Corpun file 24698 at www.corpun.com

The Atlanta Constitution, Georgia, 10 December 1905, p.40

And Now the Professional 'Spanker.'

(extracts)

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[...]

Babies will persist in being born in some families today, but after that, there is the infant incubator, artificial infant foods, and the various devices for the emancipation of the ambitious mother. If she is a business woman, she is back at her "job" in a surprisingly short time, and if her life is devoted to society and the "higher things," any natural interference on the part of the mysterious stranger from Storkville is reduced to an irreducible minimum. The whole scheme of modern domestic organization is along the lines of least interference, so far as the babies are concerned -- if they must come.

However, it is only fair to the modern American home to state that a fair per cent of the babies escape the dangers of the milkman and the hired nurse with their lives and get big enough to be palmed off on the school teacher. And, parenthetically, it is a wonder the mortality among school teachers is not higher. Everybody knows that Solomon was never wiser than when he observed that to spare the rod is to spoil the child, or words to that effect. But many of our school boards will not give teachers this keen personal satisfaction, and with the mother at the club and father working and being worked, how are wicked Willie and saucy Susan to be properly chastised? Who is to lay on the shingle, the skate strap or the switch? Ah, here is the rub! Our strenuous and overcultivated modern life, with all its parent-saving inventions and means of side-stepping parental responsibility, has not yet devised an automatic spanking machine.

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Nevertheless, a need so apparent could not fail to be supplied somehow. Eureka! We read with thankful emotion that "Miss Maude Kelly, an attractive, well educated young woman living in Toronto, Canada, sends out private circulars notifying parents that she 'corrects' children for a reasonable consideration and is ready at all hours to visit homes where her services are required." Miss Kelly, we are further informed, is doing a profitable business in this line. She is an athletic young woman, skilled in physical culture, and much practice has made her perfect as a spank artist. She relieves fathers and mothers of the unpleasant necessity of applying physical correction to the posterior of their offspring's anatomy, for a moderate fee, satisfaction guaranteed or no pay.

Submitting to an interview by a representative of The Minneapolis Tribune, this fertile-minded and able-bodied young woman said:

"I was formerly a teacher of gymnastic exercises. One afternoon a friend of mine told me her son Harry was incorrigible. I suggested a whipping.

"'Oh, I couldn't manage it,' she replied.

"'Ask his father to do it, then,' I pursued.

"'He is away,' she replied, 'and will not be back for a week.' I knew the family very well and I offered my services as a friend. They were accepted. Harry was a boy of 11, but I took him into the nursery and spanked him very soundly.

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"After that Harry's mother came to me frequently, and friends of hers got to hear of my kindly offices and get me to act for them. My income was small, extra money would be useful, and I decided to make a business of juvenile correction. I am not unduly severe, but I make my patients smart."

"Patients" is good! Success to this clever young woman's strong right arm! If she is not an American girl she deserves to be, and we predict that she will do a land-office business if she moves over the border. We need her in every American city. The potentialities of the profession she has originated are illimitable. Why not the spank specialist? Here is an open field with no competition for our athletic seminary girls inured to the hardy sport of basketball, dumbbells, and Indian clubs. Let them cultivate their muscles and hang out their shingles after graduation. Let them establish a scientific medical school of spanking, and, for extreme results, spanking sanatoriums or hospitals. Such conveniences are a necessity of the age. They are necessary to the physical and moral well-being of the rising generation. [...]