First impressions are lasting impressions! Just a Few Strokes of the Cane in Preparation for the Doctor's Visit

I’m just back from Eastbourne where I’ve been all week and guess what?  My internet access is working and up to speed!  So I have been hunting around tumblr.com looking for some inspirational illustrations that might fit in with some stuff I started writing while away and perhaps offer a little extra inspiration, now that I don’t’ have the beer flooding through my veins.  I haven’t actually found any specifically dealing with the subject matter (which I may well elucidate next time, but suffice it to say it is something of a departure from my usual area and timeframe).  What I did come across though was this little gem on the left.  I'm not sure of it's origin but I believe it probably comes from a photo set, some others of which I have featured before.  

I found looking at it last night that in my minds eye I instantly saw the title or caption:  Just a few strokes of the cane in preparation for the doctor's visit.  And before I knew it whole string of ideas had sprung into my head, albeit pretty much along the lines of the sort of thing I have been interested in for years, primarily the idea of the ever extending incarceration, whereby a short period, perhaps triggered by some minor indiscretion, becomes either inadvertently or deliberately extended again and again.  That is what I liked about that story by imreadonly2 or whoever it was wrote it and posted it up in the comments to my last contribution.  The part where the most minor of infringements of the institution’s rules is doubly punished, not only by the application of corporal punishment but also by an additional month added to the sentence.  

In a similar vein I remember liking a certain reform school story I once come across that was set in the Victorian or Edwardian era, the upshot of which was that at the end of the young lady's original sentence she was recommitted right before the moment of release to serve again the entire sentence from scratch.  The particularly piquant punch line was that the order had been signed in advance, at the time of the original sentencing in fact, by the elderly judge concerned (citing incorrigible ill behaviour while in custody) simply because he found the girl attractive and knew she was a runaway. 

And her original crime?  Little more than over exuberance that had attracted the eye of a gentleman, and having sworn when approached.  That action had already been exaggerated into something sounding far more antisocial on the paperwork, giving an excuse to impose a sentence the severity of which went well beyond such a petty misdemeanour.  And of course having already been convicted of ' incorrigible ill behaviour while in custody' might not the door have then been opened for exactly the sort of stepwise extension of sentence outlined above.  Once inside those doors and with no one on the outside to step in on her behalf, one can well imagine her being condemned to serve her entire sentence perhaps a third time, or perhaps even more serious charges and offences being heaped on her; insubordination, troublemaking, corrupting others.  One might imagine her rejection of the old judge's advances or those of one of  his gentlemen friends - maybe even the gentleman instrumental in her original incarceration - being put down to some form of assault and a fresh and a far, far longer sentence being added on to her tariff, to run immediately after her present incarceration ends.  

Even her current incarceration may well at that point have been extended by two or three more months by way of penalties for various forms of disobedience and recalcitrance - and imagine how galling and crushing an additional month of imprisonment would be, perhaps awarded simply for some real or imaginary fault with the way in which she was wearing the reformatory uniform, or simply not curtsying low enough to one of the wardresses, or neglecting to thank that visiting gentleman for showing sufficient interest in her as to have been instrumental in removing her from the street to be thoroughly reformed.  

But all that would have paled into insignificance once something like assault had been added to her charges - now a tariff numbered in years could be added in, even if she did get past this second helping of her original sentence with its stumbling block of ever mounting penalties.  One can imagine that such an institution would have been extraordinarily strict when it came to discipline anyway, but one can also imagine the old judge with his influence encouraging the staff to crack down on this particular girl harder and harder (and perhaps others he might have had an interest in), encouraging them to watch for the tiniest fault, to punish with the strap and the cane mercilessly, to report every misdemeanour personally to him and his office, safe in the knowledge that another month's extension of her incarceration could and would be added with a simple stroke of the pen for something as seemingly innocuous as talking without permission or raising her eyes from the floor or failing to walk correctly with head bowed and hands crossed in front of her lap while being led with the other girls in single file to and from the workroom.  

One can imagine her trudging silently back to her cell within a silent crocodile of others after seventeen or eighteen solid hours sitting sewing or performing laundry work in the drab windowless workroom, dressed in the severe, high-collared and long-sleeved work frock, the uniform of the reformatory, with its widely flared but humiliatingly short skirt hem floating around and just above her knees -and this in an age when to show an ankle was to be daring.  And then she recognises a gentleman in a top hat and an older bearded man next to him - both of whom she knows only too well - standing outside the bars at the end of the corridor.  And the older man calls the wardress over, passing a piece of official looking paperwork through the bars, informing her that one of her charges has now been re-convicted and that her sentence ratified by the court in her absence.  And she hears it read out; and it is in years, not months.  And forgetting herself she calls out in dismay.  

Along with the sharp slap around the face from the second wardress bringing up the rear comes the realisation that along with the half-dozen strokes of the prison cane she will receive before bed that night she will also have earned herself yet another month's extension added on to her present sentence, and this coming only days since the last she had earned... Imagine the effect on her of the realisation at that point, then, that not only does she now have this new, far longer, term to serve hanging over her after her present sentence comes to an end but her present sentence is in effect going backwards, growling longer rather than shorter - it has become so that with every month she serves another two have been added in...

