Few body parts left un-whipped ....
Traditionally – if traditionally is really the word I mean – corporal punishment of schoolboys was directed towards the hands or the backside. We’ve already looked at the question should a master cane on the hand or the seat? (Here)
These are not the only two areas of the body that can be targets for the schoolmaster’s rod; other limbs are occasionally used as the target of punishment.
Gerva D’Olbert in
his book Chastisement
Across The Ages (The Fortune Press, 1956) reminds us that whipping the
shoulders, for instance, was at one time used as an alternative.
He writes:
In this case, the exact position of shoulder-caning in the hierarchy of punishment is not clear. Sometimes it is used merely as an alternative to the more usual forms, sometimes it is deemed lighter than posterior-infliction, and as slightly more severe than caning on the hands.
At all events, punishment on the shoulders demands, for medical reasons, greater care and circumspection than do the more usual forms of chastisement, which may account for its rarity and perhaps for its comparative mildness, except in the hands of masters with expert medical knowledge who do not hesitate to inflict the maximum of pain.
Before leaving the subject of the hands, a curious custom ought to be mentioned. This consists of the punishment called “handing,” which in many outward accoutrements resembles the scene of a severe birching of the normal type: the whole school is assembled, the headmaster inflicts correction in person.
But the offence for which expiation is being made has been of such a heinous type, that ordinary punishment would seem an absurd understatement, which consists in touching the boy’s hand six times with the birch, producing no pain at all. The ceremony of “handing” is meant, then, as a token-punishment, and in its appalling restraint is to be considered the greatest disgrace of all. It is questionable, however, if many of the lucky victims would themselves subscribe to this valuation.
Chastisement on the back is not unknown in schools, but is far less prevalent than it was centuries ago. For this purpose, either the whip, the birch, or the thinnest of canes would be used.
Punishment has also been inflicted on the arms and even the chest, though this must probably be termed, not chastisement proper, but either bullying or the expression of sudden, uncontrollable fury.
Punishment on the legs is probably more frequent: in this case again, as with the back, only the thinnest of implements would be used, moreover as an adjunct to the more frequent form of correction on the posteriors.
If a lad, while undergoing such correction, proves restive or rebellious, a few incisive lashes on the legs tend to be inflicted in a kind of impatience, almost as a gesture; in no circumstances are these stripes included in the official total to be inflicted on the buttocks. In some cases, however, punishment on the legs has been used as the main punishment. This has the additional point – if such a thing be desired – of inflicting humiliation on the victim by exposing his stripes to universal view, especially where short trousers or scout-shorts or football costume is the usual form of attire.
Flogging on the thighs is more frequent still [...] Sometimes, even in modem times, punishment is deliberately inflicted on the thighs as such. But in the most cases the thighs are chastised, as it were by chance, in the cause of punishment on the buttocks; this is especially the case if the victim will not keep quite still, or if a long and winding cane is being used.
Picture credit: The Magnet
Traditionalschooldiscipline@gmail.com
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