Remembering an English eccentric
Picture credit: Getty Images
Eric Arthur Wildman was an English eccentric who had
moments in the spotlight in the late nineteen-forties and early fifties. He was
a corporal punishment enthusiast and he formed two groups; The
National Society For The Retention Of Corporal Punishment and Corpun
Educational Organisation Limited. He sold canes, birches
and straps and he gave lectures and exhibitions on their use. He also published
books and pamphlets with titles such as Commonsense Punishment, Corporal
Punishment In The Home, The German Girl: Corporal Punishment In Germany and
Austria and Dress And Discipline For The Delinquent Adolescent Girl. At
one time he also edited a fortnightly review called The Retentionist.
He posted yellow cards on noticeboards across London recommending
parents and teachers to contact Eric A. Wildman for advice on upbringing:
‘Parents, consider your children’s moral character, consider their future, and
do not shirk the necessity of occasional corporal punishment.’
Today, he would go almost unnoticed. He would probably
have a website and possibly a room in his home converted into a headmaster’s
study where he would offer CP services. He
might be a member of a group of adult spanking devotees.
But back in he day he was considered such a threat
they set the law onto him.
Gervas d’Olbert in his book Chastisement Across The Ages (Fortune
Press, 1956) describes Wildman’s shop, ‘The walls hung with instruments of
punishment cast in a variety of colours and shapes and producing a strange
effect as of some barbaric chieftain’s tent. On the walls, as on the tables and
floor, were specimens of almost every type of punitive instrument: birch, whip,
cane and strap. The extent of the director’s energy – or it might be truer to
say mania – is shown by the variety exhibited within each type of weapon:
shape, size, design, and weight were there in a kaleidoscope to suit apparently
all tastes. The price-list naturally varied accordingly. It would seem that the
main trade was in the homelier articles, that is to say in canes, straps and
belts. A speciality was the series of tawses, the Scottish punitive
instrument.’
At one point he paraded streets wearing huge placards with statements
such as ‘Abolish the Birch & Crime Increases. Sign the
petition and join the crusade to defeat the abolition of Judicial Corporal
Punishment’ and ‘Parents, do your children need beating?… If so, …’
D’Olbert writes, ‘He began enlarging his activities in his office
itself: at one time, during the school-vacations, a “resident housemaster” was
to be seen there, who professed himself ready to give free advice on the
upbringing of boys. And his advice was sometimes actually sought. According to
reliable accounts, a long discussion might take place as to the respective advantages
of beating on the bare buttocks or of providing the coverage of trousers or
shorts.’
In 1953 Wildman was fined £500 (a considerable sum at the time) with the
threat of 12 month’ imprisonment for non-payment at London’s Old Bailey court
when aged 31 he pleaded guilty to seventeen charges of publishing ‘obscene
libels’; that is how his pamphlets were described.
His defence lawyer told the court, ‘He had a kink, and thought he had a
crusade for the retention of corporal punishment.’
Daily Mirror
The Common Serjeant imposing the fine said, ‘I do not want to crush him
out of existence. But I want to give him a sharp lesson and, if possible, to
make him realise he is not the world’s Messiah in this matter.’
Wildman was back in the news in 1957. The People, a Sunday
tabloid, ran a short report headlined, THIS MAN HAS SEX ON THE BRAIN. It told
how Wildman, a petrol pump attendant, was conducting ‘a pilot survey into
sexual relationships’. The newspaper concluded. ‘We think Mr Wildman should
stick to petrol pumping.’
Wildman would be completely forgotten today if it wasn’t for an incident
at a school. The Daily Mail, a newspaper with a fair share of floggers
itself as readers, recalled
in 2009, ‘The year 1948 saw an extraordinary event in Wildman’s career. He was
invited to give a lecture at Horsley Hall private school in Staffordshire. The
event turned out to be a ruse devised by its progressive 28-year-old
headmaster, Robert Copping, who was against this form of correction.
‘The audience sat attentively until Copping asked: “Tell me, Mr Wildman,
what is the most suitable cane for a boy 15 years old or over?”
‘Wildman brandished his prized 30in Dragon Smoky Malacca, “a very pliant
and punishing cane”.
‘“And how many strokes do you advise?” Copping asked. Wildman suggested:
“Six of the best, in the place that seems to have been provided by nature for
the purpose.”
‘At that point, Copping gave a signal, his boys grabbed Wildman and meted out six strokes to a bewildered Wildman.’
Photographs
were taken and the Reuters news agency sent the story across the globe. It exists
today in numerous newspaper archives such as this one from the Winnipeg
Tribune, Canada.
After his conviction it seems Wildman kept
a lower profile but he continued to sell his canes and
other spanking implements via mail order from home until at least the
mid-1970s. He died in 1990.
For
more posts in the ‘Remembering’ series, click here
For more extracts from Chastisement Across
The Ages, click here
Traditional School Discipline
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