Corsets, Backboards and Deportment Training for Recalcitrant Young Ladies

One of the greatest influences on my writing has been the publications, journals and fiction hailing from the Victorian era (or, I suspect, purporting to in some instances). Below are a couple of transcripts of page scans that I recently came across on my travels across the web taken from the correspondence pages of a journal entitled ‘The Family Doctor’, a publication of the late nineteenth century. I suppose it is the second letter that really hits the spot - that atmosphere one senses, reading between the lines, of domination and the curbing of the spirit. Clearly much more has been done than merely putting the pair of teenagers in corsets - one senses there has been a battle of wills and what is observed is the aftereffect of a crushing defeat . Reading through brought my mind to mull over another subject much discussed in that era, one even more amenable to inclusion in any disciplinary and obedience training regime one might devise that also incorporates corporal punishment: deportment training. Tightly-laced boned corsets, backboards, the cane or riding switch and deportment training seem in my mind to go together seamlessly. This still from Lupus Pictures seems to succeed in summing up all of that in that one shot. Actually I have an even more apt pictorial example somewhere but can’t seen to be able to put my hands on it at present. But I have it stashed away as hard copy so if it comes to it I can always scan the printout.

CORRESPONDENCE.
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CORSET DISCIPLINE
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR OF THE FAMILY DOCTOR

Our eldest girl, aged nineteen, wears a backboard of very old pattern, originally made for her mother when at school in Bath. It consists of a flat plate of metal, somewhat pear-shaped. that extends from the nape of the neck downwards to the loins, and across from shoulder to shoulder--covering the back exactly, in fact, and hollowed to fit the figure snugly. This is strapped closely to the body by broad shoulder straps (comfortably padded, and arranged to buckle in the centre of the back out of the wearer's reach) and a broad leather waist-belt, also padded and buckled behind. The backplate is covered with blue leather, and when properly fixed is immovable upon the body, partially because the waist-belt is shaped to cover and closely embrace the hips. In the centre of the backplate is a small brass box somewhat like a watch, through which slides a vertical rod carrying at its upper end the "collar"--really the most useful part of the apparatus. Inside the brass box is a lock which fixes the vertical rod and collar at any desired height; and in front of the collar is another minute lock to prevent the chin being unlawfully released! All the locks and straps. I must say, have been renewed several time? but the backboard and collar are just as my wife wore them, and their beautifully chased or engraved bright portions are still perfect.
My second daughter wears an appliance similar to this, with the addition of two hooks or padded crutches, which come from the back under her arm­pits, and have smaller shoulder straps to keep the arms in position therein. This, I feel sure, makes the elevation of the chest more complete. and avoids the slight chafing caused by shoulder straps passing under the armpits.
The backboard worn by our youngest daughter is similar to the last in pattern, but the back is of polished wood (easily renewed as she grows), and the staff and collar are screwed at a fixed height to the wood direct. This does not allow her the freedom at her desk that her elder sisters gain by having their collars lowered, but by the time she is ready to be fitted with the more graceful and permanent steel backboard her fixed collar will have enforced that erect carriage of the head and neck that is so ample a repayment for the present discomfort.

The "stocks " are simply oblong boxes of polished wood, in which the two feet are placed heel to heel, and the toes turned outward. A lid then slides in from each end, having two half-round apertures to em brace the ankles. These lids have a lock at their point of contact in their centre which effectually pre­vents the withdrawal of the feet during the required period of discipline.

These appliances may sound very barbarous to those who favour the ungainly slouching habits far too common nowadays, but by their aid the following round of daily exercise has blessed me with three of the most graceful and, I will say with truth, healthy girls to be found in England. Their daily life is about as follows :--On rising, each is strapped to her backboard, the youngest, of course, having her collar, and consequently her chin, at a very high level, the two elder having theirs only half high, but all, never­theless, securely locked. After breakfast, at 8 a.m., the collars are raised to an equal height, and all, including their governess, have amusement in the garden, coming into the schoolroom about nine. Lessons proceed until luncheon, after which comes a period-about one and a half hours--of walking drill and calisthenics, in which is added to the ordinary backboard a long one reaching across the shoulders from wrist to wrist, and keeping the elbows well behind. After drill the three collars are removed entirely, and, with their backboards concealed by their ordinary dresses, all three girls go out to spend an afternoon in the park or upon the heath. For dinner the collars are again fixed, and we dine in happy fellowship, the girls afterwards standing in their stocks, with the collars elevated and the long backboards across their shoulders, for about two hours during the evening.

