Memories: Old school birchings

The birchings were done publicly – in presence of the whole school, that is. The Doctor used to turn up his coat cuffs, set back his shoulders, and widen his legs, as if he were in a boxing bout. His subsequent behaviour gave me the notion that he regarded birching as a fine gymnastic exercise. He took breath methodically between the blows, and sometimes paused awhile. The lad’s screams and our silence (there were two hundred of us) had then something of the sublime about them. –  “An Old Boy,” in 1889, recalls birchings at two schools he attended.

How well do I recall the method and manner of my birchings twenty years ago! I suffered in two different schools. Nowadays, a boy gets “tone,” as it is called, through athletics. In my day I think the agent was the birch. Just as the modern vaunts of the brief time in which he can run a mile, so his predecessor boasted of the number of his birchings in a single “half” and the stoical mood in which he accepted them.

“How many times were you birched last week, my dear?” was quite a current common place salutation on the part of a fond mother when she visited her son at school. And if she were as fully Spartan in spirit as the lad, her eyes would brighten with pride at the elated answer. “Twice mother; and I didn’t cry in the least.”

At the one school, indeed, birching seemed as much a part of our curriculum as the Latin grammar and Colenso. Daily after morning school, a herd of boys stayed behind in the large room to be castigated. One could then judge of a boy’s stamina very fairly. Some of us fidgeted a great deal during the unpleasant moments of expectation. Some smiled sardonically even to the head master’s face. Some shed tears, and volubly bewailed the injustice of their doom. These last were in the worst plight. They met with pity from neither gods nor men.

In this school our birchings were wrought in private. The drill master was the executioner; and he used to come into the room with the birch under his arm, and smelling of beer as if he had been fortifying himself for the task. The head master generally stood by and said “Enough!” when he thought the crime was duly atoned for.

But he did not always sufficiently concentrate his attention upon the work in hand; and thanks to sheer abstraction of mind, many a boy got more than was meant for him. Now and again he honoured us by himself taking a turn with the birch; and, though amateurish he had a strong arm. But he lacked staying power. He could not, like Keate of Eton, have flogged a hundred boys in a single evening.

A much more formal and impressive business was a birching at my second school. This was an institution with decided Ritualistic tendencies. Our head master, Dr E., was also far from adverse to giving us extra half-holidays whenever we petitioned for them. You would have thought the boys thus indulged would never need to be birched.

I thank heaven that I for my part never suffered the extreme penalty under Dr E., though I can speak for his deputy. The birchings were done publicly – in presence of the whole school, that is. The Doctor used to turn up his coat cuffs, set back his shoulders, and widen his legs, as if he were in a boxing bout. His subsequent behaviour gave me the notion that he regarded birching as a fine gymnastic exercise. He took breath methodically between the blows, and sometimes paused awhile. The lad’s screams and our silence (there were two hundred of us) had then something of the sublime about them.

At this school there were perhaps ten or a dozen birchings in a half. Of course, canings of various degrees were innumerable; but a birching is to a caning as a cathedral to a humble red-brick Methodist chapel. Impending birchings were announced many days beforehand on the green-baize board to which notices of cricket and football matches, scholarship contests, and the like were pinned. The culprits had the pleasure of reading these advertisements like the rest of us.

The event took place in the great vaulted dining-hall, after dinner. As soon as the servitors had carried off the plates and glasses and cutlery, we sang our Latin grace, and then, instead of bustling off to play, we remained standing. When we were quiet, the head master, from the transverse table on the dais, summoned the victim to his immediate presence. The birch was already on the table. A solemn statement of the case against the boy was recounted to us all, and then there sounded the dread command, “Strip, sir.”

This was certainly a tyring time for the boy. However firm his previous determination to bear himself with dignity, he was sure to find fate too much for him. And so he lay like a suckling pig on the table, and took his punishment as best he could.

It was not very edifying to the rest of us; but it was dramatic; and so, though those of us who were in the front held their breath and affected to turn pale, no sooner was it all over, and we were out in the cricket-field, than we discussed it as an incident in the monotony of school life.

Extracted from The Press, Canterbury, New Zealand, 1 April 1889.

Picture credit: C of Sweden

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