Locking Cots and Early to Bed

Hi Chaps

I have been in contact again with my digital illustrator chum in the 'States (remember I spent quite a time telling you all about the ideas hovering out of sight behind an illustrated version of the new book and this guy – Snooze – and his input). Anyway, as well as producing illustrations for a possible pictorial version of my upcoming book he accepts commissions from others and was recently commissioned to produce a series of images interpreting some ideas sent to him that, while now unlikely for various reasons to see the light of day, nonetheless make for a nice showcase of his talents.

As the artist himself says: “The main subject of the picture [to the artist's way of thinking] was the gruesome looking, [quite] terrifying cots. Not the girl. So thick and sturdy that [one immediately recognizes their] terrible purpose and that once [a girl was placed in one] there would be absolutely no escape from its cold confines until who ever it was put [her in ] there decided [she] be released.”

The rubber mattress and pillow “subtly implies that [she] will not be let out for the [purposes of visiting the bathroom].”

The girl on the far side is only noticed as an afterthought. You only notice her later. [Only then] does one discern the rubber suit she is dressed in; which once again implies the lack of bathroom breaks. She is diapered and waterproofed because she is not coming out until release time.”

The illustrator believes – and I agree – that “the image works [not so much due to] what is emphasized [but rather due to] what is understated; because as you look at it you see more and more.”

He sees the scene as “a special dorm for bed wetters in an institutional setting; an asylum? school or prison, perhaps. The first image is set just before 7:00 pm as it is beginning to go dark. Two inmates have been placed in their rubber nightwear and made to lie in their cots. A Dorm Matron has placed a rubber sheet/blanket over her first charge, has lifted the side rail of her cot and already secured one padlock in place and is in the process for locking the second padlock.”

He goes on to point out that:

“The dormitory Matron's second charge is already in position in her cot and is passively lying there while her [compatriot or fellow miscreant] is being [secured]. She could get up, out of the cot - she is not restrained. However, the image tries to show that such an action would be foolish. The locked bars over the window suggest that the room is in any case secure. She would not get far if she attempted to escape. Also positioned strategically in the foreground of the image is Matron's desk with a heavy punishment cane prominently on display along with a leather spanking paddle.

Less prominent, but still ominously visible on the far wall, is a board displaying three additional canes, two tawses and a pair of handcuffs and leg irons. The implication made is that the facility is well able to handle an inmate who tries to create a disturbance.

There are additional furnishings that also suggest resistance is fraught with peril: In the far corner of the room is a wardrobe containing what appear to be straitjackets. It is unclear whether [a straitjacket might be pressed into service to punish a] girl by placing her in it on top of her rubber suit, so that she would be uncomfortably restrained throughout the night] or whether perhaps [these girls] have been [routinely] incarcerated in them during the day and they have now been removed while they are locked in their cots for sleeping.

Another potential jeopardy is the half seen cage on the far left of the image. Presumably if the girls try to create a fuss, instead of being left for the night in their comfy, if very secure cots, they might be confined to the cage, which is too small for them to relax comfortably and has a bare metal floor. The implications of both the cage and straitjackets is that no matter how awful life is, it can always get much worse. And so the second girl realizes that resistance is futile and merely waits patiently for the nurse to cover her with the rubber blanket which is strategically lying on the cot, raise the rail and secure it with the two padlocks that are waiting for her.

To enhance the overall atmosphere, these girls are adults and yet the clock on the wall says it isn't quite seven o'clock. It is light outside still, yet they are doomed to go to bed so early and spend the night in very secure confinement. The lighting isn't bright but, together with the depth of field of the camera, the idea is to focus the [observer's eye] on the girl in the cot, waiting to be put to bed for the night.

The second image of the two lower is meant to capture the scene just over a half an hour later. It is now almost dark outside. The second girl has had her blanket placed on her and the side of her cot raised and secured. The lights have been turned down to allow them to sleep but it is not completely dark. The focus is now shifted on to the Dorm Matron. Her shift isn't up till 8:00 pm, when she will be relieved by a junior night nurse who will keep watch over the girls throughout the night. No talking is allowed of course, which is why the heavy cane on the desk, now well lit up, is prominently on display so that the girls know what will happen if they break the rules.

The [inclusion of the] bed pans [is intended to be] suggestive of the incontinence theme.”

There you have it! Though nothing to do with my storyline, I find the images that have resulted to be most evocative, as I think you'll find too if you look carefully! The idea of the girls just waiting without need of restraint, the no-talking rule – all this I love. But, If I were to be asked to put forward one proviso or criticism, I think it would be that I would dispense with the rubber suits. I guess another would be that I am not so keen on the depicted scenario taking place within “a special unit for 'bed wetters'”... unless it turns out that this is a unit devised to create bed wetters or enforce the behavior in some way – then all of a sudden it becomes delicious! But – hey - that's my taste; what do you think?

Institutional and Domestic Discipline: An Illustrated Collaboration 3 – Further Evolution

I have to rush out today – I am off to Eastbourne on the sunny Sussex coast where my mother is enjoying a few days in a guest house. I am going to be there later today and will probably (hopefully) spend the afternoon outside a bar at the end of Eastbourne pier writing in the sun - and it is blazingly sunny here in London at the moment, so I’m quite optimistic. This evening, I hope, will find me ensconced in the Eastbourne Wetherspoons pub; come and say hello if you are an Eastbourne type, appreciate a good ale and happen to be in the vicinity. Tomorrow I may visit Brighton or Hastings. I am taking my trusty bike and hope to tour around a bit up and down the south coast, visiting Wetherspoons branches and of course writing if and when inspired – I am taking my netbook computer with me. I next expect to be back home at my desk on Tuesday 8th June (next Tuesday) but WiFi internet connections willing, I may update the blog while on the move and hopefully I will still be able to view my emails – so don’t be shy, write today.

Talking off inspiration: if you remember the piece I posted recently regarding my collaboration with the Stateside computer artist, ‘Snooze’ and the evolution of a particular illustration I demonstrated as an example of the sort of thing we have been developing you will probably be interested with this, the latest incarnation of that art work - compare and contrast with the earlier renditions posted elsewhere. There are many more scenes we are working on – some far more complex and detailed - but it would spoil the fun to give any further inkling of these – you’ll just have to wait until the new book gets finished, or more specifically, the illustrated version of it.

In the present illustration the girl has just failed a written imposition set by the section psychiatrist – a most formidable, yet exceedingly clever - woman and has had her institutional pyjama bottoms taken of her in preparation for correction. The view through the door tells the viewer that this private little prison is in fact a tiny secure anteroom leading directly off of a more conventionally furnished consultation room - the regulation hospital bed provided for the inmate with its integral restraints is behind the view and so not in evidence. The white outer door beyond the bars both provides the psychiatrist’s office with the appearance one might expect, when closed, while also increasing the hapless girl’s isolation by removing from her the stimulation of the external view and providing for a high degree of soundproofing. The thick but supple leather belt carried, doubled-over, in the hospital sister’s hand, has a special relevance to the poor girl – it is something destined to make the up-coming correction all the more intolerable for the girl once the realisation sinks in! As always - all comments, ideas and what have you, will be gratefully received - bye for now!

Emails, Latex, Starched Collars, Restriction and Enforced Tattooing

My apologies to all those who have emailed me over the last week or so and have yet to receive a reply. I have been out of action for one reason or another and on and off for quite a while now and in the meantime the incoming e-mail tends to build up. The new arrivals eventually push earlier messages further and further down the pile until they disappear off the bottom of the page and go out of focus - then they are all too easily overlooked. I am now working my way through my outstanding email stack and in so doing I thought I might use one or two to illustrate points regarding the INSTITUTIONALISED story arc and the influences that have impacted upon it thus far. As always I'll keep everything anonymous unless the writer concerned requests acknowledgement.

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Here is one that unfortunately it has taken me seven days to reply to - seven days languishing in my mailbox is unforgivable, sorry old chap - and my reply. The pictures are from a set that somebody recently sent me anonymously, for which my heart-felt thanks, and which deliciously illustrate - in an in-between-the-lines sort of way - the spirit of part of the upcoming new volume. There is piquant ambiguity there; of which, for our purposes, one might wish to choose the darker interpretation - is the girl truly as content as she seems... or has she just come to think of herself as content?..or been expertly led into a mindset of dominated acceptance? hmmm! I know not the origin of these pics so I can only hope I am not treading on any one's toes, copyright speaking, here - if so I will of course remove them at once.

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“I am really enjoying the descriptions of the uniforms, especially Lady Madison’s “maid” and the girl in the wheelchair, 24C, I’m not that keen on latex but the idea of all white, including the Nurses’ uniforms is great, adding the Nun style wimple adds to the effect. The idea of tattooing the individual “patients” number on their buttocks is inspirational, just a couple of questions though, why get the girls to write their names when consenting, wouldn’t it have been better to have them sign in a previous chapter that they would in the future as eg 23C and then any consent form would only use their number, or was the intention to introduce a little confusion when they used their previous name. Also what would happen if the patient changes from the school to the cells, eg 30S / 30C and then back again, would she have been tattooed?”

