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LATEST:

- External links: British school CP

- External links: American school CP

- Video clips

NEW VIDEO CLIPS OF ACTUAL CP:

• Nigeria: Mass whipping of boys and girls.
• Pakistan: College boys caned en masse.
• Taiwan: A student bends over for a sharp paddling.
• Thailand: Secondary girls caned in the classroom.
• Thailand: A group of army recruits receive a caning.
• United States: Senior girls are paddled in class.
• United States: A teen boy gets a strapping from his uncle.

HISTORY HIGHLIGHTS:

• April 1994: Andy Shiu speaks! TV news report from Singapore, in which Michael Fay's co-defendant Shiu Chi Ho is besieged by reporters on his way to and from the court hearing at which he was sentenced to 12 strokes of the cane (later reduced to six, which were administered two months after this film).

- The Archive - 2012

SOME RECENT EVENTS:

• Fiji: High school students want corporal punishment reintroduced.
• Jamaica: Definitive abolition of judicial CP.
• Malaysia: Rapist, 21, pictured, sentenced to 18 strokes of the rotan and 25 years.
• Nigeria: 12 strokes of the cane for a thief aged 17.
• Tanzania: Another 21-year-old rapist is ordered 12 strokes of the cane and 30 years.
• United States: It's only boys who get spanked at one Texas high school -- and then only when they request it.
• United States: A Texas school district decides to keep the paddle.
• United States: No plans to ban paddling in Tennessee (with video clip).

2012's NEWS ITEMS SO FAR IN FULL:

- sorted by date

- sorted by country

MAIN MENU

EXTERNAL WEB LINKS (other than those listed in "Country files")

• School corporal punishment (UK)
  232 links, 12 of which are New!
  
  
• School corporal punishment (USA)
  310 links, 16 of which are New!
  
  
• School corporal punishment (Other countries)
  271 links
  
  
• Judicial corporal punishment (countries A-R)
  106 links
  
  
• Judicial corporal punishment (countries S-Z)
  190 links
  
  
• Domestic (parental) corporal punishment
  146 links
  
  
• Other corporal punishment (military, prison, reformatory, fraternity, etc.)
  248 links

  The external links for school CP, judicial CP and domestic CP are classified by country within each type.

THE ARCHIVE

THE ARCHIVE is an ever-expanding collection of news and media items about corporal punishment. Think of it as an electronic press clippings library, now containing over 6,500 clippings.

Within each year or group of years you choose the country you want to research, and the items are then classified by type of corporal punishment and by month.




• The Archive -- 1648 to 1975 (768 items)

• The Archive -- 1976 to 1995 (469 items)

• The Archive -- 1996 (188 items)

• The Archive -- 1997 (222 items)

• The Archive -- 1998 (195 items)

• The Archive -- 1999 (387 items)
  (You can also view the links to 1999's items for all countries combined as a single date sequence at News Chronology 1999)

• The Archive -- 2000 (243 items)
  (You can also view the links to 2000's items for all countries combined as a single date sequence at News Chronology 2000)

• The Archive -- 2001 (363 items)
  (You can also view the links to 2001's items for all countries combined as a single date sequence at News Chronology 2001)

• The Archive -- 2002 (367 items)
  (You can also view the links to 2002's items for all countries combined as a single date sequence at News Chronology 2002)

• The Archive -- 2003 (384 items)
  (You can also view the links to 2003's items for all countries combined as a single date sequence at News Chronology 2003)

• The Archive -- 2004 (524 items)
  (You can also view the links to 2004's items for all countries combined as a single date sequence at News Chronology 2004)

• The Archive -- 2005 (556 items)
  (You can also view the links to 2005's items for all countries combined as a single date sequence at News Chronology 2005)

• The Archive -- 2006 (397 items)
  (You can also view the links to 2006's items for all countries combined as a single date sequence at News Chronology 2006)

• The Archive -- 2007 (316 items)
  (You can also view the links to 2007's items for all countries combined as a single date sequence at News Chronology 2007)

• The Archive -- 2008 (277 items)
  (You can also view the links to 2008's items for all countries combined as a single date sequence at News Chronology 2008)

