Padding down the pants

Posted by Traditional School Discipline January 29, 2021

Padding down the pants

I can’t be certain why the boy bent across the chair appears to be chortling but I wonder if it’s because he thinks he’s fooled the headmaster by padding his pants with blotting paper.

This cat-and-mouse game between boys and masters was played out across the ages. There was no disgrace in a boy avoiding the stinging cane.

Alex Renton got away with stuffing a flag down the back of his Y-fronts when he was caned at Eton in 1977. Although, it seems the headmaster must have noticed the bulging backside but preferred not to.

Our old friend Gerva D’Olbert, the expert on all things corporal punishment, had something to say about padding in his book Chastisement Across The Ages (The Fortune Press, 1956)

Mitigation [of the pain of caning] usually takes the form of “padding” – that of inserting blotting-paper or some other thickish substance between the trousers and the skin. This is of course possible only with fairly thick clothing: athletic dress would prohibit concealment.

However, all accounts agree in that the practice is exceedingly common. Sometimes it is discovered, sometimes not. It may be that the sound on the blow as it descends on blotting-paper makes the master, ever on guard, a shade suspicious. In such cases, he will pause, and the victim has no choice but to remove the palliative article. Detection is usually followed – and with this no lover of justice can quarrel – by extra strokes.

Often, to prevent further prevarications, the chastisement is continued on the bared skin; at the other times, however, the mere addition of extra strokes is considered a sufficient penalty.

To meet the possibility of “padding,” many and diverse methods have been devised. Sometimes the master or presiding prefect will himself test the culprit’s trousers before commencing with the infliction. If this is considered to be undignified, another boy will be stationed – say in an adjoining chamber – with the express command (on pain of being whipped himself) to test every prospective victim, to remove whatever padding there may be, and to report each case faithfully to the prefects or the master in question. This is perhaps the most satisfactory method.

Other customs are to rely on the lad’s own “good sportsmanship,” and to threaten him with an excessive overdose of punishment should his padding be discovered. On the whole, it may be said that remarkably few cases of padding remain undetected, and that the average healthy boy will rather pride himself on his ability to “take a licking without flinching.”

The chief exceptions would seem to range in three distinct kinds: either the boy feels he is being punished unjustly or else he anticipates that this particular prefect or master will beat him with especial severity; or else he may have been thrashed so much already in the past few days that he considers a little protection to be a legitimate device.

Picture credit: The Hotspur

And now for something completely different ...

I don’t know if this is a spoof advert but don’t you think these padded briefs are a naughty schoolboy’s dream purchase.