A Private Asylum Detainee - Latest Developments: An Update

Many apologies if you've written to me recently by email and not yet received a reply; I'm slowly but surly catching up on my emails and I'm sure I'll be getting to yours soon.

The problem has partly been various family obligations cropping up, but also because I have been burying myself to such an extent in the production of mine and Angela Fox's joint comic book project, loosely based around certain ideas originally developed within my INSTITUTIONALISED series.  As you probably know, Angela Fox originally produced a series of computer generated 3D images based around INSTITUTIONALISED Volume 3 with the idea of jointly producing an illustrated version.  That idea was stillborn for one reason or another, but I'd kept the artwork and later began annotating, adapting and adding speech bubbles, partly as a natural development which grew from the need to add a few words of explanation while publishing some of the images on Deviant Art and also my new website (Beyond The Barred Window - link available in the right hand sidebar).

More recently Angela Fox and I have again been collaborating on a whole new fresh approach, involving the production of several sets of brand new images, which I am presently working my way through, adding various embellishments, cropping and recombining, in addition to annotating and adding speech and thought bubbles and filling with text.  Some early attempts you'll have already seen in these pages, based on my adaptations of sections taken from those earlier images, but today I thought some of you might appreciate a little teaser based around a couple of Angela's more recent creations.  These are taken from the centre of a particular set and hopefully give a taste of the story direction without giving too much of the game away.  The first actually consists of sections taken from no less than three different Angela Fox originals, along with a couple of elements pinched off the web, which I have put together and to which I have then added all manner of shadow and lighting effects etc.  The second follows straight on from the first image and consists of an annotated cropped section taken from another of Angela's creations, the full sized version of which is used elsewhere in the sequence, suitably annotated.  I must say, I totally underestimated the work involved in story telling through speech bubbles!!!  But I'm having a ball - and I think Angela is too!!!  (Angela Fox also writes books and novels in her own right and a link to her work can be found over in the sidebar on the right).

Spanking Machines: Comment and Reply

In response to my previous posting on spanking machines an anonymous contributor wrote “I can imagine the girls being made to gin cotton, or shuck corn… and if their bucket did not fill up to a satisfactory weight every 10 minutes or so the spanking machine would be triggered.”  This set me to thinking… And the thing is it could have worked, and within a Victorian setting too!

Steam power distributed throughout the workroom or shed by a system of belts and pulleys from a distantly-mounted engine to run other machinery could also have been siphoned from to run the spanking devices.  A simple mechanical linkage running from a metal hopper mounted in front of each girl could then have been put to use to trigger the spanking when necessary.  And there wouldn’t even have been a need for any kind of potentially complicated timing device – not if the product of the girl’s sweat had been continually whisked away, flowing out from the base of the hopper beneath the work bench.

Simply put; if the girl’s work rate did not equal the rate of emptying or outflow of the hopper inset within the bench top, the resultant fall in weight of the material buffered within the hopper at any one time (preset by a weight balance mechanism) would have triggered the punishment, and a bell to sound.  On the other hand, should the detainee girl’s work rate have exceeded the preset outflow rate by some preset margin at any one time then the corresponding build-up of material - again detected by weight – would have caused a ratcheted trap, flap or valve mounted at the hopper’s outflow point to open up further, thus automatically resetting the girl’s work quota for the day (a consequence again associated with a bell sounding, albeit of a different pitch).  The number of the latter occurrences, noted by the overseer, could then have been used to estimate and modify the preset quota for the next day, and all those days following, from then on!