• The Archive -- 2009 (209 items)
  (You can also view the links to 2009's items for all countries combined as a single date sequence at News Chronology 2009)

• The Archive -- 2010 (184 items)
  (You can also view the links to 2010's items for all countries combined as a single date sequence at News Chronology 2010)

• The Archive -- 2011 (190 items)
  (You can also view the links to 2011's items for all countries combined as a single date sequence at News Chronology 2011)

• The Archive -- 2012 (137 items so far, 12 of which are New!)
  (You can also view the links to 2012's items for all countries combined as a single date sequence at News Chronology 2012)

FEATURE ARTICLES: SCHOOL CP

• Caning in Singapore schools
  English CP traditions are firmly upheld for present-day secondary schoolboys in Singapore. Detailed article with pictures and links.

• Top CP Schools: 1. Purley High School for Boys
  Article about a UK state school with a robust caning regime in the 1970s and 1980s.

• Top CP Schools: 2. The St John's schools of Canada (illustrated) (with video clips)
  Three boys' boarding schools (1962-2008) where paddling was the norm.

• Corporal punishment in US schools (illustrated)
  An overview of American school paddling in the present and the recent past, with relevant documents and external links. Now expanded to include college/university CP.

• Overview: Corporal punishment in British schools (illustrated)
  Details of the cane, strap and "slipper" in UK schools before 1987.

• School caning in South Korea (illustrated) (with video clips)
  A look at this highly successful Asian country where CP was alive and well until very recently. Now enlarged and illustrated.

• Timeline: Eric A. Wildman
  Chronology spanning 60 years on a remarkable character who made headlines with his pro-CP campaigns and appears to have lived on the proceeds of supplying punishment canes to schools and institutions. With links to over 20 press items and several previously undiscovered pictures, and extracts from two of his publications.

• Eric Wildman: 1950s crusader for corporal punishment
  Subtly witty essay from 1956.

• Stretching Forward to Learn
  A first-person account of caning at a UK boys' school in the 1960s.

• Corporal punishment: the Friends Reunited evidence
  What do the entries in Friends Reunited tell us about corporal punishment in UK schools in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s? Includes a "Top Fifty CP Schools" feature based on the number of mentions of CP for each school.

• Voluntary Corporal Punishment Reduces Suspension Rates by Tim Yancey
  Study of an experiment at a high school in Georgia, USA, where paddling was reintroduced, for minor infractions, but purely as an option freely chosen by the student instead of detention or in-school suspension. The program was successful.

• The cane and the tawse in Scottish schools
  The implements used to punish Scotland's students in both recent and more distant times, and some case studies. (illustrated)

FEATURE ARTICLES: JUDICIAL/PRISON CP

• Judicial corporal punishment in Britain (illustrated)
  An historical overview.

• Judicial corporal punishment in South Africa
  Major illustrated feature article in 12 parts.

• Birching in the Isle of Man 1945 to 1976 (illustrated) (with video clip)
  Overview of the post-war use of judicial CP in this independent British offshore island.

• Judicial Caning in Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei (illustrated)
  Comprehensive survey explaining everything you ever wanted to know about the court-ordered canings in these three Commonwealth countries in south-east Asia.

• The Canadian Prison Strap
  In three parts: official views and opinions, recipients' descriptions, and full details of the two different methods used, illustrated with pictures of the various equipment used and of the strap itself.

• Timeline: Aaron Cohen
  A New Zealand youth caned in Malaysia: Chronology of the Aaron Cohen saga, with 17 archive press items and 4 photographs.

FEATURE ARTICLES: MILITARY CP

• Corporal punishment in the British Army (illustrated)
  Official and less official flogging, caning and spanking down to the present era.

• Kissing the Gunner's Daughter: Part I - 1780 to 1860 (illustrated)
  Full details of the flogging of young seamen in the UK Royal Navy.

• Kissing the Gunner's Daughter: Part II - The 1860s Ryder Reforms (illustrated)
  The birch replaces the cat for the punishment of Navy boys.

• Corporal punishment in the British Navy (illustrated)
  Developments in the 20th century.

