Birching For Shoplifters
Abel has found a newspaper account of sorta-consensual (as in, agreed-to to avoid prosecution) private birchings for “female shoplifters of gentle birth”:
I doubt that the original “London Truth” source is any more reliable than Правда ever was, but it’s a fun tale nonetheless — the sort of tale that gets recounted in the funny papers because it’s slightly lurid and because enough people sort of want to believe it even if they actually don’t.
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I certainly do want to believe it. I love the idea of voluntarily opting for the pain of the birch. I wonder what the ‘milder form of chastisement’ was?