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I have to say that latex is only on the peripheral my interests, my interests really lie more with the use of corporal punishment and imposition of strict discipline and school uniforms and the like on young ladies in their late teens or early twenties. As I have said before; my formative reading matter tended to be the likes of Richard Manton and Victor Bruno, and if you know the works of these authors you'll get a feeling for where I'm coming from. As I read around more over the years and discovered other people's interests, the discomfiture inherent in the idea of the heroine having to contend with snug-fitting school knickers, say, fitted with a latex lining seemed to lend itself to developing that all-important sense of restriction. I saw the use of latex under such circumstances much in the same vein as crisply starched school blouses having high, tight starched collars, a girl's hair being tightly plaited and pinned coiled to either side of her head or cut to a short boyish, collar length, style, restrictive corsetry incorporating a stiffened backboard so as to ensure good deportment at the school desk, heavy gabardine rain-capes worn on the warmest of days or toe-crushing shoes cunningly designed to hobble the wearer and so ensure a suitably submissive dainty, girlish gait. You have to realise that when I set out to write these books I also set out to incorporate as many disparate fetishes that seemed to fit with the storyline - not necessarily my own interests in all cases.

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The level of discipline and restriction that many letter writer's seemed to advocate in the correspondence pages of Janus, Blushes, Whispers and some other magazines published in the 1980s, the period when I was mostly reading them and tend to hark back to, never really rung true with me in the context within which the correspondents would develop their ideas - such regimes as were often advocated seemed unlikely, if not downright distasteful to the point of being a turnoff, in the context of the parental home or in any sort of conventional and publicly scrutinised school system. Where on occasion some sort of promise of plausibility did seem to arise it was to be found more often than not broached in connection with the subject of ' admission procedures’ wherein the existence of various small, secure and privately funded institutions were sometimes posited - apparently run as much for the amusement of the rich patrons that fund it as to benefit the reformation or education of the inmates.

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One writer talked about an establishment wherein a young lady might be confined and where she might be visited from time to time by the man or woman responsible for her incarceration. Some spoke of reformatory schools and short-sharp-shock regimes, lasting two to three months perhaps. Others, excitingly in my opinion, spoke of minimum periods above a year while still others used that wonderful term 'indefinite'. Then one would sometimes come across the idea of a young lady cloistered behind the high walls of her ancestral home, kept from her inheritance by a cruel guardian or stepparent and under a regime of some sort of scholastic discipline whether mediated by a stern governess, dour children's nanny or strict nursery nurse. Influenced by all of the above and having read about the church run, so-called, Madeleine laundries and the ease with which a young woman could find herself committed to such a place - or indeed, in the Victorian period, to the local mental asylum - merely for having refused the advances of the local squire, as well as the unethical psychological experiments carried out in the 1930s through to the 1960s, I chose to invoke a combination of these ideas, centring around a privately funded research unit embedded within a secure psychiatric hospital. As you know it is basically the story of a girl who, having been manipulated into becoming a voluntary research subject for a short period, finds herself increasingly less able to extract herself from the situation to find herself in.

The idea of having the girls sign an earlier legal document stating that from that point forth, while within the institution, their assigned patient number would stand for their given name in all further waivers is a nice one. The reason I opted to have the girls sign the documentation, giving the hospital the right to tattoo them, using their full names, was to impress upon them the legality of their situation and to further impress upon them the futility of attempting to stand against the reform--school / boarding-school regime they are being kept under. It is for similar reasons that the documentation itself is dictated to the girls and has to be rendered in their own handwriting while sitting at their school desks. Obviously, pre-printed sheaves of papers, merely requiring the subject place her signature at the relevant points, could have been handed out, but that would have been missing out on a wonderful opportunity to further apply psychological pressure on them - remember that during the dictation process, any one girl making a mistake or failing to achieve sufficient copperplate-neatness caused the group as a whole to have to start again from scratch. Recall also that the documentation was worded so as to be not so much a permission given to the hospital as it was a request from the girl concerned that the hospital authorities should permanently tattooed each with her assigned patient number. You have hit the nail on the head when you posit the intention of introducing a little confusion when the girls are forced to use their previous names - a girl finding herself automatically going to use her patient number despite herself, perhaps finding her given name appearing almost strange to her, will surely be mindful of the effect that her time in the unit as already had upon her.

As to what would happen as regards the tattoo if the patient was to be changed from the 'schoolroom' regime to the ' prison' or ' workhouse' regimes - there is a good reason why this would not be of too much concern but to elucidate further would be to give too much away.

A Strict Nurse in Uniform and a Girl in Medical Restraints

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I just came across this little gem of a pic of a strict nurse in uniform (left) on a YahooGroup that I will tell you about at a later date as I have to rush out soon _ I am off touring around the more far-flung reaches of Essex tomorrow for a few days and have to get a few pints in first! I have also noted how many of you have been checking out the medical bondage pic I posted a while back so thought I'd include a few more - again from a yahoo group. I particularly like the mitts pictured top right - just perfect for keeping interfering fingers out of the way should masturbation be a problem...and of course for heightening that all-important sense of helplessness and dependency, so crucial if one is striving to create the perfect model of the docile mental patient!

Drip, Drip, Drip - Just an Idea

I'd been working hard, of course, on proofreading volume 2 and it is coming on in leaps and bounds now, although I must admit that I spent the majority of yesterday in a pub in Enfield working on an idea I came up with some time ago for INSTITUTIONALISED volume 2 . I just thought it would be fun to share it with you and see what feedback I get. Basically it is a scene in which a girl has been repeatedly refusing to fully take part in her one-to-one sessions with the psychotherapist. While she insists on this policy of non-compliance she is being kept in an isolated room in between sessions. As, for reasons I won't go into here, she is in plaster casts, she is generally confined to bed and is on a drip-feed. She is thoroughly restrained while in her hospital bed, the worry being that she might twist her back and neck (which may or may not have been injured in an accident previously) a broad webbing strap runs across her forehead to restrain her head and protect her neck while she sleeps (there is also a neck brace involved). The strap has a three centimetre diameter circular hole in its centre - nothing that sinister so far you may think.
The tube from her drip feed hangs across the head of her bed and of course naturally sags in the centre at the point where a coupling connects together two lengths of tubing to extend the run over to the cannula in her wrist on the opposite side. It is in the centre of that deeply sagging section, just above her forehead where the drip first begins to form, the liquid dribbling along the tubing from one of the joints, the golden, viscous heavy oily fluid gathering and growing and stretching until…until…it falls, icy stabbing cold and splashing down dead centre on her pretty little forehead, straight through that conveniently placed opening in the head restraint strap…over and over again.
Of course talking without permission is not allowed and complaining of the fault, having been finally driven to distraction, to one of the nurses that share shifts and sit silently reading by her bed side, only gets her bent across the bed for a few strokes of the cane…then the drip feed is refilled and it all starts again…deprived of sleep she is taken once every 24 hrs to the therapists office and if not yet convinced to co operate? well, then its straight back to bed…drip, drip, drip…

A New and Intriguing Story to Check Out

A very short posting today, no pics I'm afraid - not enough time to source 'em. I'm hard at work - chained to my desk (not literally - I'm the master here. That's why my significant other has her nice new white satin pinny to wear)....and no drinkies!. I just wanted to take this opportunity (I've awarded myself a tea break) to point you in the direction of an interesting straitjacket / asylum story presently unfolding and developing on http://greggerbits.tripod.com/stories.html (click to read chapter 1 ) the basic premise being that a young college woman who fails a psychiatric exam [is then] committed to a mental hospital for further testing. I love this idea and the avenues it opens up - especially if in truth there is little wrong with the subject to start with! I have always enjoyed mulling over the possibilities for exploitation of vulnerable young things inherent in the asylum / mental health system - particularly as pertains to those often less-than-entirely-ethical days of old when wives, awkward stepdaughters and heiresses could find they had stepped out of society based on little more than the word of a disgruntled stepmother or guardian or even a slighted suitor (And a greasing of a palm or two by silver). Anyway, why not explore the entire site while you are there - a lot of interesting links (very straitjacket / asylum orientated) and a lot of material regarding straitjackets in various media (films, TV etc). Incidentally, yours truly has been kindly thanked by the writer (thanks, for the mention) for having helped but in all honesty I can claim only to have read through, made one or two comments and offered-up a couple of ideas for the story's future development and direction.

While we are on the subject - inspired by the story mentioned above, I did a little searching around and came up with a couple of other little gems: A nice selection of free straitjacket photographs on http://www.straitjacketed.com/freepics.html (click site name - highlighted in blue - to view or see sidebar resource list) and a continuing story that I am sure you (and the writer I have just mentioned above) will just love. Entitled; The Job j and posted on the same site's free section, just click on the title to read the first chapter, then just follow the links to the subsequent sections...enjoy!