FEATURE ARTICLES: REFORMATORY CP

• Caning, birching and strapping in UK reformatories
  How it used to be in Approved Schools and other British youth institutions: regulations, theory and practice, with links to key documents.

• The Court Lees Approved School Affair
  Overview, with links to numerous press extracts, of the 1967 Gibbens inquiry into excessive canings at this UK boys' reformatory. The inquiry led to its immediate closure. A photograph, reproduced here, of a boy's bruised backside was one of the key pieces of evidence. (illustrated)

• Injustice at Court Lees
  A riposte to the Gibbens conclusions from the staff point of view.

FEATURE ARTICLES: OTHER

• Spank While you Sell: Corporal punishment imagery in print advertising (illustrated)
  Analysis of 15 newspaper and magazine advertisements in which CP is pictured.

• Spank While you Sell -- supplementary page 1 (illustrated) (with video clips)
  An addendum to the above, with 12 further images.

• Spank While you Sell -- supplementary page 2 (illustrated)
  Five more advertising images and two video clips.

• The Spanking Machine: A Resilient Myth in Popular Culture (illustrated)
  Jeremy Bentham's utilitarian whipping contraption, as imagined (or in some cases actually built) by 24 different designers.

COUNTRY FILES, including rules, regulations, laws, official documents, eyewitness accounts, operational procedures

• Those Country files in full

  This is gradually being developed into an overview of the CP situation, past and present, for each country. There are many external and internal links to detailed corporal punishment information, including legal, procedural or practical aspects, from official documents or from reliable published reports.

  An offshoot of this section is the Present-day online school handbooks pages, organised alphabetically by country and, for the USA, by State. All these schools announce that they use corporal punishment and give varying amounts of detail. There are now about 1,000 of these handbook links, covering Anguilla (1), Australia (8), Bahamas (1), Barbados (1), Bermuda (1), Ghana (1), Kenya (1), Malaysia (9), Northern Mariana Islands (1), Pakistan (1), Singapore (96), South Africa (3), South Korea (1), Tanzania (1), Zambia (1), Zimbabwe (4) and the USA (about 900).

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT BOOKS

Book reviews page 1

• The Canadian Regulation School Strap: How the strap was adopted, dispensed and ultimately banned, and why it is gone forever. Corporal punishment policy, practice, procedure, regulation, and world, judicial and parental CP influences by Harold A. Hoff

• Spanking Images in Advertising and Consumer Products by Harold A. Hoff

• The Collector's Guide to the School Strap: Scotland, England Ireland, Canada, Australia & Others -- Second edition by Harold A. Hoff

• Just and Painful: A Case for the Corporal Punishment of Criminals, by Graeme Newman
  (Full text of book available for free download)

• Sons of the Brave: The Story of Boy Soldiers, by A.W. Cockerill

Book reviews page 2

• The English Vice: Beating, Sex and Shame in Victorian Britain and After, by Ian Gibson

• Caning: Educational Ritual, by Joseph A. Mercurio
  (Full text of book available for free download)

Book reviews page 3

• When Caning Meets the Eighth Amendment: Whipping Offenders in the United States, by Daniel E. Hall

• The Caning of Michael Fay: The Inside Story by a Singaporean, by Gopal Baratham (illustrated)

Book reviews page 4

• The History of Corporal Punishment: A Survey of Flagellation in its Historical, Anthropological and Sociological Aspects, by George Ryley Scott (illustrated)

• The Whip and the Rod: An Account of Corporal Punishment among all Nations and for all Purposes, by R.G. Van Yelyr (illustrated)

• Child of the Happy Valley: A Memoir, by Juanita Carberry with Nicola Tyrer

Book reviews page 5

• Red Hannah: Delaware's Whipping Post, by Robert Graham Caldwell (illustrated)
• The Flogging of Singapore: The Michael Fay Affair, by Asid Latif

SEARCH THIS SITE

If you are looking for photographs and drawings, go to the picture index.

To find selected key documents on a particular topic, such as birching in schools or female recipients, first try the Topics A to Z pages.

To browse for material on corporal punishment in a particular country, start by looking for that country on the Country files pages and also in The Archive.

The Archive is also the place to start if you want to find press coverage on all aspects of CP for a given year or period in history.

