Court fines teacher who caned boy in front of class

 

Schoolteacher fined

after caning boy

A 25-year-old schoolteacher, Roy Barber, of Fields Road, Alsager, was fined £2 at Burslam yesterday [ 22 December 1955] for assaulting a 12-year-old boy pupil. He pleaded not guilty. Mr. F. Griffiths, prosecuting, said that the boy took a small piece out of a bench with a chisel during a carpentry lesson.

Barber told him to bend down and with a cane wrapped with black adhesive tape struck the boy three times on the buttocks. There were three weals.

The stipendiary magistrate, Mr. R. MacGregor Clarkson, said that he thought the punishment was excessive and that on this occasion Barber did not realise his own strength.

He thought Barber was mistaken in believing that the boy deliberately cut the bench. While discipline was essential in any aspect of school life, the discipline of the barrack square was not ideal in the training of children.

‘Strokes given lightly’

Mr. Clarkson said at the same time he hoped the authorities would not imagine Barber had done more than exceed what he was entitled to do to some extent.

The boy told the Court that he was practising on a piece of wood when the chisel slipped and accidentally cut the bench. Mr. Barber, he said, called him out to the front of the class, made him bend down and touch his toes and then gave him three cuts with the cane.

Barber, who said that he was in his fourth teaching year, denied that he was in a temper when he caned the boy. “The strokes were lightly administered and the boy showed no signs of distress,” he went on.

“Caning is not a form of punishment I use frequently. After examining the damage to the bench, which included several cuts, I was quite sure it had been done deliberately.”

‘Not unreasonable’

Replying to Mr. Griffiths, he said: “If I had done that type of damage in my own schooldays I should have expected ‘six of the best.’”

Mr. W. J. Davies, headmaster, said that he did not regard the punishment as unreasonable. “I have been caned in grammar school,” Mr. Davies added, “and the marks have remained for a fortnight or even a month.”

Mr. A. J. Welch, secretary of the North Staffordshire Teachers’ Association, who attended the hearing, later told The Birmingham Post: “This matter is to be referred to the National Union of Teachers with a view to an appeal.”

As published in The Birmingham Post, 23 December 1955.

Picture credit: Mancspank

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