Reader's Digest

My first exposure to printed spanking/SM material comes all in one lump
from sometime in the mid-1940's before emigrating to the U.S.  I was in
second or third grade and an avid reader of anything that I could find.
My parents had a large collection of the Spanish translation of the
Reader's Digest (Selecciones del Reader's Digest).  These magazines
were very well read and re-read as they provided a window into the U.S.
and they were getting a bit dog-eared.   As a craft/hobby project and
with parental help and encouragement, I started to bind these magazines
into hard bound book form, 6 months to the tome.  In the process I read
and re-read many things.  Five items stand out in my memory:
 1)Ads of the bullet-nosed Studebakers tilted at crazy angles and
propped up by one finger of a very elegantly dressed lady (off topic, I
know, just atmosphere - 1947 I think)
 2)The earliest ads for Jell-O in very bright colors. The early
flavors were very artificial and prompted the Yuck! response, but the
ads were good.  (more atmosphere, about the same time)
 3)More than one article, but one in particular, recounting the
torture of prisoners of war.  These, to my mind then were lurid,
morbidly disturbing, with sketches of hooded torturer with long
bullwhip and victims with criss-cross marks on their upper backs.  The
text explained how the whips were kept wet so they would be supple and
how the tips were coated with vaseline so that they would cut deeper.
I can almost see the page number in my memory.
It is difficult to know how much the text gained or lost in
translation, the sketches needed no translation.  As far as I can
remember they were from the earlier years during the war.
 4)An autobiographical short article by Winston Churchill about
his school years.  I don't think it was from the Book Review portions,
but I could be wrong.  I vaguely remember all the punishments deserved
being scheduled for Saturdays but there I could be wrong too.  What I
remember clearly is his statement that after discipline sessions with
canes or birch rods some students would come away with bleeding "cuts".
I think this was after the war.
 5)Another autobiographical short article by Winston Churchill
about his adventures as an amateur painter and the first time he put
paint to canvas. (more atmosphere, after the war)

So, there you have it.  If anyone wants to call me a "deviated prevert"
(Peter Sellers would, I'm sure) I will acknowledge it and give credit
to the Reader's Digest.  I couldn't have done it without them. ;-)

red.red

Then, a German friend wrote to me, not long ago:

In  William Manchester's 'The Last Lion' , a biography of Winston
Churchill (a book I highly recommend) you also find the following
example of British educational methods.

As a boy of seven, 1882, he was brought to St. George, near Ascot, a
school which prepared boys for Eaton.  "The regimen was fierce: eight
hours a day of lessons, followed by football and cricket. There was
fagging  [oops! off topic!] (his comment, I understand the term is used
for smoking - r.r), and there were floggings almost every day, the
chief whipper being the Reverend H.W. Sneyd-Kynnersley [I swear I
didn't make that up! It's written there], a sadistic headmaster who
would lay as many as twenty strokes of birch on a boy's bare rump.
Given Winston's extremely sensitive skin, this must have been
excruciating." Judging by Winston's report cards which are still there
he must have been a rebel and was punished severely.
Though he first maintained the usual stiff upper lip (he was the
grandson of the seventh Duke of Marlborough after all), he fled home at
last to Mrs. Everest, his beloved nanny. She "undressed him and
recoiled when she saw his back and bottom crisscrossed with welts. She
summonned Jenny [his mother, Lady Randolph Churchill, a born American],
and the sight of his wounds told her what he, in the mute, tortuous
language of a child, had been trying to tell her for two years. She
immediately removed him from St. Georges... It is satisfying to report
that two years later Mr. Sneyd-Kynnersley, aged thirty-eight, dropped
dead of a heart attack." writes Manchester.