The Things Which Get Squirrelled Away

My kids are shocked to hear how the nuns punished us in primary school, and the priests, brothers and lay teachers in secondary school. Maybe I avoided promoting to uni in case the punishments kicked up a level as well, the next step would have been the cat ò nine tails.
Yep Nuns in country Vic (primary) were dab hands with the leather strap! One in particular had a feather duster with Tacks hiding within the feathers.......yep across the back of the hamstrings!
 
This was the sadistic teachers' weapon of choice. Used across the hands, up to six times, from Primary School on: The Tawse
They're still selling the 'king things, proud of their heritage!
'Dick', right enough!

Tawse.jpg
 
Blimey ! Well one of the dinner ladies at my school said I couldn't have pudding unless I ate my sprouts. Hopefully this abuse has been banned.
She really fucked up. It’s “you can’t have your pudding if you don’t eat your meat”


I used to get the cane on the arse, the edge of a 1ft rule on the back of the fingers with my hand held down flat on his desk.

A 3 foot rule on the arse as you were bent over in front of the class, he always practiced his golf swings, the last, usually a chip shot that got you in the nuts.

And a hand down my pants after a shower at the end of sports “If your pubes are wet it proves you’d had a shower”

None of which affected me into my adult years though ….. The rotten bunch of mother fucken cunts!
 
I just did some Googling, the last man hanged in Oz was in 1967, I remember it being announced on the radio news when I was a 10-year-old kid. The uproar had the death penalty abolished soon after, the last bloke flogged in an OZ prison was in 1958. They banned corporal punishment in NSW schools in 1990. It's still not banned in Queensland private schools.
 
All this talk of caning has inspired me to tell my tale of an encounter with a bamboo cane.

In the 80’s I was working as a helicopter mechanic in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia and living in a company apartment building across from the main office building. We were having a company party and drinking homemade beer, we ran out and I walked across the street to get some more and on my return I was stopped by a carload of the religious police. They looked in my bag, opened a bottle and hauled me off.

I disappeared for two weeks into an interrogation prison, eventually pled guilty to alcohol possession and was sentenced to two years in prison and 60 lashes. Long story short, King Khalid dies, the incoming King Fahd pardons all the small timers and I was released and expelled after six months.

But not before getting my lashes, or “sticks” as they were known. Me and all of the rest of the foreigners were all in the same room in our wing of Dammam Central Prison and one evening a guard came and told me and a Brit that we were going to get our sticks the next day. And he used sign language to order me to tell the new kid in our cell who arrived that afternoon that he was going to be killed tomorrow… That was the worst part of the whole six months.

We were essentially the opening act for the head chopping of the Filipino houseboy who raped his bosses wife and killed them both. We all rode over to the square in the same paddy wagon, the condemned was pretty doped up and mostly out of it. I was taken out first, two burly guys held my hands down flat on the bonnet of a black Mercedes idling in the square and the whipping began.

They used a slim finger thick bamboo-like cane and the executioner held the Koran under his upper arm as he wielded the cane. There was no way he would defile the Holy Book by letting it fall to the ground, so it was all done with the lower arm and wrist. And done very quickly while I was still wearing my tee shirt. It stung a bit, my back was reddened and I had a bit of bruising. But in that moment all I could think of was how much my hands hurt. The car was burning hot and my hands were totally blistered and burned.

They put me back into the hot van, took the Brit out and returned him a few minutes later and took the kid out, then drove us back to Dammam Central: he wasn’t coming back with us so they didn’t wait around.

That night they had a special show on TV where the kid acted out the crime in the house where it happened. He humped a dummy in a wig and dress, then stabbed it and stabbed another dressed like the husband. They then showed him getting his head chopped off. Interestingly enough, one of the Saudis in our cell block was the son of the executioner! He was a hopeless alcoholic, of course he was one of the first to be processed and released. I had to stay another three and a half months since the unwritten rule was that foreigners all had to do a minimum of six months.

And that’s my caning story.
 
