How Many Strokes?
What is the correct number of strokes of the cane to award? In England “six of the best” somehow became the standard tariff. But why was this? Why not five? Or seven? Or ten? Or think of a number and then double it?
He tells us:
In the first
place, be it noted that the days of excessive chastisements are gone, perhaps
forever. A prefect, in the present century [1900s], was even publicly rebuked
for having broken six thick sticks while administering thirty strokes to a
junior pupil. And, if thirty is considered an excessive total, what are we to
think of the four dozen, hundred, or three hundred lashes of old, especially in
military, naval and political sentences of only a hundred and fifty years ago?
This shows the growing effects of humanitarian influence.
Nowadays even twenty strokes would be deemed a cruelty – at least in schools, for an Arab, lad in Palestine was recently sentenced to life-imprisonment plus twenty birch – strokes, while a boy from the Indian hills was ordered thirty stripes – both for political offences. In school, however, where each culprit can be flogged more often, such concentrated totals are not considered necessary.
Even in these cases, however, a distinction must be made between caning on the posteriors and on the hands. Some Jesuit schools prescribe 24 as the maximum for hand-chastisement, 12 stripes on each hand; and this maximum is, according to the most reliable accounts, not infrequently ordained. A similar aggregate of blows upon the posteriors would be considered cruel, perhaps because in this latter type of beating each blow is given with a greater strength, for the hands are more easily injured.
None the less, 24 is an unusual dose even on the hands: six on each is perhaps the usual penalty (it is remarkable that punishment, if exceeding a single blow, is seldom administered on one of the hands alone). Cases have been recorded, however, of the whole punishment consisting of one single stroke, often inflicted with such vehemence as to draw blood. This method is perhaps salutary in cases where the offence itself has been of a callously brutal nature.
With the majority of lads, a rather more sustained punishment is generally considered effective. Sometimes this sustained effect – an important psychological element in the reformative side of beating – is got by as few as two stripes. Prefects sometimes limit themselves to those. Three, however, is a more frequent number: it provides a sense of the sustained nature, of the penalty with the minimum of duration and actual pain. More popular than three, however, would seem to be four, especially for slightly older boys. Five is less frequently employed, perhaps because it approximates so closely to the traditional quota, known as “Six of the best.”
Five is, however,
used in special circumstances: as in the Navy, where five “bad marks” entitled
a cadet to a beating, that is, to five marks of a sharper sort. Five has also
been known in public schools where the prefects wish to mark a particular
offence as being slightly less heinous than others. As to the psychology behind
the selection of any particular number of strokes, it may be said, that up to
(and maybe including) six, the punisher tends to think of each stroke as an
independent entity, whereas beyond that total he will conceive them in groups,
and consequently administer them with a greater rapidity.
Six, however, appears to be in beating almost a holy number. It acts like a magnet, as witness the colloquial phrases “six of the best,” or “a good round half-dozen”; this popular distinction it shares with its compound, twelves. “A dozen of the best” or “a good round dozen,” are phrases on every prefect’s or master’s lips and in most boys’ minds. Sometimes six are given as an extra-emphatic form of four: in many public schools, the quota is four for a lesser offence, and six for major crimes (while really serious moral sins are expiated by a dozen birch-strokes inflicted by the Headmaster). Again, six may be expected when four have been ordered and the culprit discovered with padding in his pants.
Speaking generally, however, six is inflicted deliberately as being the most just number; in films of school-life (e.g. A Yank at Eton or Housemaster and so forth) one usually finds six, no less and no more. It is indeed possible that six strokes enable the psychological effect of the punishment to sink in with sufficient crescendo, in a way which would be hard even with five, and impossible with three; while equally it is felt that, to prolong the chastisement beyond six strokes would prove a minor torture without any adequate psychological-penal advantage. These may be some of the reasons which militate for the retention of six strokes as the norm.
The “roundness” of the number, according to the English systems of weights and measures, may also have had a share in moulding the tradition: though this would hardly apply to countries which use the metric and decimal systems. But whatever the reasons, it is undeniable that six is the number most frequently observed. And this applies whether the strokes are given with a cane, a strap, or a birch, or whether the penalty is inflicted on the clothes or without them.
Seven is an infrequent quota, though what was originally intended as six may become seven or eight, either through a miscounting or because the victim protested or screamed during the whacking, in which case a few extra strokes would often be added. Eight is commoner than seven – for one thing, it is a “rounder,” more reasonable sum, though seven by tradition is a holy number.
In a book of reminiscences, a distinguished artist records how, at the age of eleven, he was given eight strokes for talking to another lad after “lights out”; but in this case the eight consisted in fact of two fours, the prefect having originally intended only four stripes, and repeating the total, either through unappeased indignation or because the culprit appeared insufficiently repentant. Similarly – though more rarely – six may be really two threes, and a dozen, two sixes. Another context in which eight may be awarded, is when the system classifies offences into three chief classes: in this case, the lowest class would involve four strokes, the highest twelve and the intermediate eight. It is surprising, nevertheless, how often exact mathematics are laid aside for one reason or another. Nine is not too frequently found though a case has been recorded of a Glasgow priest inflicting nine on a lad, in a kind of moral extension of the Confessional: the boy was asked how many stripes he was used to at school, and, on replying “six,” received nine.
