Send in the next boy ...

Here’s a scene that must have played out in countless headmaster’s studies across the ages. “Bend over, touch your toes,” the headmaster intones. The boy reluctantly complies. Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! Swipe! “Stand up. You may go. Send in the next boy.” He rises, gingerly makes his way to the door and leaves. Seconds later another has taken his place on the carpet. “Bend over.” And so it is Rinse and Repeat until all the miscreants awaiting their turn in the corridor have been dealt with.

The “multiple-caning” is also a recurring theme in school fiction. Story-tellers and video makers devise many different scenarios. In this scene from a video from CP Services, London, two young men have been caught red-handed collaborating in crime. They are equally guilty and are punished together. The headmaster has one across the back of the armchair and the other spreadeagled over the desk. He takes his times delivering first strokes to the chair and then to the desk. In this way he methodically punishes each in turn and at the same time. (Incidentally, the young man draped across the chair is Mark who we met earlier.)

But what of cases where boys are condemned to the cane for misbehaviour in the classroom? Mr Quelch, in the Billy Bunter stories written by Frank Richards and published in The Magnet had no qualms. He would have the boys form a line, approach and pause in front of him. The palm is raised. Slash! Slash. “Other hand!” Slash! Slash! And so on down the line.

The multiple canings in the classroom were frequent in such stories. Sometimes, (as below) Quelch would organise a “line-up” in front of a chair and in turn each unhappy lad would bend over to get the seat of his trousers dusted.

In other cases boys might be lined up side by side. A critic might point out that the boys were far too close together and it would be impossible for the master to land a decent stroke. And that critic would be correct.

In the movie Bottoms Up! a single oversized cane was used to punish a row of boys simultaneously for “comedic” effect.

As in so many other things corporal punishment, Sting Pictures knows how to do it. In this scene from Discipline Download Under two sixth-formers are successfully caned simultaneously. The headmaster ensures their distancing is adequate for his needs.

Gerva D’Olbert in his exhaustive (and exhausting!) book Chastisement Across The Ages (The Fortune Press, 1956) considers the issue of how boys, when once condemned to the rod, should be corrected. Should they be caned instantly; and, if so, should they be humiliated in face of their comrades?

He writes:

A harassed master, who does not wish to waste precious minutes, and who knows there is no corridor or empty room outside which would make a suitable rendezvous will decide to punish on the spot. This policy may have the additional advantage of acting as a deterrent on other pupils. On the other hand. it may be argued that the very invisibility of the operation, plus the audibility of distinct if distant blows and cries, will deter still further. This – one way or the other – only experience can show; and it is usually by experience that masters solve all such questions as these. The question of space, however, affects thrashings that take place in the class-room itself, for a restricted area will inevitably alter the very mode of chastisement.

Speaking generally, there are certain faults (such as mischievousness, excessive high spirits, or assaulting a fellow pupil) which deserve to be dealt with instantly and in full public view. The physical, immediate, and realistic aspects of punishing will thus be stressed. For more  subtle moral offences, and also for slackness in work – though it is doubtful whether, for this latter, the rod is a suitable remedy – it is perhaps better to reserve the punishment till later, till the end of the class, for example.

The culprit will thus have time to brood over his crime and its inescapable expiation, and will avoid becoming a hero to his classmates. All this, of course, must be conditioned very largely by the psychology of the individual lad. No general lines can be laid down.

If the correction is to be delayed till the end of the class, it is advisable in the meantime that the master should treat the lad without any reference to the coming event: complete impartiality in lessons should be observed and no ironic jests indulged in. Once the class is at an end, it is well to proceed to business without delay, though, if other boys come to consult the master, or pass through the room or even if other masters arrive for a fleeting visit, it is inevitable that the culprit’s agony of anticipation should be prolonged.

In such cases, it is sometimes found that the master will, in an aside, apologise to the lad for this unfortunate delay. The matter is even more complex should two or more victims be appearing at the same time. Blasquart records two boys who, being told to “wait behind after the lesson,” believed they were to receive a modest imposition, when, the room being emptied, the master produced a cane and blandly asked: “Which of you will be beaten first?”

The quicker-witted of the two overcame his dismay and offered himself, whereupon his comrade adjourned to the next room, reappearing after he had heard five strokes, and taking his own punishment in his turn. This absenting by the second boy during his comrade’s correction implies a delicacy which is not too common, though it hardly consorts with their subsequent conversations in which every detail of their respective whippings would be compared.

More unusual, and indeed a feat only possible in exceptional circumstances, is the actual beating of two lads side by side. If the offence has been a specially collaborative one, this may be a just mode of retribution. In this case, the strokes will probably be given alternatively to each boy. A more eccentric method is to place the lads very close together, and to use a lash which will strike both – or part of both – at the same time. Athletic masters have sometimes practised this. A more frivolous version of the same theme is to place two youths, one guilty, the other innocent, side by side, and to declare grimly that, “The cane will know how to distinguish.”

Let us hope that it will.

 

Picture credit: Schoolboys Own Library 

For more extracts from Chastisement Across The Ages, click here

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