Discipline and Punishment at an Edwardian public school
MacFarland caned a sixth former, Stewart Clarke. The offence for which he was spanked is not known but there was a dispute about whether he had committed the act for which he was punished. Eric Dodds said that the sixth formers regarded the incident as ‘an outrage. Quite apart from the injustice of the act [the caning], it was against tradition to cane a sixth-former’ – an account of punishments at Campbell College, Belfast, Northern Ireland before the First World War.
The nature and administration of discipline in an
Edwardian public school was very different from that in today’s schools. Law
and order was largely administered by prefects who were ‘senior’ boys in their
final years at the College that would be equivalent to sixth formers or in
today’s language, Years 13 and 14 (years 12 and 13 in England, Scotland and
Wales).
As in many English public schools of the time, the headmaster
delegated authority to prefects to award and carry out punishments to the boys
in lower years. This innovation was introduced to Campbell by MacFarland in
1907. The prefects recorded who they punished, with what penalty, and for what
offence in their Prefects’ Log Book and the one for Campbell has survived. It
gives an insight into how order was maintained by the prefects in the school.
In 1909, the Head Prefect Robert Boyd explained to the
new prefects their duties which included to ‘ensure promptness of boys at
meals’, ‘to enforce by example and precept good behaviour at meals’ and make
sure ‘boys must get permission before leaving studies during prep time’.
Prefects and teachers had several punishments
available to them to enforce the rules. For less serious offences, perpetrators
were given lines of Latin text books to copy out, often by the Roman authors
Virgil or Ovid. Boys were normally given a couple of hundred lines of text to
duplicate but on one occasion in September 1912, James Atkinson was given 11
pages. His offence was ‘being observed…trying to attract by his movements the
attention of girls who were passing on the footpath’ [sic]. The prefects
recorded that ‘since he could give no satisfactory excuse it was decided to
give him [Atkinson] a stiff imposition…and was warned that the next time it
would mean a caning’.
The standard penalty for more serious crimes was corporal
punishment. The use of the cane was banned outright in schools in Northern
Ireland in 2006 but was actively used for a range of misdemeanours at CCB a
hundred years ago.
In May 1915, Ronald Hunter and his brother John Hunter were identified as being guilty of ‘disorderly’ conduct during a special school assembly arranged by Mr Yates to practice the School Song. The Hunter brothers were charged with ‘mocking the School Song’ which ‘insulted Mr Yates’ and both were given ‘200 lines of Virgil’ by the prefects. Additionally, John was given ‘3 strokes’ for ‘impertinence to the Prefects’.
Frank
Hitchcock caned for interacting with girls during a hockey match
Boys were caned for some offences which would appear
trivial by today’s standards. In October 1912, John Redding and Frank Hitchcock
were charged with being ‘out of bounds on the Knock football fields during a
ladies’ hockey match. Redding went over to fetch a ball which had been kicked
over, and Hitchcock purposely kicked it back again and went over and got it’.
Both were caned.
Boys under sentence from the prefects did have the
right of appeal to the headmaster. However, in the Log Book over seven years,
no appeal to the headmaster was ever successful and the original punishment
awarded by the prefects was always carried out.
However, the system of discipline depended on working
relations between the headmaster and the prefects. These relationships broke
down in early 1912. One OC [Old Campbellian] said that trying to impose the
strict English ‘disciplinary code on Ulster boys’ caused ‘widespread
disaffection’. J. Ernest Davey believed that some prefects were able to
exercise discipline in a fair way but ‘in some cases boys who were old enough
to be prefects but were never chosen to be such – these boys [were]…often the
most difficult or dangerous in the school in the matter of keeping order’.
On 22 March 1912, MacFarland caned a sixth former,
Stewart Clarke. The offence for which he was spanked is not known but there was
a dispute about whether he had committed the act for which he was punished.
Eric Dodds said that the sixth formers regarded the incident as ‘an outrage.
Quite apart from the injustice of the act [the caning], it was against Campbell
tradition to cane a sixth-former’. As a result, three prefects, Cecil
Bailey, John Deacon and William Semple, resigned. That night Nelson Russell
reported there was disorder in the College with ‘great scrums in [the] passages
at night. The resigned Prefects were in the middle. Poor Bill Yates [master]
was on duty and did very well. Of course he couldn’t stop it’. MacFarland
gave the three recently resigned prefects a choice, to give a public apology or
face expulsion; they took the former.
The only prefect left on duty was Arthur Leslie
Gregg. It appears that the prefectural system broke down in the summer
term of 1912 as there were only two prefects appointed and the Log Book has no
record of any punishments being given to miscreants.
However, this was not the end of the affair.
Eric Dodds was expelled three weeks later for writing a ‘long and patronising’
letter to MacFarland ‘explaining to him exactly what was wrong both with his
behaviour on [the] occasion and…his general conduct in the school’. It was reported
that this letter was regarded as by MacFarland as ‘gross, studied and sustained
insolence’ which justified the ultimate sanction of expulsion.
The resignation of the prefects caused disquiet among
the governors. In the spring of 1912, they established a special committee to
‘confer with the headmaster as to the recent breaches of discipline on the part
of the prefects that ha[d]…occurred in the last two years.’ The chair of the
committee questioned whether the English ‘prefect system [was] suited to this
particular type of school in Ireland’. Recommendations were made about
suspending the prefectural system for a year but no action appears to have been
taken on the issue.
Extracted from the website Men
Behind the Glass.
Picture credits: Unknown and Men Behind
the Glass.
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