Ten is a more usual number, and has been observed especially in semi-educational institutions, such as holiday-camps, or in Youth organisations, and the like. It is undoubtedly severer than six, while being less brutal – so it is thought – than twelve. Ten may also be awarded, like any other number, for extraneous reasons : thus, in Ernest Raymond’s novel of school – and – war life, Tell England a lad, who cannot see the figure “10” which the “maths beak” has chalked on the board, because the master himself is standing in the way, is awarded ten stripes to make him remember the number. Presumably, if the number had been .327, an appropriate total of strokes would have been decided upon. (In other chapters of Tell England, either four, six, or twelve strokes seem to be the normal quota).
Proceeding to higher numbers, eleven is almost never found, while thirteen is avoided – though whether it would mean bad luck to the punisher or to the punished is not quite clear. Twelve, however, as has already been stated, is a favourite complement of blows. More serious offences, especially, which demand the birch in the presence of the assembled school, are apt to involve twelve strokes. Even with the cane, however, a “good round dozen” is a frequent dose; half-a-dozen on each hand is also by no means unheard-of.
The infliction of
twelve strokes, however, is often made for special psychological or moral
reasons, as when it is desired to cure a lad hardened to crime: for twelve
strokes are clearly more than twice as painful than six, as the pain tends to
multiply, while the blows merely add; moreover, many of the second half-dozen
will probably fall near to, or actually upon, the weals raised by the first
contingent. Thus it is that twelve stripes constitute an especially severe thrashing,
and, for that very reason, are perhaps less frequently inflicted than six or
four.
Beyond twelve it is rare to find any normal total. A boy in a preparatory school at Ealing, near London, reported that he once received fourteen blows; possibly the master intended inflicting more, but wearied before completing his quota. Certainly these fourteen were severe, and, as the master was suffering from hayfever at the time, it may well have been that his strength was prematurely exhausted.
In certain schools, especially severe offences – such as truancy – are punished with a high total of strokes. As many as twenty or thirty, on the bared body, have been met with in preparatory schools – in each case as the reward for playing truant. A school in Leinster is also reported by one ex-pupil (now an M.C.) to have specialised in excessive punishments: before the assembled school, some 200 boys, a wretched lad would be stripped and receive as many as forty blows with either birch or cane, his callous comrades clapping and counting each stripe as it arrived. The headmaster who performed these chastisements out of duty would always, en grand seigneur conclude the proceedings by shaking the victim’s hand, with the words (repeated sotto voce by the entire concourse of spectators): “Now we’ll say no more about this.”
It must be borne in mind, moreover, that the degree of severity of a thrashing by no means depends wholly on the number of stripes inflicted. A lesser number laid on with greater dexterity or force may easily cause greater damage than a large total inflicted more humanely, or with less skill. Speaking in general, however, prefects and masters tend to stick to definite numbers of strokes as embodied in conventions, and to mark the individual variations in the offence (and also in the physical and psychological conditions of the culprit) by means of degrees of dexterity or severity in the actual infliction.
Some masters – though few prefects – have even been known to take into account any previous beatings the lad may have recently received, as bearing on his present sensitiveness to pain. In the case of prefects, moreover, we must remember that they are probably, in any average group, of many types and degrees of physical strength; and most accounts of school-life stress the fact that a discerning head-prefect will discreetly choose the chastiser most suitable for the type of offence and the age and condition of the youngster in the dock. For the more hardened offender, the most athletic of the prefects will be selected, and encouraged – and rightly – to correct the youngster with every ounce of force at his command. But lesser offences, and frailer bodies, demand less violent expiation.
Sometimes, when two or three prefects have to collaborate in the correction, the lad will notice the special violence of one or other of them: thus, a recent novel describing how a boy of twelve could always distinguish the specially dexterous strokes of the Captain of Rowing; nine strokes were the quota, and the last three were delivered in quick succession by this Captain of Rowing; in the lad’s own words, “It was cut and scream every time.”
And this brings us suitably to our final word on the theme of the number of strokes usually inflicted. The highest totals are undoubtedly given in cases where numerous prefects collaborate in the thrashing. In most cases, each prefect will wish to inflict at least two strokes, so that with an average of twelve chastisers, the punishment will have a minimum of twenty-four blows. These exorbitant “prefects' beatings” are only inflicted for very special offences, and many boys pass through a school for six or seven years duly beaten, but without ever under-going the extreme chastisement. It is credible that, in extreme cases, this “prefects’ beating” degenerates into a lawless “beating-up” and rout.
Instances are known, moreover, of this extreme punishment being delivered with a slipper rather than a cane: this would be, mutatis mutandis, less painful.
Picture credits: Sting
Pictures and The Magnet
For more extracts from Chastisement Across The Ages, click here
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