As for me? Its back to proofreading / editing INSTITUTIONALISED volume 2 / 3 (At this point, I'm still uncertain whether to split it into two volumes or not).

Dietary Discipline & Harassment Therapy: A Reader's Account (Part 4) - Of Nappies, Leg Braces and Psychological Bondage

I have to admit to having spent far too long overthe last couple of days investigating the selection of real ales on sale in various London branches of that marvellous pub chain, Wetherspoon's (they have had a 'beer festival 'running since the beginning of April with 50 different ales on sale of which I've been attempting to sample as many as possible). That I am back at the desk finishing off a little work on volume 2 and fiddling around with the text of volume 3 – I've also managed to enlist the much welcomed aid of an e-mail correspondent chum in proofreading volume 2 so all is rushing ahead nicely now. As you can imagine am a little to push the time to write anything much myself today so I thought I would just post the concluding part of the account of sent in by a correspondent regarding her time in a mental hospital. As you probably remember from last time; this takes the form of a series of questions posed by e-maile, by yours truly, along with the anonymous correspondent's responses and so has something of the tone of an interview. With the exception of the use of nappies (diapers) the parallels with the happenings portrayed in INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1 and the treatment meted out to our hapless young volunteers under the guise of an experimental psychology study is remarkable. Along with the accounts that one comes across out there on the Web of life in those wonderful church run institutions, Ireland's industrial schools, with their strict cane or strap wielding nuns, and equally strict dowdy uniforms (is just so much mileage there for the writing of fiction, with a little imagination) and those highly dubious and of the unethical psychology studies carried out in past times; it all goes to show that truth really is stranger than fiction. Click here for part 3 ... here for part 2... and here for part 1... And here to read the original letter that started the ball rolling. Now, as they say, read on:

“In the average small hospital ward (and I imagine the ward you were confined to would have been quite compact) there are usually only one or two (if that) toilet cubicles. A weird subject I know but one with many disciplinary connotations, particularly under the circumstances you describe, as once in a cubicle the patient could be out of sight for example and might choose to regurgitate an unpleasant meal. And bearing in mind the regimentation of the dietary procedures you describe one can't help wondering whether such toilet visits were regimented in any way (I make mention in volumes 1 and two of my book of bedpan use, both for convenience and for ' medical ' reasons - to allow for easy monitoring of waste output, shall we say (humiliating for the patient, I know, but perhaps necessary).”

Toilet Re-training

“The hospital must have been built in the late 1800's and while it did have running water and electricity (would these mod-cons have had to be added after it was built I wonder) nobody had thought to include toilets - unless the staff had access to toilets somewhere within their private domains. But I certainly never saw a toilet. We used pots that were kept under our beds and we were expected to use them when we got up and when we went to bed. The dormitories were kept locked during the day, but we would be taken, in small groups, to use our pots once during the day, usually after the (nominally) midday meal. I know for a fact that great attention was paid to our output - there were charts of volume, weight, colour and consistency and any irregularity would be treated with laxatives, enemas, dietary changes and punishment.
It only took an increase in liquid intake and the withholding of potty privileges once or twice and a girl was bound to be found standing in a puddle of her own making in the dayroom or she would wake up with a wet bed.
Such events, whether deliberately induced, entirely accidental, or just written up on paper, were the usual precursor to the loss of potty privileges (called toilet privileges) altogether. That meant having to wear nappies - at least during the day and maybe at night too. If you were one of the retarded girls they might be regular nappies, but those of us who were deemed to 'know better', or be aware of our 'actions', were often made to wear punishment nappies... (the pictures, I think, evoke quite nicely the sort of thing that would be considered suitable garb for such a patient once ensconced in the experimental psychology department, deep within the secure wing of the institution I depict - Garth).

Girdled and Back in Nappies

The basic punishment nappy was comprised of large thick nappy pads made from old sheets quilted together - and might have canvas or hessian liners that were incredibly abrasive and itchy. They would [on ocasion] be fastened on already soaking wet. After all, the nurses were [often] heard to say, “why bother drying them when a little shit like you is just going to pee in them”. And then to stop them sagging we had to wear a panty-girdle like garment - but made from stronger elastic than any panty girdle I have ever seen and with laces up the back. Big thick brown rubber bloomers finished off the arrangement - unless you had to wear another lighter 'panty girdle' over the rubber pants. Believe me, you could do little more than waddle by the time they were done with you. And it wasn't long before the urine, and whatever else that overflowed from the nappy. would pool in the bloomer legs. There were times that I was put into punishment nappies - and only ever escaped when the rash became so bad that I had to be allowed out - though there was no guarantee that you wouldn't go right back in them as soon as the rash improved.
It was on one of the occasions when I was consigned to punishment nappies that I was taken down to the brace shop to have a crotch plate made. The design is a little hard to explain. Firstly my body brace was modified and the waist was reduced even further - making me look more like a wasp than a girl. Then a narrow and most uncomfortable strap was attached to the back of my body brace and passed between my legs and tightly buckled to the front of my body brace. Then a wide rigid plate was made, rubber covered steel I think, and that was similarly attached, by multiple straps, to the back and front of my body brace. By the time all the straps were pulled as tight as the nurses could manage (the narrow understrap could still be tightened after the crotch plate was attached because the crotch plate did not cover the buckle) I was barely able to walk, for the crotch place was about 5 inches wide at its narrowest, and unless I moved very gingerly it would leave me with wheals where it rubbed against my thighs - even through the rubber bloomers, 'panty-girdle', and layers of nappy. Believe me - the panty girdles were very unpleasant, the way they held the sodden nappies in constant contact with your crotch, but the crotch plate was many times worse. Not that I escaped that - I still had to wear a panty girdle, both under and over the rubber bloomers. If you were unlucky enough to be moved to the 'dirty dormitory' then your nappies were usually only changed at bedtime each day. Your dirty nappy and liner were removed and replaced with a 'clean', but still urine soaked, nappy and liner. The dirty nappy was [sometimes] not placed in the nappy bucket until the next morning.
We deviants had our own dormitory, and normally we would never be moved to another - they didn't want any chance of our corrupting the other girls - but the 'dirty dormitory' was an exception - we could be transferred there, and often were.
But punishment nappies were not usually the first disciplinary measure, of that type, a new girl would encounter. They would usually work up to it. My own first experience was when I came back from the bathroom, shivering from a long cold bath. On this occasion I was not wearing a jacket - though often we would wear our jackets in the bath - and as I stood next to 'my' bed the nurse pulled down the cover, and the rubber sheet below it, to reveal the bed made up with urine soaked, sheets and pillowcases - obviously sopping wet, not just damp. It was a very unpleasant experience indeed, though it became even more unpleasant when I was instructed to remove my nightgown and take the gown from beneath the pillow and put it on. Besides being wet and very cold, it too, was saturated in urine. Getting into it was no easy task because the material would keep sticking to itself and the nurse had to help me, much to her annoyance. When told to get into the bed I soon found that the indentation I made rapidly filled with cold urine. It was only an introduction, but that night, and the following nights pent in that bed were very unpleasant”.

Life Behind the Barred Window

“Under the circumstances you describe and giving your average rebellious teenager (and particularly taking into account the time scale you seem to imply) the temptation must have been to simply walk out. I imagine, therefore, all this would have taken place in a secure, locked ward. In which case I would be fascinated to learn of the security precautions?"

"Yes, I was always kept in a locked ward and would have had to pass through a large number of locked doors to get out. The windows in the dayroom were beyond the line that demarked where we could go so I could not see very much out of them, but on a couple of occasions I was able to sneak a look. On at least one of those occasions I could see patients being taken for a walk outside - but I was never afforded that privilege. We were high up - the 3rd floor I'd guess and the windows were barred, so there was not much chance of getting out that way.
The only times I ever left my ward, where I ate, slept, performed my ablutions, and recreated, was to visit my therapist, the therapy room, or the brace shop - and on all such occasions I was securely fastened into a wheelchair that had a top similar to a pram that could be pulled up, and in my case, pulled down, so that I could see nothing of my surroundings as I was moved between locations.
But I could usually still hear what was going on and it was clear that the nurses from my ward were not able to open many of the doors themselves - they were dependent upon getting assistance from others who would only do so if they recognized 'my' nurse. In fact when there was a new nurse on my ward she would have to leave the ward with one of the old-time nurses in order to be introduced to and later recognized by these 'gatekeeper' nurses.
So stealing keys would not have taken me very far. Besides, escape attempts were punished. One girl was already in a full bodycast for attempting to leave the ward when I arrived and she spent another 2 or 3 months in it before she was released. After that she wore heavy leg callipers (click to view pic on Eric Kroll's site) and only moved around with great difficulty. I don't know if the callipers were necessary because she had lost muscle strength or whether they were just an additional punishment or precaution against any future escape attempt. If it was punishment, she wouldn't have been the only girl punished in that way - there were several girls wearing leg braces and other orthopaedic devices that were made for them in the brace shop as punishment for some infraction or other.
I suppose I could have tried asking if I could go out for a walk, but I knew the answer would be no. And the nurses on the ward did not encourage questions (my oft gagged state bore silent witness to that) and we soon learnt that asking questions would lead to punishment. Equally my therapist did not welcome questions, and even in my sessions I was usually gagged. She would say that she had no interest in my opinions, or my lies, only in the measurable results of my treatment. She said that nodding yes or no when she asked a question was quite sufficient. Of course as you might imagine, not being able to ask questions, or even try to clarify what she meant by a statement or question, and not be able to give a more complex answer than yes or no was incredibly frustrating, and I would often leave those sessions screaming to myself from frustration and the feeling that I had been manipulated into nodding yes or no to something I didn't really agree to. For instance I might have to answer yes or no to a general question and then she would assume that I had said yes or no to a much more specific question - one that I would have answered differently had the more specific question been asked.

