Caning vicar defends Approved School beatings
A London vicar who regularly caned boys in his church made international news in 1967 when he criticised the British Government for closing an Approved School found to be guilty of using excessive beatings.
‘CANING
VICAR’ BLASTS
BRITISH
CRITIC
England's “caning vicar” this week described the Home
Secretary, Mr Roy Jenkins, as a “purring old tabby.”
Mr Jenkins is the country's best-known opponent of
corporal punishment.
The Vicar, the Rev.
Donald Pateman, 52, unashamedly described his East
London Church as Victorian in architecture and Victorian in outlook.”
And he is happy to oblige when parents call at the
vicarage and ask him to give their son “a good caning.”
The parish magazine of his church St. Mark with St.
Bartholomew, has come out with an all-out attack on opponents of caning.
His comment on Mr Jenkins’ order to close Court Lees Approved
School after reports of excessive caning there was: “For
several years the office of the Home Secretary has been occupied by old maids
of the male sex.
“Amiable, passionately sincere, kindly, benevolent but
still old maids.”
Nobody, had found an effective substitute for corporal
punishment, and meanwhile it would be business as usual at St. Mark’s, Mr
Pateman said.
“It may seem martinetish to whack boys, but what other
answer is there?” he asked.
“The children aren’t thugs they’re ordinary, healthy,
naughty little perishers who drop a stink bomb at choir practice and ‘accidentally’
plug the lad across the choir stalls with a spud gun.”
No opinion poll has been taken on the vicar's views, but
his congregations are far from thin. There are 300 children at Sunday school
and almost as many adults at church services.
The Court Lees Approved School case has divided
Britain.
Other people who have worked in this disciplinary type
of school, along with many regular school teachers, parents and social workers,
feel that discipline with the cane is both necessary and desirable.
The man who triggered the case, Mr Ivor Cook, a master
at Court Lees, stands firm on his assertion that there is caning and caning.
“I would say so again,” he declared of his accusations
that punishments were harsh and excessive.
“My conduct is the least that can be expected of any
sensitive and conscientious person – hundreds of thousands of people would have
done the same.”
Parents and students of Court Lees Approved School
were appalled at the Home Office’s closure of the school and hundreds of
letters were sent to the head, Mr Denis Haydon, criticising the move as “hasty,
unjust and unwise.”
In his magazine article Mr Pateman says the yearly
average of “about three dozen” canings which he has meted out in his 11 years
at Dalston, in London’s East End, are never hard.
Often a talking-to or detention were sufficient for
obedience.
“But an approved school is a very different kettle of
fish,” he says. “I do not know how headmasters will carry on. So many kids are
lawless.
“I have never heard of anyone else in the Church who
does this and I am sure that the majority of my brethren thoroughly disapprove.
“Lawless”
“Advocates of
corporal punishment like myself are often regarded as queer or cruel, but this isn’t
true.”
The article continues: “There have been naughty boys
in the world since Cain and Abel were kids and the problem has been to decide
what to do about them. "King Solomon (947-937 B.C.) thought he had the
answer when he directed recalcitrant children to be well and truly walloped.
And teachers, parents, educationists all down the ages have followed in his
train.
“But now a new star has arisen in the educational
firmament, and the wisdom of the ages has settled on the head of R. H. Jenkins.
“He has discovered that millions of people all over
the world for at least three millennia have been mistaken.”
As published in the Sydney
Morning Herald (Australia), 24 September 1967.
Picture credit: Unknown
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