Boy fought teacher to snap cane, then jumped out of the window

“I hit him twice only, across the buttocks to bring him to his senses.” The boy continued to fight him, then jumped through the window into the playground. – Teacher in court after “he knocked boy down and beat him with a cane, causing 17 welts on his body”.

BOY, 14, FOUGHT

TEACHER TO

SNAP CANE

SCHOOLMASTER Austin Bingley told 14-year-old Michael Hazell that if he didn’t apologise for causing a disturbance in class he would give him a stroke of the cane. But Michael had other ideas.

“You ain’t going to cane me,” he said. “I ain’t done nothing.” He grabbed the cane and Mr. Bingley told Bristol magistrates yesterday [10 March 1955], “I was in a rather embarrassing situation, as the cane was likely to break at any moment.

‘I’d have felt silly’

“If it had, I would have felt the world’s worst idiot, in having borrowed the cane from another master and having to return it in the ignominious position of it being broken by the boy.”

Mr. Bingley of Timberscombe Road, Whitchurch, Bristol, was sued for alleged assault on the boy by the father, Arthur Stanley Hazell, of Barnstaple Road, Knowle West, Bristol.

It was stated at a previous hearing that when Mr.Bingley caught the boy blowing paper pellets through a keyhole into the classroom in Connaught Road school where he was taking a drawing class, he knocked him down and beat him with a cane, causing 17 welts on his body.

Mr. Bingley said he caught the boy crouching at the door to blow another pellet and “he gave me a dirty look.”

He took him to his room, hoping he would apologise. But when he grabbed the cane he became very violent and Mr. Bingley realised that he wanted to fight him.

Jumped out

“I hit him twice only, across the buttocks to bring him to his senses,” he said. The boy continued to fight him, then jumped through the window into the playground.

When Mr. J. S. Horsington for Mr.Hazell asked: “did the boy have a severe beating?” Mr. Bingley replied: “I would suggest I had the worst in the struggle. I would have said he was approaching being raving mad.”

The boy, it was stated, had since been expelled for another matter. Two policeman who saw him after the caning could find only one red mark on him.

The magistrates dismissed the case and said that Mr. Bingley only exercised reasonable and moderate chastisement.

As published in the Daily Herald (UK), 11 March 1955.

Picture credit: Dimitri Bitjukov

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