Good to hear from you, Jim. Yes, we should meet up when things are less hectic. Project Gabriel examined how women in the past adopted roles of combat par excellence contrary to the preconceptions of the time. The army wanted to understand what made an otherwise ordinary woman a fearful fighter so this could be applied to modern training. Knowing your interest in the subject I enclose an interesting case from the Victorian era in a iron-working village near Ironbridge, Shropshire.

Yours Sincerely,
General Philip Warpinton.

Working at the blast furnaces smelting iron all day long gives one a thirst that one or two pints of beer just cannot quench. So it was not surprising to find me in The Red Lion with the lads supping ale after a hard day’s graft for naff-all pay. Harry was going on about his nipper’s first day at school. I wasn’t paying much attention as I’m not even married let alone got kids of my own. There was only one school in the village. We’d all gone there when we were young and hated it.

Sited at the edge of the village, the small single-storey red-brick building with a double slate-tiled roof had two schoolrooms. One small in which Miss Savage taught, the other much larger which a succession of teachers, sometimes male, occupied. I remembered with a chill in my bones those tall windows that lit up the barely furnished rooms yet positioned high up to prevent you seeing out of. The high-ceilinged rooms lit by gaslight were gloomy and stuffy.

School began at 9.00am and ended at 5.00pm with a two hour lunch break so kids could go home for a midday meal, except those from outlying farms who remained at school. Condemned at 5 years old, you suffered until you reached 12. A low brick wall enclosed the small playground penning in children like sheep. Waist-high to a man, they could have easily jumped it and escaped to freedom. That was something you only tried once for the teachers were very strict and very scary. I think they only became teachers because of their extreme hatred of children so that they could exercise their physical and mental sadism with the full blessing of the state. Kids soon learnt to do what the teacher asked or they’d get a rap across the knuckles with a ruler, or a clip around the ears, if they were lucky. The favoured instrument of discipline was the cane or the strap which was delivered with relish for the slightest misdemeanour. Perhaps it is then unsurprising that teachers were usually unmarried ladies. Dried up prunes who a man would never bed, taking out their inability to mother on the offspring of others.

My ears suddenly picked up something Harry was saying. “Miss Savage was barking orders at the little kiddies and glaring at them like she could turn water to ice” He said as a shiver went down my spine. “Christ! I nearly wet myself when she dismissed me with a sharp rebuke and a frightening stare, the old sourpuss”. “The old witch is still alive?” I gasped feeling badly shaken. “Aye and still ruling those kids with an iron hand” he replied. “Came from Coven Heath that one, I wager” Mark added. “She still makes me shake with fear, and I ain’t set foot in that place for nigh on 12 years” Matthew said. He and me were of the same age. “God! The old crone really had it in for you didn’t she Peter?” He chuckled. “Aye that was the truth of it for I was no more a rapscallion than any other lad yet I was laid across her lap more than most” I muttered into my beer recalling the feel of my belly laying across her firm upper thigh covered by a long skirt as she raised it and crossed her knee with my shorts pulled down around my legs.

“Do you remember what we called her?” Harry asked “Aye, Iron-hand” Mark replied. “Lord could she wield that cane like it were an iron poker” he reminisced “She’d tan your hide so raw you couldn’t sit down for at least a week without crying and that’s the truth”. “No wonder she never got married” Matthew said “real scary looking lady”. I remembered her small narrow shrew-like face with a large prominent nose and a wide thin-lipped mouth always set in stern disapproval. Small beady brown eyes glared coldly from behind a large pair of horn-rimmed glasses that magnified them making them even scarier. Arching above these, her eyebrows were thick and dark while her long mousey-brown hair was worn up in a bun adding to the austere look. Prim and proper, Miss Savage wore a simple full length black skirt with a high collar white cotton blouse fully buttoned at all times while upon her feet were stout flat boots. “Let me tell you, time has made no improvements” Harry remarked. “That voice” I shuddered with the memory. Miss Savage had a terrifying loud strict voice that demanded absolute obedience.

