Photo poses a mystery

Here’s another photograph that is a bit of a puzzle. I’ve seen it used to more than once to illustrate serious news reports such as this one from the Daily Express (UK) but its origin is obscure.

It looks very much like a publicity still from a film or a play about an English public school. It puts me in mind of Ian Hay’s Housemaster (See here). Certainly, the “schoolboy” looks to be pushing thirty if he’s a day (as was typical with films back in the day).

I managed to track the photograph to the Getty Images archives where curiously it was filed under “occupations.”  In a different part of the archive it had this caption, “The Cane Again. September 1949: A schoolmaster administers a caning to an errant pupil. (Photo by Denis De Marney/Hulton Archive/Getty Images).”

And apart from that, the photograph’s origin continues to be a mystery.

 

Traditional School Discipline


 

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