Kneeling at the Wall Bars

The only book we deviants were allowed to read was the bible and I had little interest in it or religion. The closest I came to 'education' was writing assignments where I had to copy out tracts from the bible - often the same tract every day for a month. I wasn't very keen on the extended prayers we had to say before bed - which was just one reason I sometimes found myself strapped to the climbing bars the next day. I have no idea why the dayroom would have climbing bars in it - maybe in the original hospital design (I'm sure it was designed as a mental hospital) it was a gymnasium - or perhaps the architect thought climbing bars in the dayroom would be a good idea - but whatever the reason they were there - but no longer used for their original purpose. Now they were a useful place to 'plant' troublesome patients. I often found myself being 'planted' there for the day. I would have to kneel facing them while I was securely strapped to them - with nothing to look at besides the wall behind them, and then my lower legs would be folded up behind me and strapped there so that I was left kneeling on my knees all day.
For the girls on regular diets, being restrained somewhere for the day meant that you would miss a meal or two - meals that were sorely missed judging by their reactions. But for anybody on a 'special' diet, their meals would be saved for them and they would have to eat any missed meals the next day. After a two-day fast, or longer, the 'extra' food might take a couple of days to consume.

"The possibility of the nurses manipulating the results of the tests is a particularly interest aspect; along with denial being virtually taken as symptom and backed up by results guaranteed to prove the point and assuming that the length of stay is dependent on a cure (of a condition not present in the first place) it must have been quite difficult to get out once admitted in one can't wonder whether one or two inmates (for want of a better term) may simply been admitted as a matter of convenience (or even amusement perhaps) to some one or other."

"Well, for me it proved impossible until the program was ended - and even then it was difficult. As for people being admitted as a matter of convenience, you might almost consider me one. Of course there is almost always an excuse - or at least a veneer of an excuse - but when you scratch it you often find there is nothing really there. There is no doubt that people were committed for the most trivial reasons - you only have to read the newspapers from the years when the hospitals were being closed to find long lists of people that had been committed for 'being at risk' (aka too pretty) or difficult (didn't get on with new stepmother). The lists went on and on. And it's probably only because the hospitals have closed down that people are no longer being committed for trivial reasons and as a matter of convenience. Of course there are other avenues available nowadays. There are plenty of 'schools' and 'programs' available for 'troubled' teens in far-flung corners of the world, where the authorities cannot intervene. And some of them sound little better than my program. Well, ok, they do sound a bit better than that. "

Dietary Discipline, Harassment Therapy & Sexual Reorientation – A Reader’s Account Revisited (Part 3 – Walking Down the Aisle…Again & Again & Again

Again, coming under the general banner of 'Truth Stranger than Fiction' here is the third part - Walking Down the Aisle (can you see where this is going yet?) A n interview, of sorts conducted by yours truly by email. Click here to read part 2 - -Click here to read part 1 (if you haven’t already) Something to keep you going while I get on with my proof reading and amending of INSTITUTIONALISED volume 2 (I had to go back to research some stuff about fabrics today, but the result was some fascinating revisions made to a certain young lady's uniform that I'm afraid can only have made it more irksome for her - we try to be kind, but its all good discipline and it is for her own good after all).

Before we get started: I have just this minute added another Yahoo Group to the side bar Yahoo Group list: Eric Stanton Cartoons (the art of Stanton) (Click on group name – in blue – or see sidebar on right)

Also, while your still there: If you enjoy (as I do, quite unashamedly) reading accounts of strict discipline - hands on heads with legs spread - Spartan regimes, late teen girls put back into juvenile uniforms and privileged young ladies brought down to the level of servants and made to wait on table then I can’t recommend enough a story I have just come across on The Spanked Girls Weblog::::: Gymslips & Dormitories (click title to read story or site name to go there – although, as always, it has been added to the sidebar blog list). Also take a look at Spanking Bethie Blog (click) why don't you?...and the yahoo group - Bound Brides (brides in bondage - needless to say...its where I got the bride pic).

Dietary Discipline, Harassment Therapy & Sexual Reorientation – A Reader’s Account Revisited (Part 3 – Walking Down the Aisle…Again and Again and Again)
“Something else [I came across while researching the basis of my treatment] that I found very interesting was something called 'shame aversion therapy'. Apparently it is/was very closely related to chemical and electrical aversion therapy. I had always assumed that my aversion therapy only related to those physical aversives that took place in the treatment room where I was shown the slides, and that the constant ridicule, humiliation and harassment heaped upon me (and the others) while on the ward, was simple meanness and ignorance combined with a desire to control us and keep a 'tight ship'. But now I wonder if these techniques may have been used in concert with the physical therapies such as chemical and electrical. Certainly something for me to ponder and research further.

.....

The nurses would belittle us and tell the other members of the ward how perverted we were and that God hates us and that we would be going to hell. They would make us stand on a table and recite nursery rhymes. Or makes us recite a prayer aloud for hours on end - often all day, without any break for lunch. Other times we would have to make public confessions about why we were there - our lesbianism and what that meant - and that our parents had disowned us. I had to make stuff up and it was still horrible humiliating - even though it was mostly lies. These 'confessions' usually had to be made at Sister's weekly 'gatherings' where she held up the undergarments of any girls who had failed to meet the required standards of hygiene - and it was on those occasions when even the drooling girls would receive their shares of strokes if they were deemed slovenly - or otherwise failed to meet the standards expected of them.

The nurses encouraged the other patients to harass us - and there was nothing we could do, restrained as we were. If we did try to retaliate, like try to head-butt somebody, it never worked out well for us. Between the nurses and the other patients we were constantly being teased - or being sabotaged in petty ways - like having our pinafores and tabards dirtied.

Shame Clothing

And there were times that we were dressed up in some costume designed to humiliate us. Not that it was always the costume that was inherently humiliating - it was the circumstances. Had it been a dress-up party, or even a regular party, it might have been ok - but being dressed up unwillingly for the sole purpose of humiliating us and amusing the nurses and other patients made me want to crawl away and die. Often it was just a party dress - albeit one better suited to a seven-year old - but I remember that one time I was dressed as a bride - not in some quick dress-up kind of way - but in a properly fitted wedding dress and veil. I was made to do circuits around the dayroom all day as the nurses told everybody who would listen that this was as close as I would come to being a bride.

.....

On two sides of the dayroom there were areas considered no-man's-land. That was where the windows and climbing bars were situated. No-man's-land was marked with a white line and none of the patients was allowed to cross it - making the windows and climbing bars, and some of the doors off-limits. Indeed we soon learned to give no-man's-land a wide a birth, for even approaching the line would generate unwanted attention from the nurses. But within patient area there was line running around close to the perimeter - and it was this line that we had to follow when we were doing 'circuits'. If I remember correctly I had to do about 200 circuits on the days when I was wearing the wedding dress. It wasn't nearly as many as I might have been made to perform on another day, but I remember having to proceed as if I was proceeding up the aisle. One foot forward - bring up the other foot level with it. Pause. Repeat. So my progress was slow and infinitely humiliating. Our progress, when performing circuits, was recorded by one of the drooling girls who was surprisingly efficient - she had paper with a kind of grid on and she would colour in one of the squares whenever we passed. However there were times when she would become distracted and I'm quite sure there were many times when she would fail to record a circuit.

.....

Besides those times when we had to parade around the dayroom in our 'costumes' we were assigned circuits for - well, I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe to keep us fit? Maybe as a result of some minor infraction. Maybe to keep us occupied if it looked like we might be heading for trouble. Whatever the reason we each had our own chart recording our progress in performing circuits. Generally the rule was that we had to perform five more circuits than our previous best - so if you were assigned circuits frequently it soon became quite laborious - especially if you weren't smart enough to start out slowly and make sure that you never completed more than the five extra circuits. If you lost count and did extra circuits 'just to be safe' that became your new 'best'. And there were consequences for failing to beat your best by those five circuits. You were not allowed to run, and if the nurses thought that you were walking too fast for 'safety' then you could find yourself hobbled.

.....

