A faked photo?

 

Here’s a curiosity that I don’t know what to make of. It’s a photo that appeared in the US magazine Life in May 1941 (see it here). According to the reader who sent it in it’s a genuine caning at an Australian public (that is elite, feepaying) school.

The contributor Haworth H. Bartram reveals how he took the picture of a boy touching toes while (supposedly) his housemaster canes his backside.

“Noticing that there was a small bookcase in one corner of our housemaster’s study we replaced one of the books with a similar book into which a miniature camera had been fitted. This was done while the master was at lunch. When he returned, a boy was waiting for him who had broken a window (on purpose) and awaited punishment. As soon as I heard the first stroke of the cane, I opened the shutter, which was fitted with an electric release operated by a Morse buzzer in the room adjoining. I believe this the first unposed picture of a caning ever taken, as the master is absolutely unaware of its existence.”

Now call me old-fashioned, but I smell a rat. The most obvious problem is that the hindquarters of the “schoolboy” look like they belong to a much older man. Also, the picture looks too well composed to have been taken in the manner Bartram describes.

Hey, ho! Then, of course, there’s the question: why bother? Canings in school in Australia back in the 1940s were commonplace and very widely accepted. Added to that, there’s nothing unusual about the caning. It’s a swipe or two across the seat of the trousers. Is wasn’t as if the intrepid photographer was attempting to expose a monstrosity – like a beating on the bared buttocks, for example.

And, then why send it to a US magazine, rather than one back home?

Ah well, another mystery that I’ll never get to the bottom of .....

 

Traditional School Discipline

Traditionalschooldiscipline@gmail.com