Probably unjust punishments
Recounting the episode years afterwards, Alan shuddered with sincere horror. “It was savage,” he exclaimed, “I couldn't sit down for five days. And, oh! the heat, the burning! The pain was so intense, it became more than pain, it entered another dimension. – Gerva D’Olbert recounts some “probably unjust punishments” in his book Chastisement Across The Ages (The Fortune Press, 1956).
Our first example will be taken from a school in the English Home Counties. Alan, a lad of sixteen who later became a promising engineer, had a friend Roy who was no use at mathematics. Alan was no scapegrace, but he had a mischievous and generous nature which had somehow escaped condign chastisement. The authorities, none the less, were on the look-out for some excuse to “bring him to his senses”; maybe the pride which often goes with great brains in a boy offended their propriety. So far Alan had suffered nothing more severe than. a few prefects’ slipperings; his skin was unusually tender, and the punishments always made him squirm. So he was careful not to offend authority.
One day, however, in the summer examinations, he was
seated next to Roy, who had been promised a severe hiding by the mathematics
master, if he failed to reach the minimum standard required. Roy was in despair;
Alan, perceiving this, made signs to his chum and surreptitiously passed him a
sheet of paper with some answers on it. This continued for a while unnoticed by
the superintending usher. At length, however, boldness over-reached itself, and
the culprits were discovered and immediately reported to the austere
Headmaster.
Now this Headmaster had a positive horror of “cheating”;
he also disliked what he called young Alan’s “bumptious behaviour”. So a double
opportunity presented itself. In the event, both Alan and Roy received
thrashings of an unusual severity. For such special occasions the Head kept a
springy cane, four feet long, and well knotted.
When Alan saw the instrument, he recoiled with a
slight scream, and protested with vigour that his “offence” had been merely to
assist a friend: he himself had gained nothing from his “cheating”. Naturally
such pleading served but to enrage the Headmaster afresh. He boomed at both
boys to bend over tight; Roy obeyed slickly (he was used to the cane), and Alan
with great reluctance. The Head proceeded to inflict strokes alternately on the
two boys, stretched as they were helplessly side by side. Each stroke was
prefaced by a run the whole length of the study. Each lad received twelve
strong strokes, Roy taking his punishment stoically, while Alan cried out after
strokes numbers three, five, seven, nine, ten, eleven and twelve (Alan’s
twelfth cut was “outlandish” and finally broke the cane).
Recounting the episode years afterwards, Alan
shuddered with sincere horror. “It was savage,” he exclaimed, “I couldn't sit
down for five days. And, oh! the heat, the burning! The pain was so intense, it
became more than pain, it entered another dimension. And I then resolved,
rather than submit again to such a hideous indignity, to, walk out of the school
building”. Ironically he added: “A few months later I became a prefect and had
the right to beat younger lads. But I never struck anyone”.
As for Ray, he never made any progress in
trigonometry.
...
FOR PERPETUALLY SMOKING (naturally without
permission), a lad of fifteen was severely chastised by his form-master. In this
case it is hardly the fact of the punishing, but its nature and extent, that
can cause us to pause. The boy actually endured twenty-three cuts on the hand
from a long, supple, knotted cane, swung with the usher’s whole force. He
writhed and yelled, and felt he could not stand the promised twenty-fourth.
This cut, therefore, struck him on the wrist, breaking the skin and causing
profuse bleeding. The master then had to stop the infliction, though
reluctantly, and the lad’s comrades were up in arms in his defence. It was
weeks before the victim was able to use a pen correctly. Surely in this case
most judges will deem the punishment excessive and brutal. It provides also a
warning against punishing on the hands: for the safety of the boy himself (as
also for the good name of the school) it is essential that the part punished remain
still – a requirement which would seem to imply the back-regions.
...
LET US NOW turn to the case of a most unusual
headmaster, the vigorous director of a Technical Grammar School near London. He
was, some may think, obsessed with the need for “Order” in his school, an attitude
for which a partial excuse may be found in the extremely rough character of
most of the pupils. Even those assistant masters who were normally averse to
corporal punishment felt that its occasional infliction was an unfortunate
necessity. A lad of fourteen, using obscene insult to his master, would in
almost any school have received dire infliction. But this headmaster went much further:
all corporal chastisement lying legally in his own hands, he summoned the
entire assistant staff and begged them emphatically to send more boys up to him
to be caned. “The discipline of this
school is getting quite out of hand”.