It may interest some of your readers to know that my wife is in the habit of using several other appliances, and of enforcing many, perhaps irksome, postures at drill with the ultimate object of perfection in view; but of these I shall be pleased to write if you can spare the space.

Concluding this lengthy letter, I may say that both pretty heels and small corsets count among her system of rewards. All our girls are confirmed wearers of night stays, in addition to what may be new to your readers--i.e., finger-nail corsets.--Believe me, Sir, yours truly, CARL.

P.S.--I shall be pleased to reply to inquirers through the FAMILY DOCTOR if you will permit, but do not desire private correspondence.
Camden Town, N.W (Sept 28 1889).

TO THE EDITOR OF THE FAMILY DOCTOR.

SIR,-I can quite endorse the opinion of several of your correspondents advocating corset discipline in the management of refractory children. A lady friend of mine has two daughters aged fifteen and sixteen with whom it has proved a complete success. They are both members of the tennis club to which I belong, and used to be much remarked by their rough behaviour, as they played more like school­boys than young ladies. Their mother was advised to make them wear their stays while they played, instead of leaving them off, as they usually did; but she did more than this, by having them fitted with very long, heavily-boned stays, with stiff, broad busks, which, of course, quite prevented stooping, besides being very uncomfortable. They were laced very tightly. when they next appeared, and I never saw girls so much improved, for they were now well behaved young ladies. Their figures were slim­waisted, and the lacing was so effective that, playing or sitting, they were obliged to keep erect. Their hands were encased in long, well-fitting kid gloves, which they were not allowed to remove. They now played a quiet, lady-like game, and looked very pretty and graceful, being laced so tightly that ungainly movements were impossible. Their mother says she finds this means of restraint is very beneficial, as it enforces patience and submission. When there is any need for punishing either of them, it is easily done by tightening the culprit's lace so as to entail an extra degree of discomfort as discipline, as well as improving her figure and carriage. These girls never know now what it is to be without con­stant pressure and restraint, for at night their already slender waists on being released from their day corsets are immediately enclosed in others having flexible busks and laced in an inch smaller than before. Their hands are kept constantly gloved both day and night in very tight kid, and fastened by bracelets to prevent them being removed, and are becoming beautifully white in consequence. (Aug 31 1889 )

Corsets, Corseletes Leg-Braces and Imprisonment

A good prison uniform begins with a good imprisoning restrictive example of the corsetiere's art - and dosn't that rosy blush make her look suitably submissively embarrassed (as well she should be). . This example is taken from Staylace.com, a marvelous source of pics, writing and all things corsetry (click on image to visit). Although it must be said that I for one prefer to envisage something more akin to the good old fashioned corselet for my girls - and adapted to make even more restrictive, particularly for the classroom: think backboards and the like. Its all good discipline.

I have been doing a bit more work on INSTITUTIONALISED volume 2 over the last few days and the completed work now amounts to around 200 pages and a little over 104,000 words. I thought you might be teased just a little by a snippet of something I have been working on today - its very short simply because the parts before and immediately following in it would give too much away about a little plot twist I have been brewing up and even then, I have had to edit a bit out toward the end to hide a crucial detail. It has yet to be properly proofread so there may be errors of grammar etc -my apologies if so.

Please let me know what you think. By the way, other snippets from volume 2 - and also from volume 1 - can be found way back in the blog archive, particularly within the earliest entries (see side bar).

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A Vignette Whipped Straight from INSTITUTIONALISED Volume 2