“And what was it with those corsets?” Mark asked. “How could I forget those?” I remarked. The stays the stern woman wore imparted a remarkably exaggerated hour-glass figure with a wasp-like waist while accentuating a large bosom. Too young to appreciate it at the time, my pubescent self often recalled that remarkable figure looming over me as she scrutinised my work for the slightest of errors with that massive white cliff face thrusting forward as it poised above me looking as stiff as rock. So big, so heaving, so strangely exhilarating a thing for such a frightening stern woman to possess. I am ashamed to admit that magnificent bosom kept me awake during my formative years with rather unfortunate discharges in the night. “Time Gentlemen please” the barman called and with a sigh we downed our last pints then went to the gents to empty our bladders before saying our farewells and departing for home.

Light-headed and giddy with the ale, it took me a few minutes of confusion before I realised that I was walking down a poorly lit street nowhere near home. There were lights on in a building ahead so I headed there to get my bearings. To my surprise I found myself outside the low walls of the schoolhouse looking lonely and forbidding in the dark. Maybe it had been all that talk in the pub that had drawn me here. I should have turned and walked home but curiosity got the better of me. Why were the lights on? Who would be there at this late hour? It was far too late for the cleaners and they daren’t forget to turn off the lights when they left. Maybe some ne’er-do-wells were robbing the place. Well I’d soon sort them out, I decided and opened the gate then headed across the playground to the entrance door around the side of the building.

Entering the small narrow hall with its rows of hooks and low wooden stools for removing dirty shoes brought it all back in a rush. The brick walls were painted green from waist height to the wooden floorboards and white to the high ceiling above. Caught up in a sea of memories I opened the rough wooden inner door. Curiosity mixed with nervousness as I entered the smaller schoolroom. Separated from the much larger room by just a curtain it now seemed to my eyes small and cramped. Four long iron-framed desks bolted to the floor faced the front of the room in rows. The bench seats were so closely aligned that I doubted that my modern self could ever squeeze between them to sit on the unforgiving wood. The wooden table top allowed room only for a slate-board and inkwell for each student with a narrow groove for pen and chalk. Here I would have sat facing the wooden blackboard and teacher’s desk where the bell rested on a small shelf. A globe for learning geography and an abacus for mathematics stood near by. A tall black iron pot from the foundries sat in the corner, with the curving handles of the canes as visible deterrent to free will. To the right was the old fireplace and boiler that I rarely remembered being lit. “Hardiness builds character” I could hear her strident voice lecturing one unfortunate who dared complain of the cold. “It will be warm enough once you get in those iron-mills, mark my words”. The room was sparse and utilitarian. It’s tall walls completely barren other than maps of Britain and the Empire and, in pride of place, a portrait of Queen Victoria, God save the Queen.

It was such a dismal gloomy place designed to crush the spirit and souls of working class kids that I felt quite mournful. I perched cautiously on the end of one of the benches, the alcohol haze clouding my brain, looking up at the forlorn walls with depressing memories of what had seemed an eternity of suffering in this hell-hole instead of enjoying my childhood. Surely that was the right of all children? And not be subject to this institutionalised torture to suppress the masses while their fathers killed themselves slowly at the foundry for bugger-all pay helping some rich upper-class bastard make himself even richer. The bitterness rose as I recalled being a small kid in this God-forsaken place with the terrifying old dragon with the large bust and pinched waist towering over me like a giantess, her small piercing eyes glaring down upon me through her spectacles. A stern disciplinarian only too keen to use the cane to beat compliance into me. The ghosts of a raw bleeding backside stoked my resentment towards figures of authority and women in particular.

Nervous unease filled me, like a naughty child afraid of being caught in this place now denied as an adult. It was Harry’s fault mentioning Miss Savage after all these years. I couldn’t even remember her Christian name or whether she even had one. Eleanor, Prudence it would be something like that. Something with allusions to the middle classes while preaching servitude to the rest of us. I tried to laugh at my nervousness, it was only the alcohol talking. I was no longer a cowering kid but a strong fully grown man. How old must she be now? In her late 60’s if not more? Nothing for a man to be afraid of except her sharp tongue and wagging finger.