Looking back, I can't help but wonder whether the same concept might have been applied to our aversive treatments. Is it possible that the shocks were increased each time, and so long as we didn't pass out then the new high voltage or duration became our 'best' and had to be surpassed in our next session? It certainly felt like it. I wonder if we could become 'accustomed' to the shocks, so that if we passed out five times in a row from a particular level of shock, whether by the sixth we would be able to endure it without passing out? In the same way as our fitness might increase as we performed circuits in the dayroom.

.....

I also need to research something called harassment therapy. I remember coming across an article about a girl being kept in sheets and forced to scrub the bathroom floor with a toothbrush. The objective was to make her 'crack' - or something, but I've never understood what this was meant to achieve. But now I think about it, it sounds awfully similar to a lot of my experiences. I
Oddly, some years later I saw The Clockwork Orange and didn't associate the aversion therapy with my own. Talk about repressing unpleasant memories. But now it occurs to me that in The Clockwork Orange they took care to make sure that Alex could not avert his gaze from the images on the screen - they used those funny little gadgets to hold his eyes open. Although they took care to make sure that my head was locked into position consistent with looking at the slideshow they didn't use any similar devices to keep my eyes open or make sure I wasn't averting my gaze. Of course I probably wasn't particularly resistant to looking at the slideshow - it's not as if I was trying to protect my supposed deviancy. I do remember being told to 'look at the screen' from time to time - and not looking may have been part of my therapist's complaint that I was uncooperative, but I don't really know.”

.....

“As regards being 'encouraged' to eat the disliked foods; you mention the use of 'aversives'. What did they consist of , how were they applied and how did they operate - what was the effect each time they were applied?”

.....

The treatment to 'encourage' better eating habits used the same aversives that were later used to treat my supposed lesbianism: electric shocks, injection of drugs to induce nausea etc. This could continue for hours at a time - and believe me, after just one such session I was more than willing to eat anything they put in front of me. But they continued such treatment long after I thought I must be eating to their satisfaction - perhaps to ensure that I would not 'backslide'.
Although they initially used the same aversives that would later be used in my therapy for lesbianism, they did not bother using any kind of imagery or measurement - so to that extent it was entirely different. They would just tell me that they would continue the sessions until I could 'eat like a normal person'. In that respect it was entirely punitive and did not incorporate any of the 'scientific' ideas used in aversion therapy - which I assume was meant to be based on the same idea as Pavlov's dogs.”

.....

“Incidentally, was any form of corporal punishment used to maintain order and enforce compliance?”

.....

“Yes, but this was no surprise to me. After all we were caned at school - both on our rears and on our hands. You have to remember that this was in the early sixties and I was at a private school. However, I must admit that the corporal punishment in hospital was both more severe and was applied for less serious offenses. All the nurses had the authority to punish us, but the most serious punishments were usually administered by the ward sister, or at least under her watchful eye. Something else that effected my punishments was that I often had a bad nappy rash and my punishment would often be terminated part way through (often one stroke short of completion) to avoid injury, only to have the punishment re-started from the beginning on another part of my anatomy more able to withstand the strokes.”

Inmate Uniforms?

“From what you say about the place and the canvas smocks worn for meals etc I doubt it was permitted to retain own clothes - or were night-dresses taken from home allowed, for instance? If not, what sort of thing was issued by the hospital and was any attempt made to enforce a uniform appearance? I'm just wondering whether nightdresses were worn at all times, for example, or whether other clothing was available for other times of the day, in which case (and assuming all hospital issue) was there a disciplinary aspect to it - for example was it necessary to look a certain way, to appear smart, perhaps, even though the circumstances seem to make such concerns obsolete? (After all it's a nice way of asserting control).”

“Nobody wore any clothes from home. The hospital seemed o have a plentiful supply of clothing that was made on the premises and they strove for a certain degree of uniformity - but you have to bear in mind that for most of the time we 'sexual deviants' were part of a larger teenage ward that had all types of patients - whether mentally retarded, catatonic, psychotic etc. and it would have been difficult to have us all look uniform.

They didn't trust the sexual deviants - they expected us to molest anybody we could get out hands on - whether it was each other, the 'normal' patients, or even ourselves. So we weren't allowed to socialize in the dayroom or move about without some form of restraint - usually what they called jackets, but weren't much like some of straitjackets I have seen elsewhere. There were a lot of variations because they were made for each person in the hospital's brace shop and the nurses could ask for whatever design variations they thought would be helpful. But mostly the arms were laced to our sides unlike the Houdini style jackets that have the arms in front. Many of the other patients were allowed to move about and use their arms so long as they didn't cause any problems. So you would have a number of patients with full use of their arms and then others, apparently armless, moving around the dayroom, looking quite un-uniform. But they did make some attempt to have us properly and modestly attired - perhaps with an added emphasis on modesty given the presence of potential molesters in their midst. Those unrestrained generally wore a mid-calf mid-grey cotton dress, belted at the waist and with slightly puffed sleeves at the shoulder, a white detachable peter-pan collar, white detachable cuffs, and a plain white pinafore. It was neat enough, being tailored to fit each patient, but looked a little incongruous on some of the obviously retarded patients. I take that back - it looked a little incongruous on everybody - but like anything else you get used to it and before long it begins to look normal.

Those of us who were wearing jackets wore 'slips' over them - sleeveless tubes made from the same mid-grey cotton as the dresses. They had the same peter-pan collars and the pinafores were replaced with tabards. There were no belts since we essentially had no waists to speak of.
And then there were a lot of variations. For instance I saw some girls wearing the 'arms crossed in front' style of jacket who were wearing their normal dresses over them - the jacket arms inside the arms of the dress. The jackets were a lot tighter than I have seen elsewhere - presumably because they were custom fitted in the brace shop - either from scratch or modified from an old, often greasy, one. This tightness, especially in the sleeves when they were the 'arms-in-front' kind allowed them to be worn under our dresses instead of over them. So, as you can see, uniformity, if it was a goal, was only partially achieved.

I think I mentioned that I managed to bite one of the nurses when I was being admitted and that turned out to be a big mistake, because throughout my stay the nurse continued to make sure that I 'paid-for-it'. And I 'paid-for-it' in any number of ways. One of them was having to wear a hessian slip under all my clothes and restraints. It was as itchy as any hairshirt must have been and they were always looking for. proof that I must be finding ways to masturbate - and that was in spite of the considerable measures that they always took to ensure that we didn't masturbate. That meant a trip to the brace shop for a very elaborate (and uncomfortable) orthopaedic brace to better ensure my future good behaviour.

I could never really understand why we wore pinafores and tabards. I suppose it was a hold-over from a prior era when such things were more fashionable - maybe when the building first opened - but by the early sixties they were something of an anachronism for anybody but a little girl - an age we teenagers were trying to dissociate ourselves from. They must have been a nightmare for the laundry and we were always getting in trouble for smudging them. But they also served the purpose of identifying us. Every girl on the ward had her number printed in large numerals on both the front and the rear of her pinafore or tabard and the deviants also had 'DEVIANT' printed in large capital letters beneath the numbers, letting everybody know to give them a wide berth - just in case they missed our stubbly heads.”

"As regards their imposition of the punishment diet; you mention a period of three months or more: this is particularly interesting as it implies a long period of residence, if a punishment should go on for three months. How long was the average stay? Was it ordained at the outset how long it should be or could it be extended at the whim of the therapists (or even for punishment purposes)?”

“I'm not sure how long the average stay might have been. I was there for three years - when the program was phased out - and I don't think that I was unusual. I was lucky to be released rather than remaining a patient in one form or another. The problem was that the results of the program and my own treatment were considered inconclusive and the hospital was reluctant to discharge me, still a possible danger to society, only a teenager and with nowhere particular to go.

Dietary Control and Enforced Weight Gain?

“Still on the subject of diets: was there any attempt to weight control? Perhaps weight loss or even enforced weight gain (something that occurs in volume 2 of my book)?”

“I should apologize for not having read your book yet and for not having read very much of your blog. It is very high on my list of things I must do, but things have been very hectic ever since I found your blog - and writing this letter hasn't helped! As for weight control, I'm not quite sure. I do remember overhearing a conversation between two nurses that were discussing what to do about a particular patient. She was extraordinarily beautiful and I think she had been admitted because it was feared she would become promiscuous because she had a number of older boys pestering her. Anyway, the nurses were talking about what might be done and the question of fattening her up or making her too skinny to still be attractive was discussed - but I'm not quite sure what the outcome was. Somehow I think she may have been moved off our ward.

“I'm not sure if this counts, but I do remember that we were often made to wear the braces, and other devices that were made for us in the brace shop, long after they were comfortable. At our age many of us periodically grew quite rapidly. I don't think it was a cost saving measure because most of the people that worked in the brace shop, and certainly almost everybody who worked in attached sewing shop, were patients, and I assume they had to work for nothing. Besides, they showed absolutely no reluctance to take us down anytime they wanted to get us a more 'difficult' brace or jacket or make a modification to our existing brace. So I'm inclined to think that our wearing of braces that we had outgrown was just one more little way in which they needled us. Incidentally I was the recipient of an elaborate brace within a few days of admittance - ostensibly to cure my stooping. Nobody had mentioned it before and I suspect that the nurse I bit was behind it. Of course after a week or so it didn't seem so bad - but it made moving and bending much more difficult - and in that respect I was always conscious of it.”...to be continued...

