UNITED KINGDOM
From the archives: RGS and Corporal Punishment (Alternative link) [HISTORY]
Information about caning and slippering at the academically stunningly successful Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe, an unusual selective state boys' school that has always behaved more like a private one.
Including a 1965 survey (Alternative link) of the boys' attitudes and CP statistics (the missing graphics are reproduced below). Until at least 1965, the weekly prefects' "court" was allowed to hand down a "sentence" of a formal slippering of up to six whacks. The offender had to bend over a chair at one end of the prefects' room, and the head boy or his nominee, wielding the gymshoe, would take a run-up for each stroke. It is interesting to discover that almost all the school's fourth-formers got their behinds officially thrashed by their older peers at some point. More remarkable still is that even upper-sixth-formers (who at age 18/19 would be older than some of the prefects) were still called upon to undergo this boyish penalty with some frequency.
See also reminiscences of 1950s mass canings (Alternative link) and Minutes of the Prefects' Meetings from the 1930s (Alternative link), when prefects still had the right to cane.
The Prefects' Meeting (Alternative link) page provides some CP reminiscences from the 1950s and the 1920s.
School's in for summer
Article about the summer 2003 reality-TV series "That'll Teach 'Em", which put 30 youngsters for a month in a re-creation of a 1950s boarding school that claimed to be authentic in every respect except one -- for legal reasons there could be no corporal punishment. As it happens, the series was made at Royal Grammar School in High Wycombe (see item above). Much of the comment about the show was around the fact that today's students had great difficulty with the 1950s curriculum and exams, but a significant subplot was debate about the absence of the cane, whether this was a good or bad thing, whether it invalidated the experiment, and how and whether the producers might have got round it if they had really wanted to.
For more, see this July 2003 news report and this July 2003 comment piece.
Memories by David Edwards 1947-1952 [HISTORY]
My memories, by John W. Cartwright 1945-1950 [HISTORY]
The War Years [HISTORY]
Corporal Punishment Book [HISTORY]
Pages for King's Norton Boys' School in Birmingham. In the 1940s the headmaster used to make each offender go and buy the cane with which he was about to be punished. David Edwards got six of the best for smoking on a tram. John Cartwright didn't get it, but saw the weals of a boy who did. Also here is a genuine punishment book page (names not blanked out!) from 1970, with only three or four canings per month recorded. Either this school used CP rather less than most of its kind, or many canings never got entered.
Bognor Cane Company [HISTORY]
Information on a message board about this outfit which supplied punishment canes to schools, and its eccentric boss, Eric Huntingdon. See also this April 1981 news item.
Stouts Hill School: Crime and Punishment [HISTORY]
Ex-pupils of this boys' boarding school recall canings.
Permission to give corporal punishment [HISTORY]
From a secondary boys' school in central London, a chit dated October 1947, signed by the Headmaster, giving permission to Mr A.G. Redston "to administer Slight Corporal Punishment".
Ouch!!! [HISTORY]
Reminiscences of punishment at West Hartlepool Grammar School for Boys.
Punishments (Alternative link) [HISTORY]
A delve into the archives at what is now a Middle School in Northamptonshire. In the 1940s the cane was a last resort and used infrequently, but on one occasion 20 boys were all caned in turn for not owning up when the Headmaster was struck by a piece of coke. In the 1950s and 1960s, the cane had largely given way to the slipper. All the recipients listed in the punishment book were boys, and the most severe penalty was "four strokes of the slipper on the buttocks". In the 1970s, however, boys got the cane and the slipper was for girls.
Edwardians Online: Revd. W. Frank B. Place [HISTORY]
St Edwards School, Oxford, in about 1905 was "the most spartan school in England", according to this former student, and was "always whacking people".
Schooldays with the Strap (Alternative link) [HISTORY]
Numerous former students of Scottish schools remember being on the receiving end of the belt.
