Daily Mail, 10 January 1953

Booklets, straps and canes seized

Detectives search leader's home

MR. ERIC A. WILDMAN, president of the National Society for the Retention of Corporal Punishment, was in his stockroom in City-road, London, E.C., yesterday, surrounded by thousands of canes, birches, and taws (three-thonged leather straps) when a police raiding squad burst in on him.

Chief Inspector George Davis, of City-road C.I.D., produced a warrant to search Mr. Wildman's headquarters and his home at Walthamstow.

Simultaneously Detective Sergeant Herbert Taylor entered an office above the stockroom where one of the five girls associated with Mr. Wildman in running his society, his publishing company, and his cane-selling business was sitting.

In spite of her protests Sergeant Taylor began to examine Mr. Wildman's papers. Another police squad was removing Mr. Wildman's belongings from his home.

In City-road, while uniformed policemen carried large quantities of literature from the basement stockroom to a police van, Mr. Wildman strode around protesting.

Wearing a black overcoat, a bowler, and thick spectacles, he went in and out of the stream of police officers, complaining but not obstructing.

At intervals he told anybody who would listen: "I don't know what this is all about. It has been done by my enemies, by the enemies of corporal punishment. I have been in touch with my lawyers, and they tell me that I shall have a good case against the police for this."

Unmoved the police stripped the four rooms in which Mr. Wildman carries on the Eric A. Wildman Publishing Company.

The removal lasted four hours. Five police van-loads of Mr. Wildman's possessions were taken to City-road Police Station. They included canes, bundles of birches, and many taws, files containing the names of people who subscribe to Mr. Wildman's publications, and tons of his booklets.

Mr. Wildman, striding up and down the path outside his offices as he talked, said: "This is fame! I can't think why they should raid me. It will put me out of business for a week."

Mr. Wildman has publicised corporal punishment by writing and lecturing.

In 1948, when he lectured at Horsley Hall, Staffordshire, Private School on corporal punishment he was seized by the pupils and given six strokes with his own cane, which he had described as a "dragon smoking malacca."