“You lad!” the loud commanding voice from my past that used to give me nightmares made me jump. “You have no business being here. Explain yourself” I spun around in horror at the voice I’d never thought I’d hear again only to see a short slim old greying woman. She’d must have been in the other schoolroom and had snuck up quietly. She recognised me before I her. “Peter Shelduck. I always knew that you were a bad penny” a knowing smirk appeared on the wide thin-lipped cruel mouth pushing up her harsh cheekbones either side of a long prominent nose. “And here you are like a thief in the night and like a thief you shall be treated”. There was no mistaking that strict commanding voice or her stern face. “Miss Savage!” I gasped as irrational fear took hold of me. My mouth became dry and my heart beat faster in my chest while starting to sweat. The thin face of the woman showed it’s age looking more haggard and lined with wrinkles than I remembered. Her hair was still worn in a tight bun at the back of the head but now was predominately grey.

“I’m no thief Marm” I found the courage to speak up for myself “I saw the lights on and thought to check naught was amiss”. The severe old woman just glared at me with small beady eyes through large spectacles folding her arms across her chest. An arrogant smirk graced her thin mouth as though she had caught a naughty boy in the act and was enjoying making him squirm. Minding my manners I rose, somewhat unsteadily, in the presence of a lady and was somewhat taken aback by her lack of height. The haughty old woman was a lot shorter than I recalled. As a kid Miss Savage was a terrifying towering giantess but now that I was 24 and 5 foot 10 tall I saw that in truth she stood only 5 foot 2 inches, a slender frail old crone. What a cold hard woman she was, as unfriendly and stern as cold steel on shattered glass. There was nothing likeable about her cold aloof authoritarian arrogance. Even the way she addressed me was demeaning and spiked.

“An unlikely story as you live in the South of the village” The lines creased her harsh ageing face as the knowing smirk got wider as though she had caught me out. “Well, you see...” I began to explain when the old harridan interrupted. “Ah!” her sharp exclamation resounded in the austere schoolroom while raising her left hand and extending her index finger into the air. “Silence is golden” she said. I found myself automatically falling quiet nervously awaiting her displeasure. “Maybe all that alcohol I can smell on your breath has rotted your brains and you lost your bearings from the Inn” she said with cutting sarcasm, her small cold eyes glinting with amusement. “You’ve been drinking. Haven’t you?” she accused, wrinkling her nose as if I had just trodden in something nasty. Inexplicitly I found myself behaving like my younger self, flushing and hanging my head with shame while muttering “Yes, Marm”. Her thin mouth widened in a grim smirk of victory. “Ah-ha! Now we get to the bottom of it. In your drunken stupor you came in here to perform thievery in order to fuel your addiction to the bottle” she crowed. “I am no thief!” I protested. The old crow ignored me, scolding “Drink is the enemy of the working man”.

Looking at the belligerent old woman as she berated me, her slim hour-glass figure with the pinched waist and large thrusting shelf-like bosom was more exhilarating than my pubescent dreams. Yes she was a wrinkly sour-faced little bitch but my eyes wandered over her exaggerated feminine figure with strong stirrings of lust. An emotion that I never thought I’d have for the spiteful arrogant old hag outside my hormonal teenage dreams. Maybe it was the alcohol slowing down my brain or the shock of seeing this nightmare from my past but only then did I notice her unusual attire. Shimmering shiny patterns of shifting light reflected from a white high-collar silk blouse as it stretched over the wide protruding cliff that was her bust, contrasting with the small waist beneath. It came as quite a shock to see such a prudish woman wearing something quite so sensual and softly feminine. Despite her harsh gaze burrowing into my skin, I lowered my eyes and was astounded to see a long black skirt made of leather. Highly sensual, the soft smooth clean polished appearance suggested higher quality than it’s use for safety clothes. It too reflected the light in a provocative and exciting manner that stirred the loins giving me the urge to reach down and run my hands all over it. Although Miss Savage’s gaze could make a rose bush wither and die, I let my eyes sink to the hem of her mesmerising skirt. The prudish righteous ways of the Schoolmarm were well known so I was astonished to see the toes and arches of high-heeled black leather boots so highly polished and reflective that it were clear that these were for fashion rather than working boots. The toes were also narrow and sharply pointed for no obvious practical purpose I could fathom.