Penge Penal Insti­tute, 5 May, 11 am

Mr Jim Black, 57, jan­i­tor at the Insti­tute, flogged in front of his col­leagues after being found guilty of gross mis­con­duct by a spe­cial­ly sum­moned tri­bunal. Mr Black had worked at the Insti­tute for twen­ty-five years, and had an exem­plary record, the tri­bunal heard; so the out­burst in which he referred to SCO Rod­well and DCO Pren­der­gast as ‘sil­ly cows who have become too big for their boots’ was out of char­ac­ter. But it was the unan­i­mous view of the tri­bunal that such deroga­to­ry remarks could not be allowed to go unpun­ished. Mr Black was sen­tenced to a 36-stroke can­ing, the strokes to be admin­is­tered on his bare bot­tom, at 30-sec­ond inter­vals, by the col­leagues he had offend­ed. SCO Rod­well and DCO Pren­der­gast dis­charged their duties accord­ing­ly. At the insis­tence of the tri­bunal, the pun­ish­ment was wit­nessed by all ten staff mem­bers at the Institute.

Signed: SCO RODWELL

Penge Penal Insti­tute, 28 April, 12–30 pm

Two 17-year-old youths, one male, one female, birched for an act of gross inde­cen­cy at a bus stop on Sat­ur­day night. Youth A (male) sen­tenced to 24 strokes of the birch, youth B (female) to 12 strokes. SCO Rod­well asked the youths why the court had not sen­tenced them to the same pun­ish­ment, ‘Because that’s how them sil­ly judges think,’ said youth A. ‘It ain’t fair.’ SCO Rod­well asked youth B if she con­curred that the sen­tenc­ing was unfair. Youth B, after con­sid­er­ing the mat­ter, said she did. ‘After all, we was both doing what we was doing, wasn’t we?’ SCO Rod­well asked whether, since there was una­nim­i­ty on the point, it would be rea­son­able for her to give each youth 18 strokes, thus equal­is­ing their sen­tences. The youths, after delib­er­at­ing with each oth­er, agreed. The 18-stroke birch­ings were duly admin­is­tered, full force, by DCO Pren­der­gast. Both youths were reduced to tears, but thanked the cor­rec­tion offi­cers for treat­ing them fairly.

Signed: SCO RODWELL

Penge Penal Insti­tute, 18 April, 6–30 pm

Male youth of 16 caught loi­ter­ing out­side the Insti­tute. On being chal­lenged by DCO Pren­der­gast, who had seen him from the win­dow, the youth con­fessed that he had been lis­ten­ing to the sound of a female shoplifter, a for­mer neigh­bour of his, being caned on the bare bot­tom. ‘It real­ly excit­ed me,’ he admit­ted. DCO Pren­der­gast warned the youth that loi­ter­ing in such a man­ner for pur­pos­es of sex­u­al grat­i­fi­ca­tion was a crim­i­nal offence: she would either have to report him to the police, with a court sum­mons sure to fol­low, or bring the mat­ter to the atten­tion of SCO Rod­well, who could admin­is­ter appro­pri­ate sanc­tions on the spot. The youth, after much dither­ing, chose the lat­ter. SCO Rod­well rep­ri­mand­ed the youth severe­ly, then placed him over her knee, pulled down his under­pants and spanked him for the next fif­teen min­utes, using a strap and hair­brush. The youth sub­se­quent­ly apol­o­gised and promised not to repeat the offence.

Signed: SCO RODWELL

Penge Penal Insti­tute, 11 April, 9 am

A train­ing day for new staff mem­ber DCO Clara Hewitt from Kent, under the super­vi­sion of SCO Rod­well, with DCO Pren­der­gast in atten­dance. DCO Hewitt, who will be deputis­ing for DCO Pren­der­gast in August, when she is on hol­i­day with her fam­i­ly, was instruct­ed in the use of all the imple­ments of chas­tise­ment rou­tine­ly deployed at the Penge Penal Insti­tute. Her tech­nique was good, as befit­ted a for­mer deputy head­mistress at a small pri­vate school, and she was par­tic­u­lar­ly accu­rate with the cane, but she strug­gled to achieve the sever­i­ty lev­els appro­pri­ate for a place of adult cor­rec­tion. Asked if she was will­ing to be on the receiv­ing end of a demon­stra­tion by SCO Rod­well, DCO Hewitt reluc­tant­ly assent­ed. A 12-stroke can­ing was then admin­is­tered, with under­gar­ments removed. DCO Hewitt, despite twice cry­ing out in shock, bore her pun­ish­ment with for­ti­tude and promised to strive to incor­po­rate what she had learnt into her future cor­rec­tive work.

Signed: SCO RODWELL

Penge Penal Insti­tute, 7 March, 8–30 am

Strap­pings of 24, 24 and 48 strokes, respec­tive­ly, admin­is­tered to Miss Bar­bara Har­ris, 19, Miss Cather­ine Wilmot, 20, and Mrs Joanne New­man, 45, all of Ten­nyson Avenue, West Penge, where they had been caught solic­it­ing on Sun­day evening. The mag­is­trates accept­ed the plea of the two younger women that they had only engaged in illic­it activ­i­ty at the coax­ing of Mrs New­man, a woman of ill repute with three pre­vi­ous sen­tences to her name; a lighter sen­tence was accord­ing­ly award­ed. The strap­pings were admin­is­tered on the bare bot­toms of the women by SCO Rod­well and DCO Pren­der­gast, oper­at­ing in tan­dem. Miss Har­ris screamed con­tin­u­ous­ly after the third stroke, Miss Wilmot after the sev­enth. Mrs New­man bore her pun­ish­ment in silence. It was not­ed that her but­tocks bore the marks of pre­vi­ous strap­pings. SCO Rod­well sub­se­quent­ly wrote a let­ter to the mag­is­trates express­ing her con­cern at the inad­e­qua­cy of the strap to effect a change in Mrs Newman’s behav­iour, and rec­om­mend­ing, in the event of Mrs New­man re-offend­ing, a recourse to the cane or birch.