Needless to add, the assistant masters did their loyal
best to support him, if only from thoughts of their own well-being and
promotion. The system was that the master gave the erring lad a note which
stated his offence and the number of strokes suggested for its expiation. This
number was almost invariably six. One lad, a brawny bully, had to be held down
by three masters and received severe cuts of unwonted vigour.
Usually the boys submitted easily enough, and the
Headmaster, sitting in his study hour by hour, would rely on a fairly even
stream of victims. Often he took the law into his own hands, at one time
flogging an entire class of 24 lads for “indiscipline”", on another
occasion chastising three classes – a total of some 70 boys – in thin shorts.
Another day he beat all the prefects, as
they had failed to keep sufficient order – an ironic fact in view of the
chastising role played by prefects themselves at Public Schools. At last the
Head threatened to surpass himself: he proposed to flog the entire school.
This was too much for most of his assistants, who
believed in corporal punishment in due measure, yet suspected strongly that
their Head was guilty of sadistic obsession. So they signed a frankly-worded
protest, and the universal beating-project fell to the ground. Since, however,
this Headmaster – as far as our information goes – is still at his post, the
vast project may still be realized.
General opinion, we believe, will affirm that such
universal flogging tends only to discredit the genuine ideal of
discipline itself. Neither is the rough nature of the lads and of the whole
neighbourhood a sufficient excuse.
...
THE FOLLOWING EXAMPLE contains some surprising
elements. At a school in the English Home Counties, a keen, mischievous, but
not unattractive lad of fifteen suffered tremendously. Often his punishments proved
to be his just due, but more often than not they were undeserved, at least as
regards their intensity and vigour.
He was even proud of his title of “the most caned boy
at school”; his comrades envied him his stripes, and examined them with the
usual schoolboy professional curiosity. But all his previous whackings were at
nought compared with what happened to him at the hands of his new Housemaster.
This man was a true psychiatric case; he had had an
accident and walked through glass; this was supposed later to have affected his
emotional and mental life. Meantime he took vicarious vengeance on the body of
the fifteen-year-old, to whom in leisure hours he taught music with enthusiasm.
Even here his feeling for discipline was apparent:
should a boy practise the piano for a minute more, or a minute less, than the official
half-hour, he felt the cane. The boy in question often suffered thus for the
trivial “offence” – if offence it be – of practising two minutes beyond the
stated time. Gradually the master began beating him for other trivial offences:
dressing in bed on a cold winter’s morning was a frequent “crime”. This mania
for beating the admittedly pleasing and mischievous lad developed to a point
where, for a whole term, he had to submit twice a week to the rod. On the
prefect’s telling him that the Housemaster wished to see him, the youngster
hastily repaired to the Chemical Laboratories, where he quickly rubbed himself
with a material whose properties he had discovered, could lessen the sting. His
fellows cheered him oh, crying, “There goes McLean again, preparing his bottom!”
Indeed he was wise to do so, for the punishment awaiting
him was severe in the extreme. It consisted of nothing less than twenty bitter
cuts with the cane upon his stripped posterior. The master chased him round the
room, inflicting resounding bruises. A term of this was enough for McLean; at
last he summoned up courage to approach the Headmaster, a figure only less
ferocious than the Housemaster, but with a soldier’s sense of justice; corporal
punishment he thoroughly approved, but he felt that McLean’s treatment had gone
beyond all legitimate bounds. So he forbade the Housemaster ever to touch the
lad again.
The Head was further incensed by the stripping of the posteriors;
trousers or pyjamas or shorts were the official penal receptacle, and only in
extreme cases of theft or immorality would the Headmaster in person beat upon
the “bare”. He therefore did not wish his privileges invaded by an underling.
So McLean was less often seen in the Laboratories, while still continuing in happiest
style to be invited by the Housemaster to listen-in to symphony concerts. That
the boy was mischievous is shown by the fact of his being quite legitimately
thrashed the very first day of the next term, for throwing darts in class.
His excessive punishments, cast a bruise over his
future life, and till long past middle age he was noticeably nervous and
neurotic.
Picture credit: Sting Pictures
Traditionalschooldiscipline@gmail.com
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