The Beauty of Double Standards [HISTORY]
James Bowman, who once taught at Westminster School, writes in The American Spectator (Jan 2007) that boys and girls are different, and we should stop pretending otherwise. He cites as an example of this pretence the notion, put about by STOPP in the 1980s, that the fact that girls' schools managed well without the cane "demonstrated" that boys' schools would benefit from its abolition, and points out that "demonstrated" here in fact means "facilely and falsely analogized".
That's quite enough poetic licence, Mr Motion [HISTORY]
The Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, has written a book attacking his prep school, Maidwell, describing the headmaster as "a cane-waving sadist". In this Observer piece (Dec 2006), Tom Fort, who was there at the same time, agrees that there was "constant corporal punishment" but points out that that is just what such schools were like at the time, and that actually the headmaster was a very nice man. Fort was happy at the school, and thinks Motion, who admitted not liking anybody much, "was clearly a boy who should never have been sent away to school in the first place".
Solihull in Wartime 1939-1945 (Alternative link) [PDF] [HISTORY]
At page 35, a caning on the stage in front of all the boys at Lode Heath School is described.
Public or Private [HISTORY]
Discussion on a message board, with personal reminiscences quoted in evidence, about the relative merits of being caned or slippered in front of the class vs. privately punished in the headmaster's office.
Unbelievable .. Yet true (Eeeeek) [HISTORY]
The Assembly Hall [HISTORY]
Rumours [HISTORY]
Can You Remember? [HISTORY]
Where Are They Now? [HISTORY]
Recollections of CP (amongst much else) at Duncan Hall School, a pretty dreadful-sounding prep school for boys (now defunct) in Norfolk, in the 1970s. One of the teachers was Derek Slade, later to achieve fame for his methods at St Georges School in Suffolk (see this Nov 1982 news item) and Dalesdown School in Sussex (see this Feb 1986 news item). Truly a man who gave corporal punishment a bad name.
Bring back corporal punishment in schools
An e-petition to the Prime Minister for the reintroduction of CP. It has now closed. It attracted 441 signatures. The government has now attached its reply, which predictably rejects the idea.
The Croydon Archives: Register of Corporal Punishment 1952-78 (Alternative link)
[HISTORY]
Former students of John Ruskin School near London come across their old school's punishment book in the local archives. Amusing extracts are quoted and a little statistical analysis is attempted. The text is wrong to state that CP was forbidden in all (state) schools around 1978; that didn't happen until nearly ten years later.
Chris Green recalls school life in the late fifties (Alternative link) [HISTORY]
More on the John Ruskin School in Croydon (see previous item). Scroll down to near the bottom of the page. This correspondent refers to the birch, but I imagine he means the cane. The methods of headmaster Mr "Joe" Lowe are described. He seems to have been a strict disciplinarian. He got a potato shoved up the exhaust of his Morris Minor in revenge!
The Victorian Era [HISTORY]
Diary entries by a school headmaster in 1850 who had hoped to dispense with CP but found this was not possible as long as "parents are so indifferent about good moral training at home". Some things never change.
Six of the best kinder than zero-tolerance [HISTORY]
Author Magnus Linklater was at school at Eton in the 1950s, when the punishment for being caught with alcohol was six strokes of the birch "wielded with some ferocity by the headmaster".
Memorable images: Whacko! [HISTORY]
The Sterling Times British nostalgia website celebrates Jimmy Edwards' 1950s TV comedy programme, from a time when corporal punishment was accepted as a normal aspect of school life.
Autobio 2000: A Personal View of the Twentieth Century (Alternative link)
[HISTORY]
The writer of this piece attended a prep school in Kent in the 1930s. He reports seeing blue marks on the bottoms of boys who had been caned. There is also an interesting anecdote about a bully who was cured of his habit by being ceremonially slippered by each of his victims in turn -- a punishment offered to, and accepted by, his parents in lieu of expulsion.
Christ's Hospital: The War Years [HISTORY]
For the uninitiated, Christ's Hospital is a school, not a hospital. Various sorts of whackings in the 1940s are recalled here.
