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!
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