Schools birch ‘until the blood flows’
That boys occasionally need to be chastised no one will deny. But to compel a lad of sixteen or so to strip half-naked and bend over a block, in which position he is held by a couple of his schoolfellows, while a stalwart “head” flogs his flesh until the blood flows, is neither more nor less than a species of torture.
--- A writer in 1906 argues against
birching at Eton.
Lord Ronald Gower has attacked that time-honoured
institution, the “flogging block,” at Eton.
The birching of boys at public schools [elite
schools], he says in effect, is degrading alike to the master who inflicts the
punishment and the lad who has to submit to it, and is a survival of the dark
ages when women were burned for coining and petty malefactors were slowly
strangled at Tyburn Tree.
And this view is undoubtedly the correct one. That
boys occasionally need to be chastised no one will deny. But to compel a lad of
sixteen or so to strip half-naked and bend over a block, in which position he
is held by a couple of his schoolfellows, while a stalwart “head” flogs his
flesh until the blood flows, is neither more nor less than a species of torture.
The fact of the matter is that use has blinded us to
the enormity of the thing, just as it blinded our ancestors to the enormity of
the rack, the thumbscrews, and the faggot. No one now defends these latter
horrors. Nor will anyone be found, a generation or so hence, to defend the
flogging of children.
Of course, it is argues that Eton’s affairs are
Eton’s; that no outsider has a right to suggest a reform in this matter, still
less to presume to dictate. But is this quite logical? We think not.
Eton is the recognised principal public school in
England. It sets the fashion, more or less, to all other schools – public,
primary and secondary – and it also influences powerfully, if indirectly, the
minds of the ruling and governing classes throughout the Empire.
How often does one not hear a magistrate say to a
tearful mother, whose son he has just ordered to be birched: “Why, my good
woman, I was flogged at Eton” – or Harrow, or Rugby etc., as the case may be.
To him this is a reason all sufficient for flogging other boys. It is
instructive to remember that it was also the stock argument against the
abolition of flogging in the army a generation ago, just as it is now trotted
out in defence of birching boys in the navy.
And, in passing, it may be remarked that a birching in
the navy is a very different thing from a thrashing at Eton. A sailor lad who
is to undergo the ordeal is first examined by a doctor, to see if he is in a
fit condition to stand the torture; and is afterwards “sent sick,” in order
that his wounds may be dressed, and any fragments of the instrument of
flagellation, that may be sticking in the scored and lacerated flesh of his
back removed.
Obviously, this is sheer brutality. And there are even
darker depths. Among the semi-savage marsh-folk of East Anglia, for instance,
where cruelty to children – if Mr. James Blyth and other writers who know the
district intimately are to be believed – is carried to lengths unheard of
elsewhere, a favourite form of “correction” is said to be as follows:
“The little victim’s flesh is first ‘tendered’ by
beating through the clothing with a stout willow sapling, after which the
bruised tissues are bared, and lacerated with bramble thorns.”
Doubtless the men and women beasts guilty of such
practices as these are as ready to defend themselves as are the apologists of
the other and milder species of child torture mentioned above.
As published in New
Zealand Herald, 7 March 1906.
Picture credit: Unknown
Comments
Post a Comment