Cambridge colleges 1504-1509 [HISTORY]
Younger undergraduates at Cambridge university, who in the 16th century might be only 14 or 15, were liable to be birched by the Dean for cutting lectures, according to this. Actually that was still the case nearly 150 years later: see this May 1648 news item.
Peakirk Cum Glinton Primary School - School History [HISTORY]
Floggings were so frequent at this Peterborough school that in 1882 it was a matter for special note that no corporal punishment was recorded for a whole week.
Eminent Victorian, Alas [HISTORY]
Review in the New York Times of a biography of a British crackpot called Francis Galton (1822-1911), the "father of eugenics". Caned and birched frequently at school, he once timed his Greek teacher thrashing 11 pupils in eight minutes.
The Parish Of Middleton In Norfolk [HISTORY] (Alternative link)
Evocative description of a village primary school in 1950. Any misbehaviour by boys resulted in a painful visit to the headmaster, but girls were exempt from the cane.
Mr Whiteley's Headmastership and the Chancery Suit (1789-1815) (Alternative link) [HISTORY]
Stuff about Leeds Grammar School 200 years ago. Discipline had deteriorated in the Upper School, and a rule was made that any "corporal correction" by the headmaster or his deputy "shall be public and with such instruments as cannot do any bodily injury".
Glaisdale School, By Chris Richards [HISTORY]
My Glaisdale Saga [HISTORY]
Memories of a secondary comprehensive school in the English Midlands from 1973 to 1978. There is an account of a youth being formally caned, six strokes, in front of all the other boys, in the outside school yard. That must have been very unusual at an ordinary state school in the 1970s, and one might have suspected the story had been embroidered, but now comes corroboration in the second of the above links (only a fleeting mention, a long way into the section headed "Back for a new year").
Old Clayesmorian Society: Letters 1997 [HISTORY]
Articles 1998
Letters 1998
Odds & Ends 2001
Newsletter 2004
Various CP reminiscences from Clayesmore, a private school in Dorset, from the 1940s to the 1980s.
Experiences at St Vedast (now St. James) and the S.E.S. [HISTORY]
Message board for survivors of this famously cranky group of private schools in London, secretly controlled by a bonkers brainwashing cult innocuously called the School of Economic Science. More pertinently for our purposes here, they were also among the very few schools to carry on with caning until at least 1996.
What an extraordinary can of worms is opened up here. Very long (39 pages) and deeply depressing.
Much of what is described really can, for once, be described as "abuse", though corporal punishment is a relatively minor part of that -- there are numerous complaints here about unfair and excessive non-corporal punishments, too, as well as more general brutality and much cruelty of a more psychological kind.
However, for me the most remarkable claim is that headmaster Nicholas Debenham, as recently as the 1980s, was in the habit of caning boys on their bare bottoms, a fact never hinted at during his numerous sallies into the media to speak up for caning, such as this October 1996 news item. At least nobody can claim that this weird place was remotely typical of anything: it seems to have been a bizarre one-off in every way. A formal inquiry into the allegations has now reported.
See also these 1996 video clips.
Bishop Vesey Grammar School [HISTORY]
Old boys recall slipperings at this Birmingham secondary school, which is fine and normal, but also "vigorous face-slapping", which seems very reprehensible to me. Not only dangerous but far more humiliating than a whacking on the backside. I'm quite surprised: I myself went to exactly this kind of school (old-established, traditional, selective boys' grammar school) in the 1960s, and there, while there was plenty of proper CP, it would have been unthinkable for a master to hit a boy in the face.
Hitchin Boys' School Old Boys' Association Newsletter, February 2001 [HISTORY] (Alternative link)
Passing mentions of caning and slippering at this Hertfordshire school.
