Memories: punished for buying ice cream while not wearing school cap

Rules at the Queen Elizabeth School, Barnet, England were so strict 50 years ago that one old boy remembered a prefect punished a boy for buying an ice-cream without wearing his school cap…on a Sunday afternoon.

In June 2018, the school’s website reported that three alumni from the 1940s–60s shared memories with current Year 7 pupils to help them with a project looking at the history of the school.

The hapless young ice-cream buyer was ordered to write lines when he was caught bare-headed one hot weekend making his purchase from a shop near his home in Southgate. Although the older pupil was within his rights – prefects of the time were authorised to dole out such punishments and boys were supposed to wear their caps even when not at school – the visiting alumni recalled that he was considered by his classmates to have gone too far, even by the strict standards of the day.

The whole School met each morning for assembly, addressed by the Headmaster in his gown: all masters (teachers) wore gowns daily, while prefects wore half-length undergraduate-type gowns.

The strictness of the regime was seen in the use of corporal punishment. The cane was still very much in use and boys could, in the schoolboy slang of the time, be ‘whacked’ for a variety of misdemeanours. The three alumni reported, though, that they accepted this as being a normal part of school education and thought that there was usually good reason for the punishment! Mr John Todd who was at the school from 1958 to1964 recalled going to be caned and being asked to select which of three different canes should be used. He remembered being concerned that it would be very obvious that he had hidden a workbook down the back of his trousers to cushion the blows, although this was, in fact, not commented upon by the master.

Extracted from The way we were: old boys share memories of the School from more than half a century ago on the Queen Elizabeth School website.

Picture credit: Sting Pictures

 

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