at the top of the page had me laughing and prompted me to dig out several other westerner spanking images. Never is the substitution of sex more prevalent than in westerns. In most contexts the caveman brute can only be accepted in movies if the eroticism is treated as comedy. Yet within the genre of westerns the hero can often still spank the girl and raise a flutter.

Where this is true of movies, it goes tenfold for pulp fiction and cowgirl heroines of books right up until the 1960s could expect to get a spanking in every other chapter, such was the insatiable demand for this brand of sex substitution.

I was unable to find an excerpt but one is given to understand that the 1922 novel Saddle Tramp has several spanking scenes, including a bare bottom strapping in the barn. One can only guess at the plot, but apparently spanking is to be found in The Cattle Queen (1936), Lord of the Range, the Marshall and the suggestively named High Hand, to reference just a few.

The source for these claims is an old text file I kept from as far back as the 1990s which was a list of books and movies with spankings or spanking references.

Unfortunately although most movies took up this theme the majority watered down the spanking and few if any early 20^th century westerns featured bare bottom spanking. But there were at least two very unusual movies where spanking, it would appear, featured prominently.

One was an early talkie called Cattle Annie, the clip is no longer to be found on Daily Motion. But it shows a very rueful young woman being sent to the barn. She says, “You ain’t gonna whoop me again…?” The stern (but heavily made-up cowboy) replies “I sure am and this time you better get them britches down.”

The other is the even more bizarre Singing Hill (1941) where not only are previous spankings cheerfully discussed but the ‘boss lady’ positively asks for it before being obliged by her butler of all people as can be seen in this clip.

Movies weren’t the only place to find spanking. By the 1950s and 60s spanking was still to be found in TV Westerns. Wagon Train had a couple as did Bat Masterson like the one in this episode called the Brunette Bombshell (1959).

We are told the bestselling erotic spanking novels are in the western genre so it appears that the tradition is not dead.

An art theme to this week’s selection. I am assuming the last one is faked, but rather well done I thought.

During the 20^th century in Europe and America there was a huge growth in spanking literature, artists, underground movies and even barely disguised spanking pursuits in mainstream books, movies, theatre and even night clubs.

Hardly anywhere in the so-called developed world seemed immune from the interest, although different cultures explored it differently. The now-liberal countries like the Netherlands and Scandinavia, for instance, were then more right-wing and inclined towards anti-decadence. The interests in these countries came in the form of punishment manuals with titles centred on spanking or whipping your wife or student manuals for young blue-stocking women being spanked, birched, paddled or caned even into their 20s.

In Britain there were risqué photographers and racy novellas, but often, like the Nordic countries they focussed on discipline and the return to traditional values. There is still a shop in London that sells umbrellas and riding crops for conventional uses. But their old signage is still extant and advertises canes, whips and other correctional paraphernalia. It is rumoured that it wasn’t only public schools that utilised their services.

Elsewhere the craze was more brazen.

The French had a whole host of artists and writers such as René-Michel , Pierre Dumarchey, Pierre de Jusange, Liane Lauré to name a few. Artists like Louis Malteste, Édouard Bernard, Carlõ, Chéri Herouard (Herric) were so prolific that their art can still be seen today in the not so dark corners of the Internet.

Not all these writers were French, many Italians, Germans, British and American writers and artist entered the fray.

One of the more interesting crazes in this vein was the ‘Slapper At’ or ‘Spanker At’ trend. Young women would dress or act in a juvenile manner to either court or at least pretend to court a spanking from an eligible young man (or sometimes woman).

I quote from my own article from 2011:

Originally a spanker-at was a term applied to a prostitute who would offer to take a spanking as one of her services. But in the hedonistic 1920s of the jazz age the term took on a wider meaning and by 1929 a spanker-at was a woman who would either take a spanking for fun or in modern parlance was spankable.

As the Depression hit it was even immortalised in song.

“No more money in the bank,
no more pretty babies to spank.”

It might help to put some of the movies of that era in context to know that ordinary girl-next-door types sometimes imagined themselves a real femme fatal, if they flirted with a spanking.

There were even clubs in New York and later London, called spanker-at clubs which lasted into the 1940s.

In Berlin the cabaret circuit was often openly gay-friendly for instance and would think nothing of exploring BDSM and the Spanker-At craze sat quite literally cheek-by-jowl with this world.

Newspapers would seize on any opportunity to report a spanking and the tone even in a serious article was schadenfreude and fun such in the illustration below, which is from an article purporting to be about juvenile delinquency.

perhaps the reason for this so-called Golden Age is probably down to two concurrent developments. Firstly the growth of popular culture in general, the movies, the huge reduction in cost of publishing and the growth of a post-industrial class to take advantage.

But more than that, it was an age like no other when not only were traditional values being increasingly challenged (the permissive society did not begin with the 1960s) but unlike later the social revelations of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, people were far more innocent. So when Clark Gabel spanks Joan Crawford, she can tolerate it or even seek it out for her own good without the moral conservatives getting upset.

The fun ended in Europe during the 1930s when the Nazis occupied France and Germany and the British suddenly found they had more serious things to attend to. By the beginning of the 1940 the USA had followed.

Of course the real Golden Age of spanking is probably now, but that is a topic for another day.