Plimsoll or Slipper? [HISTORY]
The plimsoll, dap, gymshoe, pump or tennis shoe (UK current: "trainer"; US: "sneaker"), when used to inflict pain, was generally referred to in British schools as "the slipper". Punishment with it, usually "unofficial" and always applied to the seat of the offender's trousers, was often called "a slippering". This could give rise to confusion with the domestic, house or "carpet" slipper, a generally less painful instrument. This message board includes, among some extraneous nonsense and obvious fantasy, what purport to be accounts of the use of both types of implement.
Stand Grammar School: Contributions from Old Standians [HISTORY]
Numerous mentions of CP (mainly slippering) scattered through these reminiscences of a boys' school near Manchester, which continue here and here and here and here.
The Wetherby Schools Photographic Archive & nostalgia experience [HISTORY]
Former pupils of this Yorkshire school recall their canings and slipperings.
Debate - Issue Briefs: Corporal Punishment
Short overview from the politics.co.uk site. This page states, incorrectly, that "use of the birch in schools was famously abolished in 1948". In fact, I don't think the birch has ever been referred to specifically in legislation about school punishment. It simply fell out of use in most schools long before that, as I have discussed here. What was abolished in 1948 was the use of birching as a judicial punishment -- an entirely different subject.
1970s Corporal Punishment at The Grange School [HISTORY]
Screenshots from a recent TV documentary in which former pupils of this co-educational school in Buckinghamshire revisit it for a reunion. The caning and slippering regime of the 1970s is explained to present-day students.
First stirrings [HISTORY]
Extract from the autobiography of philosopher Colin McGinn. He describes being caned at his "loutish and philistine" secondary modern school in Blackpool in the 1960s. On one occasion "the PE teacher caned an entire year of boys -- some ninety behinds".
The first rule of schooling - break it [HISTORY]
Star BBC journalist John Simpson claims to have been the most caned boy in his time at St Paul's School in London. He says it was painful and humiliating but not the end of the world.
Your views on school discipline [HISTORY]
A range of views on this BBC page. One contributor says that if the people who have banned CP were made to travel on buses with today's school children they would soon be bringing back the cane.
Things really have got better ... [HISTORY]
Article in the Daily Telegraph (March 2004) by the first woman ever to teach at a "notorious" boys' secondary school in south London. That was in 1968 and the students were frequently caned and slippered, she says.
QVS: Crime and Punishment
(Alternative link)
[HISTORY]
Recollections of cane, slipper and belt at Queen Victoria School in Dunblane (Scotland), an army boarding school. Continues on this second page.
Victorian School [HISTORY]
A museum school in Wales. Includes a picture of a stern old git holding a cane.
A Virtual Tour of the Black Country Museum [HISTORY]
More of the same sort of thing. This one is in the English Midlands. Note the unthinkingly tendentious and fashionably politically-correct comment on CP. However, this picture of an (obviously not real) caning looks to me as if it comes from a 1970s film set in Victorian times rather than from the museum.
Victorian School Day [HISTORY]
And yet another one. Some confusion here - a boy is shown bending over as if to pretend to be caned on his bottom, but the "teacher" seems to be about to cane his hand.
The Famous Sting Page [HISTORY]
Fan page for the rock singer Sting, allegedly caned at school on 42 occasions in one year in the 1960s. In fact, it now turns out that this means 42 strokes, on only seven occasions, which is not at all remarkable for that era -- see the extract from his autobiography in this October 2003 news item.
An 'Old Grange' from the Inside (Alternative link) [HISTORY]
Punishments (Alternative link) [HISTORY]
A Caning at King's School (Alternative link) [HISTORY]
Detailed description of prefects' canings at King's School, Canterbury. There is a rough drawing of the procedure (right), and two photographs of caned buttocks, allegedly dating from the author's schooldays in 1942, which seems a bit unlikely. Also a reconstruction of a noticeboard announcement of a mass caning. Prefects (here called monitors) got training in how to do caning properly: "It's not just a matter of hitting him with a stick, you know!" -- a very important statement and a fact which has been insufficiently widely understood.