Now imagine that as a result of a single girl actually managing to exceed her (very demanding for most) quota by some preset amount all outflow rates of all hoppers were to be instantaneously increased in concert - i.e. that the hopper outflow-governing mechanisms were mechanically coupled together in some manner – so that all detainees would, from that point on, be obliged to work faster.  Then ponder for a moment on how the identity of such an over-industrious lass might have been made known to all - including her hard-pressed compatriots - by the automatic, mechanised ringing of an overhead bell at her position.  Whether driven by the misguided urge to gain favouritism with her supervisors, purely through the happenstance of having been gifted with particularly dextrous hands or through the sheer dread of the cane repeatedly slashing across her buttocks, driven by a series of cams mounted beneath her open-bottomed seat, doesn’t matter; just imagine the psychological effects on the girl concerned of having earned the ire of her fellow detainees... A deliciously teetering balance between two punitive extremes is thus established, a wearing and psychologically demanding tightrope which must be trod day after endless day!  So imagine the consequences if our unwitting or unwilling captain of industry were also to be seen to be rewarded in some way, perhaps through receiving increased rations for a few days, a temporary alleviation of the usually monotonous dietary régime through the addition of a few tasty sweetmeats or  other titbits or – god forbid – a temporary (and necessarily obvious) reduction in her own work quota at the expense of all those around her whose quotas will have been permanently raised as a result!  It is through the application of such contradictory carrot-and-stick mechanisms such as this (and others) that the astute overseers and governors of the institution might, if they really knew what they were doing, set up a conflicting mindset within the individual – psychologically isolating each within her own little imprisoning shell - while simultaneously encouraging a culture of distrust within their cadre of detainees – “divide and conquer”.       

Anyway, that’s what I think.  How about you?

By the way; anyone seen the new-look website yet?  It has been flagged up to me that the direct link from the posting was not working (thanks for that ‘The Non-Victorian Girl’! (who I sort of think of as looking a bit like ‘Abby’ out of the TV show, NCIS, for some reason!) Yup! Nested brackets, no less – strictly speaking, parentheses).  Well, I don’t know what went wrong, but it’s fixed now!

Beyond The Barred Window Website Gets a New Look

Hi folks!  Just a quicky to say that thanks to Madmonkey - who kindly provided me with an example of some HTML / CSS code - my 'Beyond The Barred Window' website (click to visit) now has a smoother running new look sporting stationary title and navigation menu bars.  Basicaly, while you scroll down the page over the content the navigation bar stays in view at all times, simplifying the jump to the next page or where ever.  Take a look and let me know what you think. Also; it's been a while since I've added any new content to the website, but hopefuly I'll be adding to the content over the next couple of days as well.

Victorian Hand Cranked Hard Labour Devices and Industrial School Spanking Machines

Well, well, well!  You would hardly credit it!  This one definitely comes under the heading of 'you couldn't make it up'.  As those of you who know me and who are familiar with the stuff I write about  will already know, nothing quite gets me going like stumbling across evidence of some factual scenario, device or practise, whether historical or contemporaneous, which mirrors or even surpasses the kind of fictional goings-ons that pepper the pages of the books I write (usually from the historical annals of experimental psychology - a particularly rich vein!).  Plausibility in story plotting has been a watchword with me from the outset, when back in 2008 I published INSTITUTIONALISED 1:  BEYOND THE STANDFORD EXPERIMENT and so on the basis of anything which has happened can potentially occur again in some form or other... Well, you get the idea, I'm sure!  Anyway, for the sake of plausibility and research generally - and based on an idea supplied by my graphic artist collaborator and friend, Angela Fox (with whom, as you know, I am planning a comic book / graphic novel type thing - something of a departure for me) - I found myself Googling Victorian hand-cranked hard labour devices (or machines; I can't remember exactly right now)... And guess what i came across?  Yep! That newspaper cutting right there on the left!  As I said; you couldn't make it up (and I just hope somebody else hasn't)- and I just love that sblog archive, and on my website where they are easier to find, including reader's letters scanned from various spanking magazines) I had to share this with you, my loyal followers!   

ort of thing!  So of course, as with all sources of inspiration (and there are loads back in the

But imagine for a moment that industrial school!  In my mind I see not just the ‘bad girls’ but a whole row of young women, all working away bare bottomed at some mindlessly tedious task - and with a spanking always just a press of a button  away!  Or the basis of some unethical aversion therapy experiment or other?  You tell me!  

