The Sunday Telegraph, 7th February 1993

Oxford educators: Miss Partridge and Miss Langridge run meetings for
students downstairs, discipline sessions for paying punters upstairs
Swish society of Oxford's hits and misses

by Nicholas Farrell


Fear not the Chinese slipper, but beware the crook-handled cane. It is a
perfect tool of punishment and it really hurts.

Miss Partridge, dressed in gown and mortar-board, stood by the blackboard
in an upstairs room at her suburban semi in Oxford. I sat before her at an
old school desk on which were a 12in ruler and a pencil. She loomed above
me. Dotted about were assorted canes.

Her scarlet lipstick and turquoise eye-shadow were the only flashes of
colour in the drab room. She wrote on the board: "I must obey my mistress
at all times." It was time for the lesson to begin. Such lessons would come
as a sharp surprise to the Oxford undergraduates who visit the house for
quite different reasons.

Miss Partridge - alias Miss Traill, Mari De Colwyn, Miss Clare Tyrrell and
Miss Scarlett - and her companion, Miss Priscilla Langridge, who is said to
have a suspicious five o'clock shadow beneath her mask, run regular
gatherings to which undergraduates are invited. The Constant Nymph soirees,
named after a 1920s novel by Margaret Kennedy, are a dotty attempt to
escape the late 20th century.

Dress code is strict: black tie for the men; evening gowns for the women.
The aim is to leave the poisoning of the age behind and enter the world of
Romantia.

Old favourites such as Land of Hope and Glory and the Teddy Bears' Picnic
are played on a crackly wind-up gramophone. Bowes, the doddery butler,
serves cocktails called the Fountain of Youth - gin, sugar water and lemon.
Television and conversation about post-war people and events are banned.
The undergraduates pay £3 to attend. Cocktails are paid for in shillings
and pence.

Romantia involves secession from the modern world. The two women claim that
one of their several magazines, The Romantic, has 1,000 subscribers. Their
group, the Romantic Society, has been advertised in publications such as
the Spectator. The response has been very favourable, they say.

They also run the Anti-Metric Society, whose motto is "Don't Give An Inch".
Its patron is Patrick Moore, the astronomer.

One regular undergraduate attender said: "There's something rather grimly
fascinating about them. The majority feel the same way as me: it's a
sociological experience. It has to be seen to be believed."

The undergraduate was astonished when he was told of the upstairs
activities. He said: "Bowes the butler is a rather odd character. But I'd
never have guessed that they also cane people."

Last month the Sunday Telegraph disclosed that Miss Traill and Miss
Langridge fled a house they had occupied for 10 years in County Donegal
after a disagreement with the owners. That was in December.

The owners found bundles of sado-masochistic and lesbian magazines and a
school-room complete with blackboard, desks and canes - as well as
magazines of extremist Right-wing groups such as the British National
Party. The women ran the house as a school.

Miss Traill, 41, a graduate, used to be a real teacher. Between 1979 and
1982 she taught at a junior school in south-east London. Having fled
Ireland, the two women are apparently permanently resident in Oxford.

Miss Partridge advertises in adult magazines such as Forum, via an 0898
number. For £75 men and women can come to the house and be disciplined. Men
must wear a suit and the women stockings and suspenders. I went in the
guise of a Mr Fletcher, a civil servant in fisheries and food.

Miss Partridge's rules were simple: I had to address her as "ma'am", put my
hand up if I had to ask a question, stand up whenever she left or came back
to the room - and agree in writing that I required corporal punishment.

For discipline to be administered there had to be a reason, she explained.
While I had a solid centre I had a chaotic surface. "Tuck in your tie,
Fletcher." "Yes, ma'am," I said and obeyed. "I dare say those cuffs are a
little grubby as well, aren't they, Fletcher?" I would be punished for
being scruffy and confused, she decided. She commanded me to bend over the
desk. She then began to strike me with the Chinese slipper on my
trouser-clad backside. It lasted about five minutes and was gentle enough
not to hurt.

She warned: "I'm not sure you're ready for the crook-handled cane. When I
use it I cannot control myself."

She was right. Three times she hit me with the ghastly implement. Each time
the cane made a sound like a pistol. Not for nothing was Miss Partridge
convicted in February 1990 of causing actual bodily harm to a woman, now
26, who had been her bonded servant in Donegal. She was fined £100 and
given a two-month suspended sentence.

The next day, when I telephoned to reveal my true identity, Miss Partridge
was far less in control. She snapped: "I could tell you were a lying little
rat and I was quite right, wasn't I?" She added: "I really believe
discipline is good for people and that my attitude is normal and the whole
of the rest of society is wrong. Some people are meant to rule and others
to serve. It's a good therapy. It relieves a lot of tension. If somebody is
naughty, the way to restore balance and harmony is to administer physical
punishment."

Undergraduates may be blissfully ignorant of what Miss Partridge and Miss
Langridge get up to, but their neighbours are not. Two boys cycling past
shouted: "Going for a whipping then?" Now that the secret of the Chinese
slipper and the crook-handled cane is out, will meetings of the Constant
Nymph ever be the same again?

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