James Hale [HISTORY]
Obituary of this literary agent says that at Charterhouse School around 1960 he instigated a successful rebellion against the practice of senior boys caning junior boys.
History of Fettes College [HISTORY]
Scroll down to the section on 1970-2000 in this account of Scotland's top private boarding school. It mentions Anthony Chenevix-Trench's period as Headmaster (1971-79) but doesn't allude explicitly to his enthusiasm for corporal punishment, saying only "his regime was a highly personal one". The only mention of CP is to say that by the late 1980s it had been abolished.
For more on Fettes see feature article The cane and the tawse in Scottish schools and, on caning there in the Trench era, this September 2001 news item. And see also the following item ....
He could talk his way out of things [HISTORY]
A mate of Tony Blair's who was at Fettes College with him around 1970 tells us a bit more about the different sorts of caning there. A 'school beating' involved being caned by all 12 prefects in turn, and "by tradition you were allowed a day in the sanatorium afterwards".
The abolition of caning [HISTORY]
The former School Clerk at a Sheffield primary school remembers sending out a letter to all parents asking them to vote on abolishing caning. Only five parents out of 260 replied yes, she says, but the school abolished it anyway. So much for democracy!
The School Belt Past and Present [HISTORY]
The True History of the Lochgelly Tawse [HISTORY]
Lochgelly Tawse Scrapbook [HISTORY]
Where Can I Buy a Lochgelly Tawse? [HISTORY]
Description of the Lochgelly Tawse [HISTORY]
A website created by the daughter of legendary Scottish strap manufacturer John J Dick. You can now once again buy a real Lochgelly Tawse -- but prices start at £100!
For more about the Scottish tawse, see this article.
Now it's like looking through a window [HISTORY]
A former student of a girls' secondary school in Wolverhampton recalls canings in front of the whole school in the 1940s.
"But you didn't tell us what for, darling" [HISTORY]
An apoplectic letter to "Nospank" from a Brit who describes in detail the "culture of spanking" experienced at a boys' prep school in the 1970s. I really don't see what he is whingeing about -- it sounds exactly like every other English boys' prep school. He doesn't seem to have been able to enter into the spirit of the thing at all, and calls it "a place of abuse". Most normal boys of that age love jokes about bottoms and whackings, or at least they did in those days, before they started getting indoctrinated with sanctimonious rubbish about "abuse" from the likes of the nauseating humbug Esther Rantzen. He must have been a pretty neurotic child already to get into such a tremendous bate about trivial things like semi-jocular slipperings that at the time were perfectly standard. And still to be angrily fulminating about it 30 years later is just pathetic. I note with interest that he hates his parents as well as his school. All deeply depressing.
Mr Reg Woolford (1924-1929) [HISTORY]
Mr Henry J Hunt CVO CBE (1928-1935) [HISTORY]
Mr Reginald Gwynn (Approx. 1910-1920) [HISTORY]
Reminiscences from The King's School, Gloucester.
Punishment and discipline at Old Radnor School [HISTORY]
Extracts from 1880s punishment books in Wales.
Punishment Book [HISTORY]
Quotes from the punishment book of a junior school in the early 20th century.
The John Gillatt "It's My Life And I Did What I Want" HomePage [HISTORY]
At Maidenhead Grammar School in the 1960s, when you got to about five detentions in a row you could go to the headmaster and ask to be caned instead.
Mick Jagger: My best teacher [HISTORY]
Rolling Stone (now Sir) Mick Jagger, revisiting his old grammar school in 2000 for the first time in 40 years, remembered that headmaster's canings were a daily occurrence.
Thomas Wolsey School - Punishment Book [HISTORY]
Photographs of pages from this Ipswich school's punishment book in 1930 and 1931.
School Daze [HISTORY]
Recollections of school in Wales. The author says these remarks were originally posted on Friends Reunited but got deleted, so he made his own web page for them. Grove Park Grammar School for Boys in Wrexham took the prize for sheer volume of physical punishment, he says.