Labels and Tags and Botox Bondage (I'm Back Folks: Happy New Year)

Botox as a Bondage and Humiliation Tool?

If you have seen my blog recently you’ll know about the computer problems I have had recently. I’ve also had something of a crisis of enthusiasm and confidence as regarding the work on volume 2 of my book and the continuation of my blog and so whereas I should have been fixing my computer over Christmas I have in fact done absolutely nothing about it (other than drunk too much in the hope of somehow magically gaining inspiration). However I did get around to reading my email on my lapto -: and boy, I’m glad that I did!

There were quite a few messages of encouragement - and then there was a very interesting little thing from a contributor that featured some interesting ideas as regards the imaginative use of Botox - yes Botox, you heard right - as a bondage and humiliation tool. It is an insight of shear genius and together with a stimulating exchange of ideas, regarding institutionalised humiliation, has once again reignited my enthusiasm. Anyway, refreshed by the Xmas layoff and this wonderfully stimulating flood of ideas I have taken my life in my hands and, ignoring its bleating and repeated bleeps of protest, I have once more somehow forced my main machine into action.

I couldn't resist sharing this with you in its entirety; I don’t think I have ever felt so invigorated let alone inspired:

"... As for ideas for volume III, have you considered the many possibilities of botox in controlling the subjects? I can see many applications. The subject need not know that they have been injected, this could be done while they are in a drug induced deep sleep. Botox could be injected on one side of the lower lip to create a mild or more pronounced speech impediment. It could also be injected in the thong for a more dramatic effect before appearing in front of a judge to decide on one’s sanity… It could also be injected in the muscles that control the fingers, the thumb in particular. Of course there are few things worse for self confidence than loosing bladder control, various amounts of botox in the bladder sphincter could produce night incontinence, or night incontinence coupled with dribble incontinence during the day or all out full incontinence. The possibilities are endless; inject muscles in the back to force the wearing of orthopedic corsets or collars or both. Botox lasts about six months so the procedures would have to be repeated..."

Wow! Yes, Yes, Yes!

As you may have noticed; throughout INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1 both of our favorite subjects have been developing a rather debilitating stammer. As you probably realize; this and their other supposed 'problems' are as much a result of subtle psychological pressure, both before their arrival in the clinic and ongoing since (of which more in volume 2). But wouldn't Botox be a great way of initiating an impediment or perhaps exacerbating one where a girl does not respond quite so well to the power of suggestion.

I generally dislike over-reliance on drugs and technology in story lines but I do like this usage as it can be quite subtle and used to reinforce or initiate the psychological means that I prefer to see used. I particularly liked the idea of applying it to the muscle at the base of the thumbs - perhaps very tiny doses, barely noticeable at first and just inducing a gradually worsening weakness there. At the same time she would be given post-hypnotic suggestions under the guise of therapy that she is 'all thumbs these days' that she is finding the buttons on her dress 'fiddly'.

As per this contributor's induced incontinence ideas; well at the moment Botox injections are used to reduce muscle contractions that cause the sudden, undeniable need to urinate, but I dare say that placed else where the opposite effect could be induced and again paired with post-hypnotic suggestion and/or psychological conditioning to make the effect more permanent. The idea of the use of Botox to enforce the wearing of orthopedic corsets or collars is a master stroke and would fit well with one of the scenarios developing in volume 2. Most of the latter volume is finished and thus it is probably too late for its inclusion there - but I may try to write something along those lines into volume 3 (which is also under construction as we speak).

Plausibility in Setting Choice and The Appropriation of Status Through Label Imposition

The same contributor has also sent me a link to an interesting article based on the real story of a young girl trapped in the insane asylum of 1950’s Quebec (Click here). Basically, a church-run orphanage, for economic reasons, changed its status, almost overnight it seems, to that of an asylum for the mentally infirm and in so doing the original residents found their status virtually instantly changed to suit, quite legally and officially it would seem, despite being normal in every way. Other than the age of the principle characters at the time - a disappointment I also ran into when reading about the research that was done with the deliberate induction of stammering in the 1930s (mentioned in an earlier blog entry) - there is much of potential interest here.

In common with the aforementioned stammering study, wherein one participant was 15, there is mention of the involvement of teenagers and thus of young adults, allowing some latitude to the imagination. I am very keen to avoid any connection with paedophilia and also the characters I invoke, both in my private fantasies and more recently in my writing, are of necessity young adults. Sexual maturity is a must if the scenario is to be of any interest to me at all; devoid of any sexual element all one is left with is a disturbingly cold depiction of various forms of torture, both mental and physical. This could be said of all forms of S/M fantasy / writing wherein participation is not necessarily consensual - but in your mind's eye place in either of these situations a deliciously curvaceous and well developed young lady, perhaps a spoiled pouting and pampered princess of a girl, once the apple of her late father's eye and wanting for nothing but now left with the prospect of facing-off against an avaricious jealous young stepmother for every penny...a very clever, very inventive young stepmother.

What really most caught my attention in the article was, firstly, how easily the status of an institution could be changed overnight, from what could easily have been a shelter for young runaways (or - in an earlier era perhaps - a church-run home for young women likely to fall into moral danger) to a mental institution - and solely for financial reasons it seems. Secondly, the way in which, automatically, the way in which the status of an inmate could change along with the institution by default, despite her being perfectly normal in every way, to that of a mental defective or retard and her new status be recorded quite legally - with all the implications that encompasses. And, thirdly, the way an inmate's treatment might change commensurate with that new status, despite her normal disposition and good behavior, as the staff come to view her in a different light (there are possible parallels with the well known Stanford experiment here as regards the effect on the staff's behavior towards their charges). Finally: there is the implied long term psychological effects of the barred windows, sedation, straitjackets, humiliation and punishment; the possibility that an inmate could be changed so as to come to match the status imposed on her - so much easier to control a nice, quite, tamed mental patient.

The latter point echoes the aforementioned stammering study wherein, in addition to the provision of so-called negative therapy, the staff overseeing the subjects unwittingly reinforced the treatment by changing the way they were treating their charges in their day-to-day life once their status had been reassigned and they had been given the label; stutterer. Partly this was the way the staff had been instructed to behave, but partly it was also a subconscious response to the attached label.

I remember reading years ago about the shooting of the film of The Pride of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). Many of the cast and extras played school girls and had to stay in costume (a gymslip, blouse and tie ensemble) wandering around all day despite only being required on set from time to time. Shooting went on for many weeks and the cast began to notice more and more as time went on how studio staff, canteen staff for example, would treat them as children, despite their being in their late teens or even early twenties in some cases. What is more; they found that rather than complain about such off-handish and sometimes patronizing treatment, as they might ordinarily have done, they found themselves tending to adopt a rather sheepish stance of acceptance, thus reinforcing the staff members viewpoint, and treatment of them, still further, perpetuating the situation.

From Behind Stained Glass: Meredith's Tale - Part 3

Another short (and hopefuly sweet) extract from INSTITUTIONALISED volume 2

I'm probably going to continue on now and publish this chapter in its entirety as it only represents a small part of the work as a whole and, in any case, is an aside to the main story arc - although its ending does fit in nicely with one of the events depicted in volume 1. The only problem is that part of the middle section is still to be completed (I've had to skip past that bit here) and the ending is still in the process of writing - and the ending is crucial to the series as a whole in that, as I have said, it links neatly from part of INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1 and explores one more deeply certain aspects of the clinic's funding.

As before, I have to point out this is very much a rough first draft and there may well be typo's and grammatical errors etc (if so, feel free to point them out). I'm not a professional writer and I cock-up royally when I do - I'm dyslexic so how the hell am I supposed to know?

The pic came from a now defunct Yahoo group; I'm unsure as to its origin but it seems to have been around quite some while on one group or another. It's a nice bit of hospital-bed bondage and enforced enema procedure; not really as I envisage it carried out in the INSTITUTIONALISED series, but food for thought nonetheless. As before, you can view previous parts by clicking on the title below - a click on the icon to the right should take you to The Institute site to view some other extracts or to view more of volume 1 if you have not read it already.

On a slightly different tack, I am thinking of uploading my collection of women's work-wear and uniform catalogue scans and make them viewable via this blog (I have previously used one such as a 'governess' illustration in an earlier post). They range from nurses' uniforms, aprons and nylon overalls to maids dresses, waitress uniforms and shop-assistant wear and date from the early 1960s (some a fair bit earlier) through to the late 1980s. The, rather tenuous, link to this blog's stated purpose is that much of the inspiration behind the uniforms the girls find themselves placed in, particularly as depicted in volume 1, was derived from those catalogue pics. Please let me know if any of this seems particularly interesting - or, indeed, otherwise.

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Aftershock - Aftercare

(Click on title to read previous part - i.e. part 2)

“Wha...?”

