Never too old
For those who think that sixth-formers (senior schoolboys) were too old to be caned, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair knows otherwise. He got ‘six of the best’ when he was seventeen.
He told the
BBC Panorama programme in 1994
that caning was wrong but, ‘It probably did me no harm.’
Blair attended Fettes College in Edinburgh, Scotland during the 1960s. Fettes is
one of the most exclusive private boarding schools in the country. At the time
it was an all-boys’ school.
Blair said no more about the
caning, but in 2001 political journalist John Rentoul in a biography
unimaginatively titled Tony Blair: Prime Minister (Little, Brown, 2001) writes, ‘Roberts [his housemaster] beat Blair, the only
master to do so, giving him “six of the best” at the age of 17 for persistently
flouting rules.’ On another occasion, a prefect at Fettes beat Blair for
smoking. Years later, Blair noticed with some smugness that at a lawyers’
dinner in Edinburgh the only person in the room with a cigarette was the same
prefect.
Rentoul later
told a journalist Blair was not the most popular boy at
Fettes with figures of authority. ‘All the teachers I spoke to when researching
the book said he was a complete pain in the backside, and they were very glad
to see the back of him.’
The Scotsman
newspaper in 2004 spoke with people who knew Blair at school,
‘Tony would wear his hair long, albeit greased down with butter to keep it
inside the back of his collar, and is best remembered for a cavalier attitude
to the rules of drinking and smoking.’
Roberts, the
master who caned Blair, described him, ‘as the most difficult boy I ever had to
deal with’.
Tony Blair wasn’t the only senior boy ever to be caned by a schoolmaster. There were undoubtedly many others but quite rightly school punishments are personal affairs and are probably best left that way. However, from time to time they do become public. I’ve already written about the 18-year-old American boy who was caned with others by his headmaster for sneaking out of school to go to a dance (See here).
Another case that made the newspapers involved three
18-year-old who were punished by their headmaster for freeing rabbits. I have
no idea why a national newspaper of the standing of the Daily Mail
(London) thought it worthy of publishing but then who am I etc
etc? It was reported in June 1959 that one of the boys lost his prefect status
and the other two got three strokes of the cane.
The Mail
reported,
It happened at the Varndean Grammar School For Boys at Brighton, where the
rabbits were being kept in the biology laboratory. They were to have been
dissected this week by boys taking the G.C.E. biology exam.
The three boys, all sixth-formers, are Clive Ashworth, a 6ft. prefect, of West
Hill-road, Brighton; deputy prefect Paul Rayment, of Bates-road, Brighton; and
Roger Cox, of Woodingdean.
After
they owned up to the ‘offence’ the headmaster, Mr. E.J. Hutchins, told Clive
and Paul: ‘You can either hand in your prefects’ ties or have three strokes of
the cane.’ Roger Cox was not offered a choice.
Clive said last night: ‘I thought it was beneath my dignity to bend over, so I
handed in my tie.’
He added: ‘We saw the rabbits in a glass fronted cage in the lab and decided to
set them free. After school we put them in a bag and released them in a copse.
It was all done on the spur of the moment. We just felt sorry for them.
‘We all
knew we had done wrong and we have no complaints about our punishment. I think
the head has been very fair.’
Mr. Hutchins who has 750 boys at his school, said: ‘We use rabbits in ordinary
routine scientific studies and buy them as we need them. I have no other
comment.’
TAILPIECE: Mr. Hutchins told Clive yesterday that he will consider reinstating
him as a prefect in the near future if he behaves.
If Clive in the story above thought it was beneath his
dignity to bend over for the headmaster he would not have liked to have been at
Eton around the 1940s. Eton was (and still is) the most famous of the elite
English ‘public’ schools.
Ralph Nevill in his book Floreat Etona, (Macmillan, 1911) recalls the
case of a boy high up in the school, and a well-known swell at athletics, who,
going up to Oxford in order to matriculate, instead of returning to Eton
directly the examination was over, outstayed his leave and remained for some
days amusing himself with a Christchurch friend.
As a consequent result, when he
did return the voice of a praepostor [prefect] was heard inquiring “Is —— in
this division? He is to stay.” The culprit, who considered himself a grown man,
at first stoutly declared that nothing would induce him to undergo a flogging
[birching], and it required a good deal of persuasion to make him realise that
continued resistance would entail his going away from Eton without a leaving
book; that is to say, practical expulsion, which is liable to injure a boy’s
prospects in after life. Eventually, concluding that it would be best to
submit, he duly paid the required visit to the library, where Dr. Balston
officiated in a most sympathetic but efficient manner.
Ralph
Nevill also told this story:
In the
case of big boys there is some humiliation in being flogged. A certain captain
of the boats, who had indulged too freely in champagne, a very tall and
powerful young man, about to be flogged by Dr. Hawtrey, begged hard that he
should receive his punishment in private, and thus escape the degradation of
being observed on the block by a large crowd of boys looking through the open
door. The Headmaster, however, would not hear of this for a moment, declaring
that publicity was the chief part of the punishment.
And this
...
An
amusing story used to be told of a boy just about to leave Eton who, having
refused to be flogged, on his arrival at home discovered, to his horror, that
his refusal to bow to constituted authority would prevent him from being
allowed to enter the career upon which he had set his heart. Hoping to put
matters right, he at once set out for Eton, only to find on his arrival there
that the Headmaster had gone to Switzerland. The ingenious youth, determined to
get flogged, then somehow procured two birches and hurried off to Geneva, only
to find that the Head had gone on to Lucerne. To that city he too followed,
but, missing the pedagogue whom he sought, again had to continue his pursuit,
which eventually ended in the refectory of the Monastery of Mont St. Bernard,
where he eventually persuaded the Doctor to administer the sought-for flogging
amidst a circle of edified monks.
For
more True Memories, click here
Traditional School Discipline
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