Redgrave and Rickinghall Schools [HISTORY]
Old log book extracts and caning reminiscences from two primary schools in Suffolk.
The Cane and Ruler [HISTORY]
Drawing of a cane and a ruler as once used at Beaudesert Lower School, Leighton Buzzard.
Stripes in Magenta, issue 2 [HISTORY]
Stripes in Magenta, issue 7 [HISTORY]
Initiation Ceremonies! [HISTORY]
Tales from Assembly [HISTORY]
Rose Tinted Glasses [HISTORY]
Strap Meister [HISTORY]
Re: Strap Meister [HISTORY]
Re: Strap Meister [HISTORY]
Re: Strap Meister [HISTORY]
Re "Spike" [HISTORY]
Re: Re "Spike" [HISTORY]
Register of discipline administered at St Augustine's Grammar School [HISTORY]
Former students of a Roman Catholic boys' school in Manchester write in to describe their strappings in the 1960s and 1970s. Part of a (mostly) touchingly affectionate website devoted entirely to this school which no longer exists, having been absorbed into a different one in 1977, but which clearly made a great impression, in more ways than one. "Stripes in Magenta" is the ex-school's electronic newsletter, with yet more anecdotes. Each one contains a cod "letter from the headmaster" (actually he is long dead) and the one in issue 7 is a witty fantasy about proposed European harmonisation of the size of his strap. The website's Visitors Book repays careful study, too, both the current one and earlier years linked therefrom. Read also such fascinating documents as school policy, Duties of masters and mistresses on duty, and The Green Room, a place where the duty master administered the strap twice daily, with the miscreants lining up to bend over a chair. "Do you remember how you had to tuck your elbows into the chair so your posterior was presented properly?" Truly remarkable.
Why we are all losers in the crime game [HISTORY]
Humorous columnist is overcome with nostalgia for the Britain of "red telephone boxes, free cough mixture for all and corporal punishment in schools".
Battersea Grammar School: Remember .... (Alternative link) [HISTORY]
Memories of this London boys' school include a teacher "prowling the corridors looking for boys to beat"; the lines of people waiting outside his room to be caned; and an occasion on which an entire class was strapped. Despite all this, much fun seems to have been had.
And on this separate page (Alternative link), a former pupil of the late 1950s apologises belatedly to his fellow students for charging them half a crown for the loan of his lederhosen, which he claims served as undetectable protection when worn under the trousers. Can it be true?
Elmbridge School: Crime and Punishment [HISTORY]
Elmbridge School: Things we did, good and bad [HISTORY]
Elmbridge School: Roger Francis Remembers [HISTORY]
Elmbridge School: some reminiscences by Garth Allmand [HISTORY]
Some more of the same kind of thing, from one of Essex County Council's unusual out-of-county state boarding schools.
School history: Purley County Grammar School [HISTORY]
Story of the school that later became Purley High School for Boys (now closed). In the 1950s and 1960s the headmaster was the aptly named Dr Birchall, who once caned 30 sixth-formers on the last day of term. Of Mr Derek Akers, who maintained a high media profile in defence of caning, the authors say "Much can be said about the last head of the school - but alas due to the laws of libel must remain unpublished until after his death". Whatever can they mean? For more on Purley in the 1970s and 1980s see this feature article.
Committee on Rights of Child concludes thirty-first session [HISTORY]
This UN body noted in October 2002 that, at least in theory, CP had still not been abolished in private schools in Northern Ireland. (But it has now -- see this June 2003 news item.)
School discipline - what's to be done?
BBC News Online "Talking Point" debate from June 2001. As always, some contributors insist that the return of CP is a key part of the answer, while others completely disagree.
Should corporal punishment return to the classroom?
Another BBC News "Talking Point" (January 2000). Includes a posed picture of a teen student being rulered on the hand.
Families First, Issue 1 [PDF]
Launch (Spring 2000) by the organisation formerly known as "Families for Discipline" of an unsuccessful campaign to restore CP to British schools.