Use the search engine below if you are looking for a "needle in a haystack" such as the name of a town, a state or a person, or some specific aspect of corporal punishment not yet highlighted in Topics A to Z. Also use the search engine if you want to be sure to find every occurrence of your search term throughout the website.

Search www.corpun.com :

NOTE: the search engine will only take you to the TOP of the page containing what you are looking for. If it is a large page containing several items, you may then need to use the search function in your own browser ("Find on this page") to find your item on the page.

SOME ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS FROM READERS

• [14] The principal in one of your US school CP video clips says that paddling is an option only for boys. Isn't that unacceptably sexist?

• [13] In which year was there the most CP of teenagers in UK schools?

• [12] I am a little troubled by the reference to Eric Wildman, who, I assume, was a founder of your Organisation, in Ian Gibson's The English Vice, p.60.

• [11] I sent in a news item. Why hasn't it appeared in the latest update?

• [10] How do you decide what to include in the website? For example, does it include ALL available news items about corporal punishment?

• [9] Is there any information on the incidence of crime in areas that have banned corporal punishment in schools, compared to those which haven't?

• [8] Is it true that the UK school cane was applied to the hands more often than to the bottom?

• [7] When and why did the cane replace the birch in England?

• [6] Why are you so dismissive of research studies showing that the majority of violent criminals were subject to corporal punishment as children and that therefore corporal punishment of children should be avoided?

• [5] My query is about the police administering corporal punishment. Was this considered a normal, everyday part of a policeman's duties? Did he sign up to it, as it were, when he joined the force?

• [4] How did school corporal punishment vanish so fast in the UK? What was the European Union's role?

• [3] Which US states still permit school paddling and which have banned it?

• [2] I've heard mention of something called an Eton pop-tanning. What is or was this? (illustrated)

• [1] I have to write an essay / speak in a debate about corporal punishment. Can you send me a full information pack as soon as possible?

ESSAYS AND OPINIONS

Although this website contains mainly factual material, expressions of argument and opinion also have their place, provided they are clearly labelled as such. This section will, over time, develop some lines of argument from a variety of sources about different aspects of corporal punishment. The focus is on views not widely expressed on the Web -- within a pro-corporal punishment perspective, since arguments against corporal punishment overwhelmingly dominate the debate, on the internet as elsewhere.
• Corporal punishment in general:
  Corporal Punishment by David Benatar, Philosophy Department, University of Cape Town, South Africa
  Dr Benatar considers the CP of youngsters from a moral and ethical point of view. He makes several excellent points, tackling in turn each of several common anti-CP assertions -- that it leads to abuse, that it is degrading, that it either stems from and/or causes sexual deviance, that it "teaches the wrong lesson" (this bit is particularly good) -- and finds none of them especially persuasive. And how refreshing to have a distinguished academic point out that the debate is too polarised, with advocates and opponents alike typically adopting absolute black-and-white positions when common sense would suggest that the reality is a series of shades of grey. Well worth reading.
  
  Hate Mail!
  C. Farrell has an exchange of views with a hostile correspondent.

• School corporal punishment:
  The High School Cane: a Eulogy, a thoughtful comment on the cane's usefulness and efficacy in keeping mischievous teenage schoolboys in order, with some reflections on its wider cultural significance. The author writes from personal experience and a lifetime's careful observation.

• Judicial corporal punishment:
  C. Farrell's letter to a British politician, 1982 suggesting that you cannot sell the idea of judicial corporal punishment by concentrating exclusively on the deterrence argument, and discussing a number of legal and technical points that need to be addressed in any new proposal.
  For further arguments in favour of a return to judicial corporal punishment in the UK, see A fair price to pay, The Guardian, London, 14 March 1998.

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CONTACT THE EDITOR OF THIS WEBSITE:

• By E-mail:
  
  farrell (AT) corpun (DOT) com
  
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• By snail mail: If you wish to send me items by postal mail, please contact me by E-mail first to arrange it with me.

  All press cuttings or other factual material relevant to corporal punishment gratefully received. Please quote source and date if at all possible.

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Copyright © C. Farrell 2013 -- Who is C. Farrell? -- Legal stuff about copyright and hyperlinks