The Library of Spanking Fiction: Wellred Weekly


Wellred Weekly
Volume 1, Number 7 : April 27, 2012
 
Articles
Items of interest regarding all things spanking

In Search of Alice Kerr-Sutherland
by Februs

I have to admit that when starting to write this article I knew very little of Alice Kerr-Sutherland but she seemed worthy of further investigation. I should also confess that the finished article bears little resemblance to the one I was expecting to write, being more an account of my investigations than a detailed review of the life of Miss Kerr-Sutherland.

Initial searches of the internet suggested she is known for being a dominatrix and author of a particularly celebrated book: A Guide To The Correction of Young Gentlemen.

Despite her apparent celebrity it turned out there were very few sources of actual information about her to be had but I was aware that an Alice Kerr-Sutherland Society had been formed so this seemed like a good enough place to start.

The Alice Kerr-Sutherland Society
According to its (now defunct) website, the Alice Kerr-Sutherland Society was formed in England in 1992, in order to "promulgate the teachings of the author of A Guide to the Correction of Young Gentlemen". It further stated that:
"In the opinion of the founders, this is the most perfect work yet created on the subject of romantic (domestic) discipline with ladies, needless to say, in charge. The original founders of the Society are all females, as is the editorial board of 'The Governess', the Society's House Journal."
Their website further revealed, in a somewhat grandiose manner, that the Society was "the largest such organisation in the world, with members on (almost) every continent." It also stated that the Society and its journal went into abeyance in 1996, allegedly due to the ill-health of its Honorary Secretary, Miss Jacqueline Ophir, but that due to demand and with the blessing of the original British founders, it subsequently re-launched as the Alice Kerr-Sutherland Society International with 'new headquarters' in New York City, USA.

Unfortunately, despite all the info about the Society itself virtually nothing at all was said about Miss Kerr-Sutherland so this seemed like a good time to take a look at the book she was famous for penning.

A Guide To The Correction of Young Gentlemen
Although apparently written in 1924 the book was first made available to a general audience via a reprint published by Delectus Books in 1991. It was subsequently also reprinted by AKS Books in 2003 and Olympiapress in 2006.

The first page of the book reveals a subtitle: The Successful Administration of Physical Disciple to Males by Females! but no actual author name is provided, the contents being described as "written by a lady". Of greater interest, at the top of the page is a large, rather intriguing banner which proclaims "BANNED AND BURNED IN 1924".

According to the Introduction, the authorship of which is credited to 'The Publishers', the book was initially produced in 1924 in a private edition limited to just 100 copies. The publishers further go on to describe how all the copies were seized by the police prior to a single copy being sold or distributed when the privately-owned printing works belonging to Gerald Percival Hamer were raided on October 5th, 1924.

The Introduction goes on to describe, in great detail, the subsequent trial which took place, the nett outcome being that all copies of the book were ordered to be burned and the publisher, Hamer, was sentenced to "11 years penal servitude".

How then did Delectus Books come into possession of the book if all the copies had been destroyed over 65 years ago? They claim not to know and make various detailed speculations about how one single copy might have been preserved. They also inform us that the book came into their possession under "curious circumstances" but unfortunately for the reader and would-be detective they refuse to reveal what these curious circumstances were. They were equally tight-lipped when I contacted them recently in order to try and secure some primary sources for the information provided in their Introduction claiming they were "sworn to secrecy".

So, what then does the Introduction reveal about the life of Miss Kerr-Sutherland given that it appears to be the only actual source of information about her?

A Short Biography
She was born in 1879.

She originally worked as a governess and for an 8 month period between November 1898 and August 1899 served as Assistant Matron at the St Mary Capel Home for Orphans in Nuneaton, Bedfordshire where she apparently left following allegations of harsh punishment which were reported by the Nuneaton Advertiser.

At some point between 1900 and 1904 she appears to have abandoned the role of Governess to become a dominatrix.

In 1908 she was convicted of running a disorderly house at Clifton Terrace, Bristol and the Bristol Evening Herald reported how:
"...a serving captain in a famous regiment of fusiliers was found in her apartment, kneeling strapped to a bench, with his trousers removed and the marks of physical chastisement clearly visible on his posterior."
In 1912 she was named as a director of a small publishing company called Dolomite Press.

Whilst operating as a prostitute in Bristol she apparently also advertised in "respected scholastic periodicals" as a specialist in the "correction of disruptive or unacceptable behaviour in boys".

Between 1915 and 1920 she ran an "elegant and flourishing flagellation brothel" which catered exclusively for the aristocratic and wealthy cognoscenti and was regularly visited by Earl Mountbatten's elder brother, George, the Marquis of Milford Haven.

Following her third conviction she was subsequently sent to Holloway Prison for a term of 4 years for public morality offences.

She never married and died in 1939 having emigrated to South Africa.

All in all one has to say that her biography reads very much like the idealised fantasy of a submissive male.

