When you see this many buckled leather straps in play, you know that something is about to be happening where there is potential wiggling that needs to be prevented:
More than five years ago I posted small images of this Adam Johan Braun oil painting from 1789 showing a nun birching a girl as two other girls look on in tears. The images were from an auction house and quickly vanished from the web after the auction was over. Well, much that is good eventually returns. Now, via another art dealer who gets no link because of intrusive watermarking practices, and courtesy of the watermark removal efforts of volunteers at the Wikimedia Commons, I can show you much nicer images of the painting, in higher resolution. Don’t forget to click these pictures to enlarge them!
My favorite is perhaps the Vancouver magistrate who attracted the ire of “feminine leaders” with his “take her home and spank her” sentence for a pretty wife’s drunken misdeeds:
Pretty Mrs. Patricia Cederberg was in court on charges of imbibing more cocktails than she was prepared to handle in public. When she pleaded guilty, the magistrate turned to her husband, Gus.
“Did you ever try spanking your wife?” he asked?
“No,” said the surprised Mr. Cederberg.
“I’ll let her go if you take her home and spank her,” Magistrate Matheson ruled.
Gus agreed with alacrity, but whether the prescribed paddling ever took place is the Cederbergs’ secret.
I think we all know that it did indeed happen. “But dear, I’m under the strictest order of the court! I wouldn’t dare not spank you!”