Of course we had no idea at the time but ours was a prosperous family. We grew up with evrything we needed.
Our home in the country was large and we had acres of land to explore growing up. My parents kept a maid and a gardener and my father had a chauffeur.
He used to leave for London every Monday and, before my brothers and I left for boarding school at the age of eigth and during school hoidays we rarely saw him until the Friday mid afternoons when he would return in the Bentley. During the week my father lived at our other home in London and worked for in the City.
I had two younger brothers and a sister who was the youngest. I do not remember much about her because I was alwayds out doors, no matter the time of year with my brothers. We used to play hide and seek with the gardener and spied on him and his son as they worked. Life was good.
When mother went off for her charity meetings she would ask the maid to watch out for us. This was always a dangerous time as I remember becasue the maid aws a rather frumpy woman who did not like us boys and mush preferred doting on my sister. It aws always a good idea to keep out of ther way. I must have been about four or five years old when my mother firstcalled me into her day room and the maid was sitting in a chair.
Mother told me that the maid had said that I had been a very rude boy and not done what I had been told. I cannot remember what I had done but my mother thanked the maid and she got up and left the room. Mother told me that I was a naughty boy and that I would get a smack, she took my hand and guided me over her lap and smacked my bottom hard though my shorts. I cried.
That was the very first memory I have of a smacking. The next time mother punished me she used a slipper and that is how I was punished from then on. Mother slippered me whenever I did anything wrong. I always tried to be good but our maid used to tell tales about me and my next younger brother. I always felt guilty as well as upset after I had been smacked because I was told that, as the oldest, I had to set a good example to my brothers. I am sure I was punished more than my two younger brothers.
The first time I remember father whacking me was when I was a little older. I do not know how old I was but I do remember him coming into my bedroom to punish me. Some time after that, during a Christmas holiday and after I had started at my boarding school, I had my first experience of the cane in fathers study.
I remember it clearly and I was rearly scared.
I found out from friends at school that many of them were caned by their fathers, we used to exchange stories but ,contary to what you may think, corporal punishments at school were not that common.
I recently read a history of my old prep school and I seem to have been lucky enough to have been there during the headmastership of a kinder type of schoolmaster.
I have to go and talk to my nine year old son now. His school report is not the standard I expect.
Goodnight.