But I digress:  the real reason for this posting is the following (below) which is the actual train of thought that came into my mind looking at the above photograph so I might as well call it:  A  few strokes of the cane in preparation for the doctor's visit. Just to give it a title.  Of course it is not unconnected to the rambling above, in fact a similar principle applies, but attained in an entirely different manner and in a more up-to-date timeframe.  Here it is actually left to the girl herself to arrange for her own extension of stay - and in one manner or another she has little option but to comply.   

A few strokes of the cane in preparation for the doctor's visit.

The girl knows what to say, how to behave, what answers to give to all those probing questions.  She's been schooled in it, it's been drummed into her for weeks, if not months - she's even been given pamphlets to study, set essays to write over and over again so that when the time comes the required responses should fall parrot fashion from her lips.  Nevertheless a dozen or so strokes from matron’s cane - with the promise of twice that number to follow should she fail to co-operate - should serve as a timely reminder of the need for total compliance when it comes to matters pertaining to her care here.  But then again she is well aware of that fact; it has been a year now and from the very first day she has been subject to matron's discipline - and to matron's cane.  

In fact she received her very first caning, a good dozen hard strokes, within thirty minutes of arriving, held down across a desk by smiling young nurse grasping her wrists.  The reason then was having said she was well, having claimed she suffered none of the problems that had been reported when she had been brought in.  She learned then her first lesson: she was just not allowed to say she was ‘well’.  In fact she was not allowed to say anything at all, unless spoken to first, and then only in direct answer to questions, and only ever to staff members.  

The no-talking rule was one of the most strictly enforced stipulations they had - and one of the most difficult to abide by; she often had her face slapped by a nurse or felt the bite of matron's cane or strap in those early days and weeks for talking out of turn.  But it was not the very hardest stipulation they had.  That honour went to the rule they had about never making eye contact.  That rule had earned her many sessions over a desk under matron's cane or bent over her lap, her bottom dancing under the tattoo of a heavy leather strap, in those early days.  She had found it difficult locking herself away in her own little silent shell, but gradually it had become second nature.  Now she shuffled around never once taking her eyes off her shoes, let alone looking to the left and right.  

And that was a strange thing itself, nowadays, staring down at a pair of lace up school shoes in a place such as this.  The school uniform came along with the pamphlets and booklets she had to learn off by heart and the hours spent sitting at a cramped school desk set up facing the wall in the corner of matron's office poring over essays and line-writing impositions.  It had been set up there so she would remain under supervision.  And that was a difficult thing to deal with too, the close supervision.  The stipulation was; she was always to be within sight of a staff member.  She was accompanied everywhere, even to the toilet, watched closely, sometimes criticised and belittled while performing her ablutions, sometimes made to use a bedpan set up on a chair in front of a mirror while a nurse stood behind her with a clipboard recording the details and reading out loud what she was setting down on paper.

So many rules, so many stipulations, covering every tiny little detail of her existence, right down to the way in which she eats her food.  And all under the control of a woman who is a mistress of humiliation.  So now it’s been a year, and now finally her appraisal has come around, the doctor and board of governors will have assembled.  And so she writhes and sobs and cries under the kiss of matron’s cane while she waits to be sent for.  And yes, she has been well prepared.  And yes, she does dread a repeat visit with at least double the number awarded.  And she knows too that even if she doesn’t behave as rehearsed, even if she manages to pull herself back to something resembling normality, there will still be a holding period of a couple of months to review the various reports matron and her staff have posted, so matron will indeed have her way.  

If she reports her treatment, she knows only too well she will not be believed; it will be put down to ‘instability’ as it was last time.  That was what got her original six month period extended to a year in the first place.  It had also earned her an entire week of being caned three times a day, alternated with the same number of iced baths.  Then there had been some unknown period spent in a tiny white-painted room with nothing to hear but a constant regular tick, tick, tick coming from somewhere like a constantly dripping tap.  That had very nearly driven her insane – perhaps it would if there were a next time; and matron would have two months on her hands to make that possibility come true.

But on the other hand she knows that if she does as she has been trained, says the things she has been told to, recites the symptoms she has learned, displays the hand-wringing body language she has practiced, then in all likelihood she will be condemned to remain under supervision in this place for many years to come.  If she did a really good job then she might well end up proving herself ‘incurable’, as she has been trained to.  But then again, there is the dread of the cane – and all those other things matron can do to her.  The truth is the woman has got her completely and utterly under her thumb.  The best she can hope for is to go just far enough to not demonstrate defiance while hoping for another review date some time in the future.  But that would give matron another year, maybe two, to further prepare her.  

And matron has already done a good job:  The hand-wringing, twitches and facial ticks have become real enough now and hard to control - and the nervous stammer she has become inflicted with makes her all but unintelligible under stress.  So she will be let up in a moment, allowed to change out of that humiliating school uniform and back into hospital issue pyjamas…  She doesn’t know yet of the prior warning matron and her staff have sent to the panel regarding her ‘violent and abusive behaviour’, nor that she is to be presented to them in a straightjacket.  Matron thinks it a shame that the hand-wringing behaviour won’t be observable, but the facial ticks still will be, and she’ll still expect her protégé’s compliance when it comes to the questioning… But after all:  First impressions are lasting impressions