Evening News, London, 2 March 1948

Judge orders birch for two youths

They Attacked Student

Two youths were each ordered by Mr. Justice Singleton at the Old Bailey to-day to receive 12 strokes of the birch.

The youths were found guilty of robbing with violence an undergraduate, Donald Charles Kennedy Sim, aged 21, of Hurlingham-court, Fulham.

The youths, Douglas Gordon Goody, aged 17, plumber's mate, Commondale, Putney, was also jailed for 21 months, and Joseph Connelly, aged 16, of Overstone-Road, Hammersmith, was sent to Borstal for a period not exceeding three years.

Footnote 1: The sentence did not deter Goody from a life of crime: in 1966 he was to be one of the Great Train Robbers.

Footnote 2: Judicial corporal punishment as a court sentence was abolished in the UK with effect from September 1948, so these must have been among the last court-ordered adult floggings (as opposed to those ordered for internal prison disciplinary offences) on the mainland.