Memories: Rubber pants
A lad had got a pair of pants that he had made out of the inner tube of a motor bike. He charged 4d. for you to borrow his rubber pants – but it worked if you had got them stuffed down then the Master could not feel anything. A.M. Jerrom recalling King Edward VII School, Sheffield, England in the 1920s.
Mr. Nicholas’s room was
beside that of the French master, Mr. McGrath. If you deserved 4/6 swipes of
the cane you had to go to the porter’s office at the entrance where you
collected a cane and a book and you would take them to Mr. Nicholas (after
having been entered in the book).
If you were in the French
class you could hear a lad go shuffling by very slowly and go into Mr.
Nicholas. He had a booming voice and you could hear, the lad take a chair
outside into the corridor. Then McGrath would stop his class, go to the
blackboard and stand ready. Then you would hear Nicholas’ voice saying “don't
flinch boy, take it like a man” and McGrath would score on the blackboard –
this was the point; when he had finished and the boy took the chair back
Nicholas would give him one penny for a do-nut. You had to go and buy a do-nut
from the tuck shop and take it back to his classroom where you then bit it to
see if there was any jam inside; if there was no jam inside you got another
beating. About one in ten had no jam in.
A lad had got a pair of
pants that he had made out of the inner tube of a motor bike. When you were
going to be caned by the Master this was done in the classroom and you bent
down to get a whack; the procedure went – the teacher would smooth your
backside with his hand to see if you had stuffed anything down your trousers
etc. This lad charged 4d. for you to borrow his rubber pants – but it worked –
if you had got them stuffed down then the Master could not feel anything.
By the time of the war,
this lad owned a successful engineering steelworks business – it must have been
paid for on the profits of hiring out his rubber trousers! One master used to
take a run at us down the centre of the classroom. One lad one day had had
enough and had raised four pence to hire the rubber trousers. He stuffed these
down his trousers. The master took a run at him, left-hand upper cut. He hit
the lad’s bottom and it rebounded – because of the rubber – and nearly broke
his wrist. He had it in a sling for ages.
Picture credit: Unknown
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