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my uncle Arthur was a WW11 prisoner of war for a full five years, when he was returned to his home town of Westerham in Kent in 1945, the transport was a lorry and there was one other man to be dropped off in Westerham high street, my uncle jumped out of the barely stationary lorry onto the ground, and turned to recieve the chucked kit bag, the second bloke jumped to the ground, fell badly, and rolled into the traffic only to be crushed by another passing truck and killed, he too a long term POW, and he died in his home town a free man, My uncle was ordered by staff, to go straight to the mans home and inform his parents of the tragedy, and to NOT go home first, jesus that must have been hard for him to tell. my uncle survived for another 20 years, taking his own life in 1965, he never forgave the Nazi'z or Jap's and never bought anything manufactured by either, he though he had cancer, stomach maybe, autopsy proved he didnt and likely it was a muscle strain, , in the weeks before his death, he said he was sure the Nazi food was the cause, pure pork fat and 3 cabbage leaves anyone? five years of similar grub must have been a torture on its own.
CLEM
 
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Good yarn there Alzero.
I was in Saudi in 84/85, occasionally would ride my XR500R down to the town square on Fridays to see if any heads were to roll. Must have picked the wrong days as I never experience a beheading. Probably glad I did in hindsight.
 
Some arab countries they cane the underside of the feet. A friend saw a beheading by sword from his hotel window, in a town square with lots of audience watching on, it freaked him out. Another friend witnessed tanks driving over massed demonstrators in that famous square in the far east. No interest in visiting those countries, despite that the average person there is extremely friendly.
 
Someone I know liked to see those recent videos from that bunch who almost established a to them a religious enclave. He offered me a viewing. No idea why anyone would touch that, the world has some normal-looking sicko types in it.
 
I know Saudi law is harsh ( up to them how they do things) but I would like to know how there crime rate compares with ours. I’m a great believer in when in Rome, if that’s the rules that’s the rules. I’m sure people that are beheaded tend not to reoffend.
 
I know Saudi law is harsh ( up to them how they do things) but I would like to know how there crime rate compares with ours. I’m a great believer in when in Rome, if that’s the rules that’s the rules. I’m sure people that are beheaded tend not to reoffend.
Problem is that it breeds an expectation of that kind of behaviour is acceptable when not in Rome.
In Istanbul, for example, Jamal Khashoggi despite not having been convicted of any crime
 
Problem is that it breeds an expectation of that kind of behaviour is acceptable when not in Rome.
In Istanbul, for example, Jamal Khashoggi despite not having been convicted of any crime
No worse than Mossad or CIA or any other Government hit squads. The US have just executed a guy by firing squad - outrageous or effective? UK are letting people out of prison to make room for more people in prison🤔
 
Some arab countries they cane the underside of the feet. A friend saw a beheading by sword from his hotel window, in a town square with lots of audience watching on, it freaked him out. Another friend witnessed tanks driving over massed demonstrators in that famous square in the far east. No interest in visiting those countries, despite that the average person there is extremely friendly.
When I was in the interrogation center, they made me watch prisoners being questioned. I saw a foot beating and electric shocks being applied. As a westerner they couldn’t use the same physical methods on me as on the Pakistanis and Filipinos. So they made me, as the only western person there, watch. After two weeks, I was glad to sign my confession and get transferred to the general population in the Central Prison.

My employer and co-workers had no inkling of what had happened or where I was until I arrived in the regular prison. The authorities just stonewalled all their inquiries.

Now I have to try and forget it all over again! I woke up last night and thought I was back there again for a few seconds.
 
Bit different to the caning method in Australia Clem. Here the thugs made you hold your hand out and then proceeded to hit you with the cane on your fingers. The maximum allowed was six per hand and the talented thugs would aim to hit as near to the end of your fingers as possible to inflict maximum pain. I would certainly like to meet one of those thugs in a dark alley but like you our age means most of those arseholes are dead or dribbling away in a nursing home.
Tom
Same at my school Tom, bloody hurt though and I remember wincing as others copped it too. Some of those teachers were sadists but fortunately not all.
 
The main thing I learned was to cover your tracks and dont get caught, the problem was actually knowing what the crime was half the time. Nit-picking was a big thing.
 
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