Some Further Investigations
It was at this point that I thought I'd try and undertake some investigations of my own in order to see if I could unearth some additional material. Being something of an amateur genealogist I decided to look for any records of birth, marriage or death for the surname Kerr-Sutherland within England, Scotland and Wales. There turned out to be no such records.

This appeared to leave only one conclusion and that was that Kerr-Sutherland can't have been her real name. However, according to the Introduction to her book she had been mentioned in at least 2 newspapers, several scholastic journals and been convicted 3 times and eventually sent to prison. Surely, at least some of these sources must have used her real name. It was at this point that I contacted Delectus Books to ask for any one single primary source of information that referred to her but as previously stated they wrote back claiming they were not allowed to share anything at all with me.

Further investigations that I carried out revealed that a number of other claims regarding her life and activities were simply untrue. The only conclusion that could be drawn at this point was that Alice Kerr-Sutherland had never existed and was a wholly fictitious creation or, alternatively, that her description was based on another person who had actually existed. Not such a great discovery to make when you're planning on writing an article about her!

In Search of the Real Author
Despite the fact that Alice Kerr-Sutherland had never written the book she was famous for or even existed, the content and background information provided in the 1991 publication was certainly good enough to fool Joseph C. Smith, Professor of Law at the University of British Columbia and Carla J. Ferstman, authors of The Castration of Oedipus: Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Will to Power, who state on page 250:
"While the volume in question specifies only that it was "Written by a Lady" the author of this book was, without doubt, Alice Kerr-Sutherland, a professional dominatrix who like many in her trade had started her working career as a governess. She had been a close associate of Hamer's since 1912, and there can be no question about her authorship of the Guide when its style is compared with other surviving examples of her writing."
Ooops!

So if Miss Kerr-Sutherland was a figment of someone's imagination who then actually wrote the book? A closer inspection suggests that the gender of the real author may even be in doubt as the book contains what might be described as "masculine prose". In addition it is highly unlikely that it was written in the 1920s as it occasionally uses terminology that was not in use at that time. One example is the use of the word 'dominatrix' in the following extract:
"...At other times we see her as the dominatrix of a household: the unsentimental Aunt, the grave Stepmother, the severe Mother."
Investigation of the etymology of the word 'dominatrix' reveals that its use dates back to at least 1561 and that it is the feminine form of the Latin dominator, a ruler or lord and that it was originally used in a wholly non-sexual sense. Its earliest recorded use in the modern sense as a female dominant, however, dates only from 1967.

Some further searches later led me to the AKS Books website where it looks as if the mystery may have been solved, in part at least:
"The book was, in fact, written by the much-admired writer, Jacqueline Ophir, prior to the formation of The Alice Kerr-Sutherland Society as a tribute to the non-existent author!"
Interestingly, the 'much-admired writer' also appears to have been the proprietor of AKS Books.

Jacqueline Ophir
So now, if you will excuse the unintended pun, we appear to have got to the bottom of things... or have we?

The name Jacqueline Ophir turns out to be almost as scarce as that of Alice Kerr-Sutherland and once again there are no primary sources of information to suggest a person with such a name actually existed. What then is known of the person calling themselves Jacqueline Ophir?

Well they were certainly the founder of the Alice Kerr-Sutherland Society and the driving force behind their journal, The Governess. It also appears that they were the original owner of AKS Books whose website describes them as "one of England's foremost disciplinary theoreticians and authors". The AKS Society website tells us that they later retired from the day-to-day running of the Society in order to devote themself to writing novels on the subject of romantic discipline.

Following 'retirement' they went on to write the following under the name Jacqueline Ophir: Sweet Retribution (1995), The House in St. John's Wood (1995), The Fellowship of the Rod (1995), Tales of the Unbreeched (1996), The Song of the Cane (1998) and A Perfect Mistress (2002). In addition it seems they also wrote a number of items under the pen name of Louise Malatesta, the pseudonym being derived from feminising the name of the 1920s writer and artist Louis Malteste.

Having made a number of enquiries which bore little fruit I did finally manage to establish contact with a reliable source who was acquainted with the person using the name Jacqueline Ophir. It seems the name was created simply from "of here" but also recalling John Masefield's "Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir". Furthermore, they described the person as being "...very charismatic, infectiously enthusiastic, always free with compliments and never difficult to work with."

In Conclusion
As to whether someone matching the description of Alice Kerr-Sutherland actually existed or who Jacqueline Ophir really was I think it only fitting to leave to the reader to determine because in a sense it doesn't really matter. Nor does it really matter that the book, A Guide To The Correction of Young Gentlemen, was not actually penned by Kerr-Sutherland as, to quote AKS Books:
"...it was and still is an extremely comprehensive 'Flagellation Cookbook' detailing the philosophy, equipment and techniques for the successful administration of physical discipline to males... by females"




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