Sects, power and miracles in the Bible belt of Essex
The oracle of Essex
American-style fundamentalist Christianity comes to the English home counties, with tales of lawsuits over paddlings in Bible schools. Articles from November and December 2000.
The Making of Them, extract page 8 [HISTORY]
The Making of Them, extract page 9 [HISTORY]
From the "Boarding School Survivors" website, a description of ceremonial prefects' canings at prep school.
A Tale of Two Countries: Child Rearing in Northern Ireland and Norway [HISTORY]
An American pacifist discusses her witnessing of CP whilst teaching at a mixed school in Northern Ireland.
A great deal of caning, 1879 [HISTORY]
Extracts from the log book of a school in rural Wales.
JH in the mid-1950s [HISTORY]
Second Form 1968-69 [HISTORY]
Pages from the Sternians Association for old boys of Lord Wandsworth College, a boarding school in Hampshire. In the Junior House, misbehaving boys were given a "cosy tail", and in the 1950s "beatings" with a cane were taken as a matter of course.
Spanking Facts & Research [HISTORY]
Anecdotes about the corporal punishment of females, especially "celebrities". Many of the sources are not cited in detail, so we should be wary of taking any of this as gospel.
Dartech and Wilmington Newsletter, June 1995 [HISTORY]
For alumni of a boys' grammar school in Kent. Scroll down to "The Old Dartechs' and Wilmington's Book of Records'. It records the name of the last pupil to be caned, a 15-year-old, and the date (10 October 1985). (One trusts he was asked whether he wanted this fact to be published only 10 years later.) There is also an analysis of the punishment book for the final two years of caning, drawing the conclusion that "the cane was beneficial". Old Boys could apply to purchase a school cane as a souvenir!
Old Emanuels: Leavers from the 1950s [HISTORY]
Old Emanuels: Leavers from the 1960s [HISTORY]
Old Emanuels: Leavers from the 1970s [HISTORY]
These "school reminiscences" sites are springing up everywhere. At this London boys' school, look for numerous references to slippering and caning. Boys could ask to have detentions "caned off" so they could do sport. Note also that prefects still had the power to cane in the 1960s.
Friends Reunited [HISTORY]
Growth has slowed down to a crawl at this huge "school memories" website covering all UK schools. Presumably most of those who were ever going to join and contribute have done so by now. Allegedly the membership database contains fully one-third of the entire UK adult population. Unfortunately there's no way of searching by keyword -- you just have to plough through the memory board of each school separately. A recent reorganisation of the site has made it even less user-friendly. See also this feature article.
What do YOU remember about Primary School? [HISTORY]
Author Maeve Friel remembers a school caning in 1950s Northern Ireland.
History of Miller Academy and Memories for the Millennium [HISTORY]
Strapping anecdotes from a school in the far north of Scotland.
Transgression and Correction
Essay calling for an end to "polarised debates" on subjects like corporal punishment -- amen to that -- and asking: why not let the child choose the form of punishment?
Ultimate Deterrents: Punishment and Control in English and American Schools [HISTORY]
Essay from 1966 comparing discipline policies on both sides of the Atlantic.
The Elitist and the Popular Ideal: Prefects and Monitors in English and American Secondary Schools [HISTORY]
Companion piece to the above. Academic view of the prefectorial system: in past times school prefects could impose punishments on other pupils, including (in some schools) corporal punishment, a situation apparently unknown in the US.
"The Art of Slashing": Victorian Representations of Corporal Punishment [HISTORY]
Introduction to an academic essay notes that 19th-century educators succeeded in resisting all attempts to do away with caning and birching or even in many cases to tone it down. "Spectacular forms of bodily punishment" were crucial in forming the middle-class subject, it says. The title, by the way, is taken from a description of Mr Creakle in Charles Dickens's David Copperfield.
