Caned 15 times in his first year at Rugby school

 

Not enough birch

for ‘bad boys,’ so

Mr. Pank has quit

BECAUSE he thinks approved schools are too “soft” and birching should not be banned, ex-public schoolboy John Dudley Pank has resigned his job as supervision officer at one of the schools.

Pank, forty-five, worked in these schools for nine years. But, he says, he found himself becoming frustrated.

“I believe in caning or birching,” he said yesterday [31 March 1951]. “When I was at Rugby I was caned fifteen times in my first year and it did me the world of good.

“About one in five of the boys – incorrigibles who keep escaping – needs corporal punishment.

“But the schools are not allowed to use drastic methods.”

In a book he has written to be published this week – “The Order of the Court” – Mr. Pank urges that the birch should be brought back both in approved schools and by order of juvenile magistrates.

“Birching would cure a great number of bad boys,” he says. “The boys don’t like the pain of it and their parents dislike the shame of it.”

But magistrates and other experts disagreed with Mr. Panks last night.

Mr. Basil Henriques, East End Juvenile Court magistrate, said: “I am absolutely opposed to corporal punishment by court order.

“You cannot straighten out a boy’s twisted mind by beating his bottom.”

Mr. Hugh Klare, secretary of the Howard League for Penal Reform, agreed. “Bringing back the birch is the worst thing that could be done.”

As published in The People (UK), 1 April 1951.

Picture credit: Unknown.

Traditional School Discipline

Traditionalschooldiscipline@gmail.com