Alternatives to the cane: 1885 style

“There can be no doubt that flogging and caning is on the decrease,” wrote The Odd Fellow in the the Boy’s Own Paper in 1885. “The next generation will probably know of bodily torture by tradition only.”

Yet it was almost 100 years later that the practice was outlawed in state schools in England.

The Odd Fellow describes a few alternative punishments schoolmasters had introduced instead of the cane.

BoP was a children’s story paper (comic) of the day.

(Copies of the Boy’s Own Paper from this era are available from the Hathi Trust Digital Library here.)

As published in the Boy’s Own Paper, 7 March 1885.

 

For more extracts from comics and story papers, click here

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