Meanwhile in the background, and away from the graphic art stuff, I have also started writing a bit more.  Whether this will develop and evolve into a new book or stay as a short piece for 'The Erotic Mind Control Story Archive' (which inspired the piece and towards whose audience it is largely targeted) I don't yet know; I'll keep you posted, as I will the website as and when I next update it (soon, honestly) and my tumblr blog (Google Toynatan Tumblr - because it doesn't really have a title yet).

A Private Asylum Detainee - A View Into a Different Detainee's Life (Or The Dirty Room 1)

My good friend Angela Fox (link over in the right-hand sidebar) and I have embarked on an entirely new set of comic book style images. Once again she has created the 3D artwork within which I have then added the cane, the wall lights, speech bubbles and the main text. And once again the basic framework is loosely inspired by my third book, Institutionalised 3: A Continuum of Discipline (out on LULU and just about everywhere else), or at least the series that volume forms part of and the spirit of that series; even though this set is not so closely aligned to the original story arc as the previous set was.  But that is part of the point of the exercise.  Angela Fox becomes inspired by some part of the tale and creates an image, which in turn (on a good day) triggers a whole fresh set of ideas within your truly’s devious imagination.  It is not my intention to publish the entire set here, as that would give the game away, but you will get to see one or two works in progress and perhaps one or two failed ideas along the way, and all of it, God willing, leading up to some sort of comic book / graphic novel style thing… I do hope so!

A Private Asylum Detainee: The Cane is Raised and Her Bottom Awaits its Tender Mercies

Another of those pics based around original artwork created long ago by Angela Fox (her link can be found over in the right hand sidebar), inspired by certain events depicted in INSTITUTIONALISED volume 3.  As you know (if you follow this blog or have read any of my first three books) the basic story is that of a girl in her late teens who finds herself detained having been fooled and manipulated  by her scheming stepmother and legal guardian - with the aid of a certain less than ethical female clinical psychologist - into volunteering to take part  in a residential psychology experiment as a clinical study candidate - an experiment gone awry to put it mildly!  Just click to enlarge.  By the way; the last picture I posted was all my own - the nurse's dress came from a catalogue scan with its colour shifted to more closely match the uniform dress of the cane-wielding nurse created by Angela Fox.  Talking of whom:  Angela has now created another version of that caning scene featuring our heroine in her straitjacket!  It's just waiting for me to add some final touches and put in the speech bubbles.  Right, that's me down here for now! Now I'm off to The Tollgate for another few pints!  See Ya!

The Private Asylum Detainee: A Girl Awaiting the Caning of a Lifetime

By rights I should be working my way around the Wetherspoons beer festival - and I will be soon.  But I couldn't resist doing a bit more on extending this comic book-style series thingy (click to enlarge) I have been working on of late, this time inspired by the latest image Angela Fox has just kindly sent me.  To set eyes on the latter image, though, you'll probably have to wait to see if Angela and I go through with our threat to create a full-blown graphic novel, and of course whether or not it adheres to the story arc of the INSTITUTIONALISED trilogy or goes somewhere else completely - a decision which is to some extent in your own hands, as I'm always open to fresh story ideas.  I also should be dealing with my extensive backlog of emails and the comments which have been left on that Well Red Weekly ezine article I wrote on nuns in fictional spanking literature, but these are tasks I can tackle from my smartphone while in the various pubs I intend to visit.  As to the latter - I am supposed to be in the West End later , so I'm off out now; first a couple in The Tollgate in Turnpike Lane, then The Coronet (a converted cinama no less, with many original features still in situ) in the Holloway Road and thence to the West End, The Metropole sometime after 5:30 and then the Wetherspoons in Paddington Station and then....   Who knows?  I don't bite, so if you see me, buy me a pint... Oh, and I'd quite like a chat too!  And I'll be in the first of those pubs - The Tollgate - in thirty minutes time (3:15 PM).  Cheers!