“…I said; we'll have to see about getting you up and about today, I'm afraid. We can't have you lying on your back all the time, now can we?”
The voice was cheery, brisk and breezy. The woman, maturely-plump, her figure somewhat over-enthusiastically filling her white uniform, was bending over the girls head almost as if her intention was to kiss her forehead.
Meredith, startled, was dragged from her reverie. Memories, dreams, nightmares, call them what you will; whatever they were, she had been lost in their thrall to the extent that she had not had even the slightest inkling of the nurse’s arrival, not even when the curtains around her bed had been drawn back. Now, for the first time, she could see beyond her immediate confines; this was her first real glimpse of the rest of the ward.

A second woman, attired identically to the first but younger and of more slender build, stood at the foot of the bed; half turned away, she was craning over a clipboard, bent necked, scribbling away furiously like some court stenographer as if recording every occurrence, every nuance and idiom of speech. Beyond her, directly ahead, a bed, the exact twin of her own, lay empty, the white plastic of the mattress catching the light where the coverings had been rolled back, presumably in preparation for the next occupant. Immediately to its left, white curtains were drawn around what she could only assume to be an occupied bed.

Twisting her head to the left as far as her pillow would allow she could see there was another unoccupied bed separated from her own by little more than a couple of metres and then, around three meters beyond that came ward’s end wall. The latter was dominated at its centre by a large window, occupying fully one third of the width of the wall, that looked as if to be steamed up or misted over in some way and that lay recessed back behind a row of vertical bars that seemed themselves to be inset into the wall.

To her right, some three meters distant, a barrage of thick glistening-white bars, running floor-to-ceiling, bisected the entire room and guarded the double swing doors that, lying two meters beyond, constituted the ward's only access. Not that this latter pair did not represent a formidable enough barrier in their own right; their porthole windows, each inscrutably gazing out from behind its own crisscrossed basketwork of curving cylindrical bars, were as reluctant as any of the ward’s windows to give way to any more than a diffuse luminescent glow at most.

Meredith blinked, then blinked again as if in double-take, as if her first impression’s failing would yet be exposed; her mouth gaped and her eyes widened -the truth remained the same. Her consternation must have been writ large across that pretty elfin face; at that very moment the second nurse, the one with a clipboard, chanced to look up:

“They had to move you here when you wouldn't calm down. They had no choice - you were far, far too disturbed to be kept on the intensive care ward any longer”.

“But what is... I, I mean, where am...”

“Shhh, hush child, there's nothing to worry about. ” Sensing the young woman's increasing confusion and impending panic the plump woman, the more experienced of the two nurses, had interjected; it was best in a case like this to be candid, to explain quickly. She went on: “This is a secure psychiatric unit, a locked ward as it is sometimes called - nothing to worry about, really. You'll be just fine here until you feel better. As soon as you show signs of recovery, that is that you can satisfy us that you recognise those fears and nightmares of yours as just that, your imagination, we'll do everything we can to get you out of here and back on to a normal ward as quickly as possible. For now, though, I'm afraid this is home for the foreseeable future.”

There was much more here then she could ever have seen, even the rare moments, and they had been precious few, that the curtains had been parted to any degree. For one thing there had never been more than a few degrees of viewing angle opened up between the flaps of that heavily-hanging and sound deadening fabric, for another, such rifts even when opened had been exceedingly fleeting; a nurse might come or go, perhaps a trolley pushed through, but that would be it.

And then there was that cushion, and the strap that went with it. The former was of white foam rubber, the softest imaginable, being U-shaped it wrapped around and cradled her head with a surprising, and initially disconcerting, firmness, covering her ears at all but rendering her completely devoid of hearing.

The associated strap consisted of a broad band of PVC, padded out with a softly quilted lining, running across her forehead, covering it in its entirety other than that at its very centre whereat a circular cut-out of perhaps three centimetres in diameter lay. The latter’s functionality, if any, remained a mystery to her at this point; its existence being known to her only from the rare occasions she had been released from that bands grip so that she might be moved. That it was aligned so perfectly with the fine-bore nozzle that emerged at the very centre of the glittering child’s mobile that hung over the head of her bed, and every other in the ward, was completely lost on her; whether it would remain so would depend solely on the whim of others - any endowed with sufficient pity and wisdom might pray for the continuation of that innocence.

The rational behind that particular immobilisation had been explained to her so many times, all too often in fact; it was a precaution against the possibility that her neck had been injured, though they continually assured her that she was fine. Additionally, on those occasions, as now, that she was released from its unrelenting clamping grip her neck seemed fine, if stiff from the prolonged inactivity. It must be said, though, that even when released her neck’s freedom of movement was somewhat limited by the latex lined neck-brace they kept her in, so she could never be certain.

Even now, her head released from that cushion’s grasp, much lay beyond her field of vision. The wall-mounted colonic irrigation apparatus to the right of the bed head of course remained out of sight, its associated plastic pipe work left coiled on the shelf below; she had experienced its work many, many times yet never once had laid eyes on it. The patient sling and hoist, too, remained for the most part out of sight, having been pushed up against the wall immediately to the girl’s right; this, of course, would not ordinarily have been present, having been drafted in for the purpose of moving her.

The wheelchair she had a fair if oblique view of, the angle sparing her the details of its restraints for now. To any outside of this very singular establishment, not privy to its detailed machinations and agenda, such precautions, even in the most disturbed and demented of cases, might have appeared at the very least somewhat excessive, if not downright oppressive. This would have seemed particularly so considering the degree of hindrance already inflicted by the plaster casts encasing both the girl’s upper and lower arms and those encasing her above and below her knees. The hinged callipers fitted on the latter, presently locked out in the straight position, did at least allow for some degree of freedom in moving her around being positionable and lockable in a multitude of orientations – not all of which were ‘usual’ or necessarily comfortable for the patient.

The gynaecological examination stirrups, presently residing at the bed’s far end, she knew only too well of course. These could be moved up along practically the entire length the bed, if necessary, by means of a simple adjustment of wheel, adorned with a convenient handle, mounted at the foot of the bed – a worm-drive, running along a slot mounted in the bed frame and duplicated at both sides, carried the supports back and forth as required.

Those hideous callipers, or leg braces as the staff were apt to term them, provided more then enough freedom of adjustment to allow for even the most open and exposed display of her person and the most intimate of examinations. On many such occasions her knees would be drawn back practically parallel with her ears, stretching the sinews of her crotch and forcing those once private coral lips to gape. This would particularly be the case on those occasions when shaving her ‘down there’ was required; it gave unimpeded access of the razor to that region and around her anus too. Regular depilation was a must, it was hospital regulations. It was all about hygiene at the end of the day and she was not a particularly ‘clean’ girl ‘down there’, not particularly ‘fragrant’; she was always overhearing them saying that about her, commenting on her ‘smell’. Her cheeks burned with shame at the thought of it; it amplified the trauma of those examinations out of all proportion.

At other times, always at a time her sedation had been increased beforehand, a small plastic box would be placed on the mattress in a suitable position, this supporting a small wheel, not unlike cotton spool, festooned all around with the softest of hand-selected eiderdown and with a row of slightly longer feathers running around its centre. Two arms emerging from either side of the box carried this device on a little axle slung between them, their positioning being virtually infinitely adjustable. Spinning madly and maddeningly, thousands of gentle feather strokes would kiss then later, once soaked and lathered with her arousal, slaver, lick, and suck at her, softly caressing all around and across her clitoris.

A nurse, sitting by her bedside, would read from a script in lullaby tones, a teeny condenser-microphone pinned to her uniform relaying her voice to the speakers built into that U-shaped cushion pinning her patient’s head. Sometimes these words ran true and ever more so in more recent times. At other times, most others in the early days, her mind would rebel; the ideas coming being just too alien to her. Swamped with strangely perverted images and drowning in her dreams, dreams she couldn’t possibly comprehend, she would strike out the safety of the shore – she would struggle against the sleep-tide, fight to wake herself. She never could of course; the sedative they used was just too heavy. Nor could she resist upon waking, for what could there be to fight if there was nothing to recollect?

And the sedative’s amnesiatic effect, albeit temporary, saw to it that there really was nothing to remember; there were just those missing hours and even those went unnoticed in the 24-hour-lit temporal distortion of that place euphemistically known as ‘the ward’. It was addictive too; it was not medically recognised as suitable for long-term use, that sedative. They undoubtedly knew that and yet they kept her on it continuously, albeit at a much lower dosage ordinarily; it kept her relaxed and her mind soothingly foggy – she was beginning to like that feeling, beginning to wonder how she could ever live without it. She would have grabbed at those little blue and gold capsules when they were brought to her, had she been able, she would have snatched at them, now; it was a deeply humbling addiction - and one encouraged by those softly whispered suggestions she knew nothing of.

