This is the story of a young attractive schoolteacher in Great Britain in 1890. The teacher, Miss Abigail Strong loses her cool with an arrogant and privileged student and suffers the reprisals of this student and her friends. It is a fictional story for entertainment purposes only. It does not purport to be an historically accurate portrait of the school system in Great Britain in the late nineteenth century. I am telling this story in three parts: Background, The Caning, and Retribution. All participants in the sexual events depicted in this story are eighteen years of age or older.
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Background:
This story takes place in a combined Middle and Upper school in a small English town in 1890. This school educates first through upper sixth form students, ranging in age from eleven to eighteen or nineteen. The school separates of boys from girls into their own classes for each form, in order to increase concentration by the students and benefit the learning process. There are three end-of-school-day bells: first bell is to release forms one through five for all classes, second bell is for lower sixth form boys and girls, and final bell is for upper sixth form students, eighteen and nineteen-year-old boys and girls classes. This last form is for university preparation, and includes advanced classes by qualified teachers. This was the general plan.
Since this town does not have the resources of some larger school systems, teachers teach more than one form in the same classroom, with separate lessons taught to each form. Teaching in these schools was a difficult task since teachers had to be conversant with all subjects and to be college educated. The teachers answer to the school's headmaster (or headmistress) for any failing students, or discipline problems. For minor infractions and disciplinary problems, teachers are empowered to administer discipline in their classrooms; but they can send recalcitrant students to the headmaster for stronger discipline or expulsion in the most difficult cases.
There is no tolerance for misbehavior, talking, or tardiness, which is disruptive to the class, and teachers may act freely to administer discipline to their students. This mostly amounts to boys being caned (punished with a long slender rattan cane) either on the upturned palms of their hands, or on the backside over their clothes, with girls receiving several swats with either a wooden ruler, a paddle or a cane on their upturned palms.
These methods are effective in most cases of minor infractions, but bare-bottomed paddling or caning is also an option; bare-bottom punishment normally is for boys who are slow in learning their lesson. It would be very rare indeed to punish a girl this way due to concerns for modesty. School officials usually give this kind of punishment in a private setting, although the embarrassment and sharper pain of the bare-bottomed approach in a more public setting proves effective for the worst cases.
This town is small by some standards, but large enough to have several social castes. At the top of the social milieu are the landowners, business owners, lawyers, bankers, and owners of large shops or farms. Below this group, the sales persons in shops, the bookkeepers, owners of smaller shops and businesses, and teachers. At the bottom are the tenant farmers, farm hands, small farm owners, domestics ... butlers, and the like. This meant that teachers are required to teach children of several social castes, and it is natural that more punishment fell on children of the middle and lower castes, while infractions from upper class students often dismissed or overlooked by mostly middle class teachers.
Most teachers follow this model, but an occasional teacher coming from a larger city or more prestigious school might want to be fairer between classes of students. Since funding of the school is, in part, through the largesse of the upper classes, they expect better treatment for their children, whereas parents from the middle or lower classes, upon hearing of their children punished in class, would also administer an additional punishment in the home. A few of the wealthier families provided private tutors and governesses for their children, or more exclusive private preparatory academies.
This particular school is called Saint Dunstan's School, having been named after a tenth century Archbishop of Canterbury, and the student body represented all social classes in the town, with wealthier parents favoring the more well-rounded socialization of this school, as opposed to sending their children to a private academy. St. Dunstan's is a typical school for this size town, with boy's classrooms on one side of a central hallway, and classes for the girls on the other side. The walls of the hallway are of painted wood, a sort of wainscoting, to a height of one and three-quarters meters (Five feet), and windows above this to a total wall height of two and one-half meters (eight feet).
The windows allow teachers, department heads, and administrators to view what is happening in the classrooms. This means that the older and taller boys are able to look into the girls classrooms, but often only on tiptoes. Saint Dunstan's is a good school, and produced many students who had gone on to very prestigious schools, and brilliant careers. This particular school year was the first for Abigail Strong, a single, attractive, very bright and experienced thirty-year old teacher who had received her education at a prestigious college.
Miss Strong teaches sixth form students, aged sixteen and seventeen for the lower sixth form, and eighteen and over for the upper sixth form. This last category is a university preparation class, and all students in this form are eighteen or older. She is an excellent teacher, but is very reserved and a strong believer in maintaining order in her classroom. Like many teachers, she keeps a paddle and assorted canes on the wall beside the blackboard in her classroom, and as she goes about her lessons, she often holds a wooden ruler which she uses often as pointer or simply taps against her other palm to make a particularly cogent point during a lesson.
