Corpun file 26201 at www.corpun.com

Lancashire Evening Post, Preston, 10 April 1937, p.7

Boy Caning Case

Teacher's Success in Appeal to Sessions

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A woman school teacher's appeal against a conviction for alleged assault on a schoolboy by caning him, was successful at Birkenhead Quarter Sessions yesterday. She was Miss Vita Maria Wilson, assistant teacher at St. Anne's Roman Catholic School, Rock Ferry, Birkenhead, who had been fined £2 and ordered to pay 11s. costs, at Birkenhead Police Court, on February 8th, when she was summoned for assault by Frank Ford, aged 10, a pupil at the school, and son of Andrew Ford, a labourer, of Russell-road, Rock Ferry.

Mr. Bertram Treece, the Recorder, allowed the appeal with costs.

Miss Wilson stated that she had been teaching for 16 years without a complaint. She had no personal animosity against the boy, but she had to draw his attention continually to the manner in which he did his work.

On the afternoon of January 12th, she warned him several times. When she went to cane him in the ordinary way, he turned away and she hit him with the cane three times on his pants. She did not lose her temper. The boy went back to his desk and sat down, doing his work much better afterwards.

Mr. Roland Thomas, K.C., for the teacher, commented, "Teachers will go in terror of punishing children, if bruising of the ordinary kind is going to be taken as excessive."