19th-Century Reformatory Spanking Machine (Or Not)
In 1898, the New York Times reported on the state of spanking machine technology in our nation’s reformatories:
The text of this, but not the image, was reported many years ago on Spanking Blog. Various reliable sources suggest that the Warden Hoyt quoted in the piece subsequently claimed he was only joking, and that no spanking machine was ever made.
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It does seem like a hoax. If Warden Hoyt in Denver has designed a spanking chair, then what need would there be for a purchase of one from Kansas?
I downloaded a clipping from the February 13th, 1898 Chicago Tribune which has a similar story to this, but includes a large drawing of the chair. The drawing doesn’t seem like it would actually work, it’s basically a square chair with no seat and several oval paddles kind of hanging in the space below. There was a later interview, in the August 20, 1899 tribune, where Warden Hoyt talks about his support of corporal punishment and how he favors the paddle. The article describes this previous article: “The Denver papers were full of accounts of the trouble the managers of a certain industrial school for girls and young women, located in Denver, were having in controlling the inmates. I was interviewed by several of the newspapers and was asked what I would do with these incorrigible girls. I replied that I would spank them. They seemed to marvel at such a method and advanced several reasons why it could not be done. Then, just as a joke, I suggested a bottomless chair with paddles operated by electricity and so on. The Denver dailies took it up, published a cut of the alleged chair and a column article on the same, and the matter went all over the country.” Back when the newspaper archives were available for free, I downloaded a number of different clippings.