Signed: SCO RODWELL

Penge Penal Insti­tute, 15 Decem­ber, 6–30 pm

DCO Pren­der­gast dis­ci­plined for neg­li­gence amount­ing to seri­ous pro­fes­sion­al mis­con­duct. A Penge youth, 18, hav­ing been sen­tenced to 36 strokes of the heavy strap, to be admin­is­tered by SCO Rod­well, it tran­spired that there was no such strap on the premis­es. When SCO Rod­well asked for an expla­na­tion, DCO Pren­der­gast replied that she had bor­rowed the strap to chas­tise her teenage daugh­ter, Har­ri­et, then omit­ted to return it to its usu­al place in the strap-box. She apol­o­gised pro­fuse­ly for the over­sight. SCO Rod­well informed DCO Pren­der­gast that, although her pre­vi­ous record was exem­plary, such slip­shod behav­iour could not be tol­er­at­ed. After she had pun­ished the youth with the medi­um strap in lieu of the heavy one, increas­ing the num­ber of strokes to 48, she put Miss Pren­der­gast over her knee, lift­ed her skirt and spanked her with the utmost vigour, ‘as a reminder to be more care­ful in future’.

Signed: SCO RODWELL

Penge Penal Insti­tute, 5 Decem­ber 10–30

Grave dis­or­der broke out dur­ing the strap­ping of Jane Kel­ly, 16, for lit­ter­ing. SCO Rod­well was admin­is­ter­ing a 25-stroke strap­ping, with the assis­tance of DCO Pren­der­gast, when the girl’s father, who had asked to be present at the pun­ish­ment, direct­ed a vol­ley of abuse at the two cor­rec­tion offi­cers. ‘You’re ****ing sadists!’ he shout­ed, repeat­ing the aster­isked word on three sep­a­rate occa­sions. SCO Rod­well warned Mr Kel­ly that she would not tol­er­ate lan­guage of that kind when she was sim­ply car­ry­ing out her civic duties, and that he was to leave the room imme­di­ate­ly. When he declined to do so, he was restrained with the help of DCO Pren­der­gast and Mr Joly­on Pren­der­gast, hus­band of the same, who was down­stairs hav­ing a cup of tea; he was then thrashed, severe­ly, with a cane, such ad hoc pun­ish­ments being per­mit­ted under Reg­u­la­tion 11 (b) of the Penge Penal Code. Mr Kel­ly sub­se­quent­ly apol­o­gised and told SCO Rod­well she had been right to take such a firm line.

Signed: SCO RODWELL

Penge Penal insti­tute, 27 Novem­ber, 4–30 pm

Sev­en youths aged between 14 and 23 received exem­plary can­ings fol­low­ing dis­tur­bances at the match between Crys­tal Palace and Hud­der­s­field Town at Sel­hurst Park on Sat­ur­day. All those sen­tenced were Crys­tal Palace sup­port­ers who had shout­ed abuse at the ref­er­ee after the award of a con­tentious penal­ty in the 88th minute. They were iden­ti­fied by a stew­ard, Mr Wat­son, then tak­en into cus­tody by PC Roberts and WPC Williams, who were on duty at the ground. After a spe­cial sit­ting of the mag­is­trates’ court, the youths were sen­tenced to can­ings of between 15 and 24 strokes. Their bot­toms were bared, to empha­sise the grav­i­ty of their offence, and they were strapped to the birch­ing bench to ensure that they could not escape the bite of the cane by mov­ing. SCO Rod­well admin­is­tered the can­ings, while DCO Pren­der­gast took pho­tographs of the boys’ but­tocks after their pun­ish­ment, at the request of the local newspaper.

Signed: SCO RODWELL

Penge Penal Insti­tute, 21 Novem­ber, 3 pm

An extra­or­di­nary Sun­day meet­ing of the Insti­tute, at the request of local vic­ar, Rev. Hor­a­tio Plom­er of St Mary’s Penge. His ser­mon hav­ing been dis­rupt­ed by per­sis­tent gig­gling by two girls in the sec­ond pew, Rev. Plom­er met with the girls’ par­ents in the vestry after the church and, with their full agree­ment, made arrange­ments for the two girls to be dealt with as soon as pos­si­ble.  The girls – Celia Jones, 14, and Patri­cia McCall, 15 – were offered the choice of being pun­ished before the con­gre­ga­tion at even­song or being sent to the Penge Penal Insti­tute for sum­ma­ry chas­tise­ment. They chose the latter.

SCO Rod­well, who had been in the con­gre­ga­tion at St Mary’s and wit­nessed the girls’ behav­iour, was charged with teach­ing them a suit­able les­son. She opt­ed to put the girls over her knee and spank them with a wood­en hair brush on the bare bot­tom until they begged for mer­cy. The girls were then made to stand in the cor­ner for half an hour, with their bad­ly bruised pos­te­ri­ors exposed to view.

Signed: SCO RODWELL