Sitting on a cold stone numbed boys’ bums before flogging
A very special slab of stone stood in the shadow of
the headmaster’s study at the old Reading School.
The stone was always cold, and the boys blessed it for
that. Half-an-hour spent sitting on it reduced feeling in the hindquarters, a
necessary precaution before they went in to receive the painful punishments of
Dr Richard Valpy, recognised as one of the most fearsome floggers in the land.
“Half a dozen boys were to be seen any morning before
breakfast, outside the doctor’s study,” related one former pupil, “sitting on
the large stone in order to go into the presence numb.”
Dr Valpy took nearly 50 years between 1781 and 1830 to
build the reputation – recorded in the Dictionary
of National Biography – as “one of the hardest floggers of his
day”, but he is also the man who can be said to have done more for the prestige
of Reading School than any other.
It was he who made it a nationally-accepted centre of
learning.
Extracted from They Made History, by Ray
Bryant, Reading Evening Post, 28 June 1982.
Picture credit: Westminster School, or Dr
Busby settling accounts with Master Billy and his Playmates, 1785. Artist:
Anon. Via Look
and Learn.
Traditionalschooldiscipline@gmail.com
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