The sling having been worked under her, a button was pushed and the hoist sprang into life, albeit remarkably gently. There was an almost supernatural element to that smoothness, of levitation rather than lifting; pulleys of nylon and PTFE, a rope of Dacron standing in where a chain might ordinarily have been expected, these had brought new standards to that, and a quietness of operation that belied the work done. Little more than an electric hum emanated from the crane-like structure; and even that was apt to vanish below the swish of the nurses' dresses – that soft polyester rasp she had become so accustomed to, was comforted by somehow.

The wing-nuts on the hinged mechanism at her knees, that sited between the upper and lower sections of her leg braces, had been loosened off before initiating the lift, allowing the adoption of a seated configuration as it progressed. On being satisfactory seated that adjustment would be reversed, locking the girl's callipers in the new conformation, all safe and sound.

The wheelchair's seat gave markedly under her weight despite her slightness, the white leatherette proving to have an unexpectedly spongy, resilient character. The clinical chill of the plastic came to her, even through the rubber of those awful, sweaty hospital issue bloomers they kept her in; at least it chilled those fleshy regions lying to either side of the thick incontinence towel that resided therein. This latter was a particular bane of her present existence. Affixed internally by straps designed for that purpose, positioned two fore and two aft of the gusset region, the most distal of each pair being just short of the waistband while the other sat just clear of the crotch area itself, the thing was constantly in the most intimate contact with her most sensitive flesh; it both irritated and teased in equal measure.

Placed in the chair, her useless hands now dangled over the ends of the armrests, plaster-enwrapped fingers splayed fan-like; true the resin-based nature of the casts made them softer and more resilient than had they been fabricated from the more traditional plaster, but not as flexible as might ameliorate, in any real sense, the totality of that immobilisation.

Analogous to the mechanism surrounding her knees and allowing angular adjustment to her leg braces, a plastic hinge arrangement linked the casts fitted around her upper and lower arms – this providing stability to her elbows. The similarity ran to the wing-nut and ratchet adjustment of each limb's conformation and by this means the required right-angle bend at the elbow had been introduced, making allowance for a seated posture; again a simple re-tightening of the nut by finger and thumb alone was sufficient to lock each limb in the required attitude.

Having secured an entire plethora of straps and bands around the limbs and torso of their patient, both of Velcro and those secured by buckles and all seemingly unnecessary considering the circumstances, she was deemed 'ready for transfer'.

This 'transfer', when it finally came about, turned out to be somewhat disappointing; it was not quite the lengthy excursion that all that preparation, precautions and fuss might have suggested. Indeed, this sojourn consisted of little more than the length of the ward, a decidedly limited dimension, the negotiation of a substantial, securely locked door and a fairly narrow passageway stretching all of ten metres or so, the latter requiring traversing in single file, one nurse leading the way, the other pushing the wheelchair and bringing up the rear. If she harboured hopes of some glimpse beyond the confines of the hospital, then the frosted glass of two windows that they passed in the ward, then that windowless passage beyond, dashed them in their entirety.

Their destination was, if anything, even more of a let-down; four bare white walls stared back at her as she was pushed across the threshold, unadorned in any way and notably uninterrupted by any window. They had set out in the opposite direction to the ward's security-grille-guarded exit and she had guessed from the outset that they were not actually going to be leaving the unit as such – but she had expected something more, somehow, than this near empty box of a room. Being of perhaps four metres on a side, its only occupant stood bang slap in the centre; a bench or examination table of around waist hight and having a most singularly sinister appearance glowed there as if spotlit, its white plastic top dazzling to the eye. This latter furnishing, noticeably bolted to the floor, was arranged longitudinally within the space. Hinged at its centre, it had been left with the end closest to the party folded down in a manner not unlike a drop-leaf table, the extreme edge reaching down close to the floor and the whole having the form of a horizontal 'L'. Releasing her from the imprisonment of her wheelchair, they stood her up against the contraption, her legs once again straitened, knee joints locked and her callipers pressed firmly up against that vertical section.

A short explanation followed, delivered in a hurried flurry and giving the impression of some fast approaching dead line. It flowed past her largely without comprehension; she felt muddled, foggy, as she so often did these days. It was something to do with needing to have an x ray of her back in a particular orientation and, as she was overdue for an anal exam, 'killing two birds with one stone'.

She was placed in a standing position, bent at the waist with arms stretched above her head, her elbow joints having been locked out now as had been her knees, the latter by way of the callipers. A broad Velcro-fastening band was then drawn tightly across the small of her back and another pulled across her shoulders and upper back, the latter being of some thirty centimetres in breadth and seeming superfluous considering the enforced rigidity of her extremities.

Her chin rested in a raised U-section cushion, provided for that purpose; a cap of criss-crossed leather or plastic straps was fitted over the top and back of her head, firmly secured by buckles at its sides, stabilising her head and allowing the neck brace to be released at the rear and her head to be tilted back such that she faced forward.

Despite their apparent redundancy, leather straps were then fastidiously buckled at her wrists, elbows and again close to her shoulders, the fastenings struggling to accommodate the plaster casts at those points. Her legs were similarly restrained, drawn out into an embarrassingly exposed exaggerated inverted 'V' conformation by straps positioned around her ankles, knees and upper-thighs.

There was something disturbingly familiar about it all; all that attention to detail, all that complexity of restraint while so obviously unnecessary. It was something she thought she recognised, had experienced before in some other place, long ago; there was something ritualistic, fetishistic about it all – it froze her blood, petrified her heart, near unhinged her mind.

Finally, as if in answer to an unasked question, she felt fingers toying with the broad elastic waistband of her knickers. With a concerted smoothly sweeping action a pair of hands was dragging the tacky latex from her bottom, peeling the clinging fabric free of the latter's fleshy overhang with a sound not unlike a young girl,s breath drawn softly through lips pursed with uncertainty, then away from, and down, her thighs, to end stretched wide between her knees.

The mortification was tangible; in her mind's eye she could see now the heavily saturated towel at the crotch dragging down the gusset, revealing its loathsome and embarrassing contents to all – why did it always have to be this way? Why couldn't they clean her up first, at least change the towel if not the knickers? Would it be so difficult? Didn't they care about her feelings? That these concerns remained internalised was probably for the best: Yes, they did care, her feelings were of paramount consideration, no, it would not be difficult; beyond these she would not have appreciated, nor liked, the responses – it was best she was spared the fruits of curiosity...

Suddenly they were gone – just like that. She was alone, abandoned in silent vulnerable isolation; no words spoken in explanation, no light-hearted inter-colleague banter, the only clue to their departure being the softly-padded thud of the door closing behind them. She was alone, open and secured, helpless...

How long it had been she had no way of reckoning, yet her feeling was it hadn't been very long; though what such a relative term might actually mean to one confined as she was, is debatable. Strangely, she hadn't heard the door, not even its muffled re-closing yet somehow she sensed she was no longer alone. For a while she couldn't be sure; there was something there, a slight muffled shuffling perhaps – then her very bowels twisted, mangled in fear, in utmost dread...

It was the wheezing that came first – dry, like old parchment, like the rustle of drought fallen leaves. Then the cough came; not quite a death rattle, although she had so often prayed it was. Decidedly masculine, it came in excited staccato bursts, the nervous asthmatic constriction of elderly bronchi. Then it came nearer, that unseen presence, the breathing, laboured and heavy; moist foetid breath lapped around her neck and hung there like rotting strands of seaweed, then dangled down her back, then sniffed and snuffled between and around her buttocks, bony fingers, the nails ridged with time, easing the globes apart.

Her mind had become as frozen in terror as her body had been immobilised by more physical means, her last cogent thought being one of utter disbelieve: how could it be him, here, in this place, in this hospital – how could he have got to her here? She knew it couldn't be, of course, how could it? It had to be some sort of hallucination, the sort they were always warning of, that she denied yet they insisted she suffered – had they been right all along? Yes, that was it, just another delusion, it had to be, just had to...

She waited, what else could she do; even that scream wouldn't come, it froze somewhere along her throat. That scream had always torn through the air, rang in her ears, but that had been only in nightmares; they told her that's what they were and punished her if she said otherwise. They had so many ways of punishing, all for her own good; they could withhold her meals, not let her sleep, they might simply ignore her for days or even weeks - that was by far the worst, no one speaking to her, not smiling, not even acknowledging her own smile, it was subtle but effective – so very many ways. No, she could only wait, the scream wouldn't come, the punishments had been too effective - what if it was all just another nightmare? But this was no nightmare, they were never in the here and now, never in this setting – yet how could she be certain? No, it had to be a nightmare, another derangement. That is what they said they were and she was not allowed to object, she was not allowed to question the fact; that was what was stifling her scream, slowly dismantling her reason thought by thought, belief by belief...

Gnarled arthritis-clawed fingers kneaded and prodded the flesh around her most intimate regions as so often before, exploring, teasing. Then a hesitation, the pause she knew to be the calm before the storm, an uncertain meandering countdown, time itself seemingly hanging pendulous in space, quivering before the coming tempest; a most agonising prospect for any woman. And then... AND THEN...

To be continued

Copyright (c) 2008 Garth. P. ToynTanen