If only he could have seen her at that moment, stood in the corner of the doctor’s room with arms stiffly at her sides and her legs framed uselessly in callipers. Would he have run to her with concern and compassion burning in his heart, taken her in his arms meaning to whisk her away from there? Or would the mere sight of the angrily-swollen, criss-cross basket-weave of red imprinted on those helplessly-bared and oh so vulnerable buttocks have been enough to inflame a very different passion?
And if not, what of the more recent, horizontally overlaid, gridiron-branding of pinky-width flaming scarlet; would the sight of that have been enough to twist his best intentions? Expertly drafted from the very uppermost curving slopes of that tight, almost heart-shaped little bottom and extending to near-on halfway down the backs of those milk-cream thighs, until where finally curtailed by the intervention of the girl’s leg-brace straps; right at this very moment in time these were so fresh as to be actually visibly throbbing. What with those still-developing wheals and the local involuntarily twitching of muscle fibres sending little patches of soft girl-flesh, alternatively tautening and relaxing, dancing bewitchingly across the surface of that peachy behind of hers – what with all of that in the background, if he had been asked at that moment whether he might perhaps prefer her kept there after all…what would have been his answer?
What of the girl herself? What of young Meredith Hewson? A young woman so well shielded from reality, his reality, any reality, as to inhabit, for the most part, a shadowy self-built world of uncertainly-flitting phantasms and constructed of self-doubt and inconsistency - what care could she have that someone, somewhere, searched; even if that searcher was her ex-lover? As crushed as she felt at that moment, she would only have viewed it as false hope – for surely her situation was beyond hope.
After was said and done, she had thought herself safe, here in hospital. But they had let her down; he had still got to her, the old man, that old church-man from her nightmares, the priest or whatever he was. But they were not nightmares, were they? They never had been; they were memories pure and simple - as unlikely as that might seem - she was certain of it. Just as she was certain that he had come to her - just when she was at her most powerless to resist, strapped down, bent over from the waist waiting for her examination and X-ray and left so open and vulnerable with her legs spread wide and immobilised in those awful leg callipers they kept her in.
Of course she hadn’t actually seen him, how could she have, strapped face down like that? But surely they could have seen the physical evidence in front of their own eyes. Not satisfied with anally raping her he had viciously taken a cane to her defenceless bottom prior to the act – just as he had always taken that heavy leather strap of his to her in the parsonage to “beat the devil” from her before he would take her from behind. Besides, they had cameras just about everywhere; someone somewhere must have seen it all.
Yet they denied that anything had been seen, denied the existence of the frenzied web of burning cane-lines she could feel blazing agonizingly across her backside, even denied that she had been left alone for much longer than a minute or so – a period ridiculously too brief for the events of which she complained of to have occurred in.
It had all been in her head, just as all of that other stuff she seemed to remember had been fabricated in her head – and surely the very existence of those security cameras only went to underline the truth of that statement. She had just been in a car crash, an accident, that was all – they said so, constantly. All those other things had just been delusions and dreams, wicked dreams…dreams that she had no right to have, that had to be eradicated, that she had to have therapy for…that she had to be punished for. It was all for her own good.
Here was a personality folding in on itself - day by day, week by week and month by month. Psychologically, she was nowhere now that he would recognise - not that her physical surroundings would match more closely his common experience in any case. The ‘squeaky bouncy little thing’ of old was stood here now, a quiet, hunched and mouse-like little thing – quenched indeed.
But was that really so surprising? After all, she had just been caned by her therapist, by a woman doctor, in front of two waiting nurses as witnesses and simply for having just previously been caned by someone else; or so it seemed. She had just been caned for having been caned, for daring to complain about having been caned and anally abused - or rather for sticking to her conviction, for refusing to admit that she was deluded, that she was in fact mentally ill.

They had carte blanche over her. It was a dream come true for any possessed of her carer’s predilections - besides, her presence attracted substantial funding…and from an impeccable source.

Corselletes, Corset Discipline & Institutional Hair and Fingernail Cutting

Today's posting was going to be one of those explanatory things - this one dealing with the corselet (corsellete), a garment that crops up in description several times in INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1 and will undoubtedly do so again along with corsets, corset discipline and other associated subjects in the subsequent volumes. I don't have time at the moment to post up any explanatory illustrations as I am hard at work on volume 2 and the writing is coming along quite nicely today so I don't want to interrupt my flow as it were. I have located some interesting articles and a suitable website to visit however and those links are posted below.

On a completely different tack: while looking around a forced-hair-cutting story site last night I came across what I think is a really great storyline, or at least has the potential to be so if it was to be continued by the author. It is called Industrial School Days by Harry Standing and is easily one of the best things I've ever read incorporating the hair cutting (and indeed fingernail cutting) theme. The tale has quite a lot in common with part of the INSTITUTIONALISED storyline in that the main character hasn't really done anything to justify her incarceration (so I guess it has a certain affinity with those so-called ‘blameless punishments’ so beloved of the 1980s Janus letters pages correspondents), secondly (and this part I love), despite being placed in ‘care’ initially just for the weekend it becomes clear that this period is likely to extend to 21 days and it is hinted that such a period could possibly be extended, quite legally, perhaps indefinitely (I certainly hope so). She has done little wrong, she is really there at the whim of others. Finally, the tale is based loosely on the existence of, and the exploitation that allegedly occurred in, the Magdalene Laundries or asylums of Ireland (See also the 2002 film written and directed by Peter Mullan entitled: The Magdalene Sisters, click to view trailer), a little bit of history that went a long way in influencing the direction of my writing in the INSTITUTIONALISED series. Click on the title above to link to this story.

Hopefully I will be returning to this post later today or early tomorrow when I will post up the relevant illustrations etc.

Corset article 1
Corset article 2
Corset article 3
Corset design resource site