The ruler is also a handy tool for a quick wrap on the knuckles where needed. She is from a middle class family in London, but is not as class conscious, as the students or the townspeople of this town. This means that she expects the same comportment and academic focus from all of her students, smart or dull, rich or poor. She is an earnest person, and takes her teaching very seriously and even minor infractions: talking and giggling amongst the girls, missing or incomplete lessons, and tardiness all met with some level of punishment.
Due to Miss Strong's attractiveness, the older boys watch her as she walks down the hallway, and they sometimes make whispered comments to each other as she passes. She is tall and slender with an ample bosom, which strains at the material of her crisp high-buttoned blouse—always neatly tucked into her simple floor-length skirt. She has her prize students as all teachers did, but in general, the girls in her classes dislike her for her stoic demeanor. Upper-middle and upper caste girls in her classes resent any treatment without deference to their social position. This is true of one student in particular.
Angela Neumann is one of the older girls in Miss Strong's class, and the daughter of a prominent upper class merchant. Angela is a strong willed eighteen-year-old and has a following of several girls who wish to associate with her. Likely, they wish to boost or to maintain their own social standing in the school by associating with a popular girl. Angela also has a very deliberate way of trying Miss Strong's patience.
She was several times the recipient of swats by Miss Strong's wooden ruler on her open palms. She received the painful strokes as if it was all some joke, and even though they hurt, she would roll her eyes and giggle on her way back to her desk, and joke with her fawning group of friends. It was becoming increasingly clear that Miss Strong's patience with Angela's classroom behavior was wearing thin.
The Caning:
Angela Neumann had been guilty of several and repeated minor infractions such as tardiness, late lessons, and talking with her group of friends in the back of the classroom during study time for her class, while Miss Strong was working with lower sixth form girls. On this particular day toward the end of the school day, Angela once again violated study time rules by quietly talking, giggling, and generally holding court with her group of sycophants. This happened after the first bell, so only sixth form students were present in the classrooms.
Something simply snapped in Miss Strong's mind; once more forced to interrupt her math instruction for Angela's sake. She turned and glared at the offending eighteen-year-old student. Although Angela knew she was the object of her teacher's attention, she kept on with her private conversations instead of returning to her studies. Miss Strong, with her ever-present ruler in her right hand, tapped it firmly against the palm of her left hand, and said in an even, but authoritative voice,
"Angela Neumann, would you please come up to the front of the classroom?"
"I'm sorry Miss Strong. What?" The smug reply from the student, delivered with a slight giggle.
"Miss Neumann, come up here to my desk! Now, please!" Miss Strong demanded.
Angela smiled at her best friend eighteen-year-old Marianne Simpson seated next to her, shrugged her shoulders, rose from her seat, and walked leisurely to the front of the classroom.
"What is it Miss Strong?"
She asked her teacher with a definite attitude in her voice. Marianne and a couple of Angela's other girlfriends whispered and giggled together at this.
Miss Strong studied the girl for a brief second or two, still slapping her reddening palm with the ruler and replied,
"Miss Neumann, you are very well aware of the reason for your presence at the front of this classroom ... once again!"
"Oh, I'm sorry Miss Strong, Marianne, ah Miss Simpson made a joke, and I giggled, but we did not intend to interrupt your lesson with the younger girls. It will never happen again."
She then presented her upturned palms for the attention of the ruler, and as she did, she rolled her eyes and looking up and to the left as if the punishment to come was of little concern to her.
Miss Strong noticed by the clock that the second bell dismissing the lower sixth form boys and girls was about to ring, so she waited. The bell rung and all of her lower sixth girls filed out of the classroom and ushered out of the school by student hall monitors. With just her eighteen and nineteen-year-old girls left, Miss Strong looked at young Angela, and began to think that a few wraps on the palms of her hands is not going to suffice this time.
She placed her ruler on the corner of the desk, and strode to the side of the blackboard, tested a few, then selected one from the collection of canes hanging there for dispensing discipline. Seeing this, Angela, still standing in front of the teacher's desk, reflexively closed her palms, and stepped back. Miss Strong strode back to where Angela was standing, and noticing the student's growing dread, tried the cane again with a couple of swipes through the air. Angela, flinching each time she heard the cane slicing through the air and not knowing what else to do, asked,
"M-Miss S-Strong, do you still want my palms open?"
Without looking at Angela or answering her question, Miss Strong turned toward the nervous girl at the front of the room. Using the tip of the cane, she taped the desktop. Then, looking directly at the Miss Neumann she said,
"Miss Neumann, please bend yourself over the desk, and use those sweaty little palms to grip the far edge."
Angela Neumann now found herself in very unfamiliar territory—not ever having had her bottom spanked due to her position among the students and in the town. Without thinking, and seeing Miss Strong's stern expression, she did as instructed. She turned back to look at Miss Strong,
"Miss Strong, girls are not supposed to be punished on their bottoms ... only the palms of our hands."