Dr Arnold [HISTORY]
A chapter from Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians (1918). Dr Arnold, headmaster of Rugby School around 1830, celebrated in fictional form in "Tom Brown's Schooldays", is claimed to have single-handedly changed the whole ethos of English private education, not least in the matter of corporal punishment. In place of the indiscriminate, casual, knockabout flagellation which had characterised most schools thitherto, he introduced the idea of solemn, ritualistic floggings as a piece of grave ceremonial theatre with almost spiritual overtones.
No caning at Nantddu [HISTORY]
Sarah gets a worse punishment
Part of a local history series for kids on "Victorian school days" in Wales. Shows extracts from school log books in 1878 and 1893.
Brookhead Revisited (Alternative link) [HISTORY]
Quotes Cheshire Education Committee's 1951 rules on corporal punishment. Click on the picture of the punishment book to see some entries from it.
Abolishing corporal punishment: lessons learnt in British classrooms
Overview (in a South African document) of the abolition process in the UK, with particular reference to the role of the European Convention on Human Rights. Points out that the alternatives to CP are costly and time-consuming -- or, in the case of exclusion, ironically self-defeating.
Early parting [HISTORY]
Article from the London Guardian (December 1999) on schools in Northern Ireland, still largely divided on religious lines (Protestant or Catholic). At a Catholic school in Derry, the writer recalls, corporal punishment was not a last resort but the first and only resort.
Misericords and Choir Stall Carvings: Education Imagery and Satire in Medieval Choirs [HISTORY]
Discusses, with illustrations, the numerous appearances in church choir stalls of carvings of boys having their bottoms birched.
School Punishment Book 1954-60 [HISTORY]
A primary school on the edge of London reproduces some extracts from its punishment book in the middle 1950s (all canings of boys on the hand).
Sparing the Rod: Schools, Discipline and Children's Rights
Advertisement for a book, published July 1999, which I have not seen: it claims to be the first book to trace the history of corporal punishment in schools, which certainly isn't true.
Archives of the Society of Teachers Opposed to Physical Punishment, 1968-1989 [HISTORY]
You can now consult the records (108 boxes of them, it says) of the dreaded STOPP at the Institute of Education.
What Life Was Like in the 1940s [HISTORY]
Reminiscences about whackings at Giggleswick School in North Yorkshire.
Retiring Headmaster [HISTORY]
Transcript of a radio interview: retiring headmaster recounts amusing anecdote about a caned 16-year-old boy and his complaining mother.
Factory Worker Tests Cane [HISTORY]
Catalogue for a picture agency. Photo shows a school cane being tested at the cane factory. It doesn't have a direct URL -- to see it, enter "Factory worker tests cane" in the "professional" search box.
For another cane factory photograph, see The Archive
Muggeridge: The Biography [HISTORY]
Chapter One of Richard Ingrams's book on the late writer Malcolm Muggeridge, who attended a grammar school in Croydon at the time of the First World War. The headmaster was keen on caning boys, and on one occasion M.M. supposedly seized the cane and broke it.
Excerpts from Down With Skool! [HISTORY]
Couple of snippets from Ronald Searle and Geoffrey Williams' 1953 classic. Ostensibly kids' humorous fiction, but can be seen as highly subversive satire.
Punishment at Spring Hill School [HISTORY]
Quotes an extract from the logbook of a Lancashire primary school, recording the caning of some girls in 1902.
Brian Jones [HISTORY]
According to this page from "Rock and Roll Heaven", the late Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones (the vaguely handsome one of the group, who died at age 27) was frequently caned at school in the 1950s.
Should corporal punishment be reintroduced into the school system?
Essay by a schoolboy who says he would not like to be caned.
It Never Did Me Any Harm [HISTORY]
The "Nospank" anti-CP outfit has made a web page containing some particularly silly quotations from a fairly silly book, Ian Gibson's The English Vice, some decades after its publication.
Joseph Clynes [HISTORY]
Information about a trade unionist who became a Labour MP in 1906 and later Home Secretary. He is quoted as saying that all he learned at school was a fear of birching.
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