Memories: ‘Entertaining’ stories of canings

The canings boys of Cranbrook School, New South Wales, Australia, received did not seem to bother them too much if their accounts when marking the centenary of the school in 2018 are to believed. The cane was finally and permanently outlawed in Australia in 1997.

Below are some extracts from a website covering the school’s history.

If they were not traumatised by the experience, many old Cranbrookians at least have some entertaining stories to tell of the “sharp stings” that “everyone used to get” and the seemingly innocuous misdemeanours that warranted them. Most old boys agree that only the Headmaster or Masters were permitted to use the cane and generally gave “two, four, or six” strokes depending on the severity of the misdemeanour. Ian Platt Hepworth “received all of those different stages” during his schooling, at one time for quoting “at least half a page of the Bible verbatim” in an exam. His teacher thought that he was cheating.

According to Errol Bode, “the punishment was usually fairly minimal. Well, the requirement for punishment was minimal” with one unlucky boy receiving “six across the bottom” for smiling in early morning prayers. Colin Douglas also recalled “getting the cane quite a number of times”, once for drawing attention to a cufflink that was missing in a portrait of his teacher Polly Perkins. This missing cufflink quickly became known as the “missing link”, which Colin reflected was understood at the time as “the evolution of mankind, and wasn’t very complimentary”.

Nonetheless, some clever boys managed to mitigate the effects of caning. According to Colin, “if you knew you were going to get caned you put an exercise book down your pants at the back”, but risked receiving twice as many stokes if caught.

A few Masters have gone down in student memory for their fearsome “caning technique” (Headmaster Hone was known as “Blitz” and another teacher was nicknamed “Flogger Martin”), but the two Masters who most readily embraced the cane have been largely warmly remembered as good disciplinarians who enlisted an effective form of punishment. Alan Sharp reflected that Polly Perkins was a “firm”, “intelligent” and “remarkable little man” and, according to Barry Chard, Algie Child “was universally liked”.

Marc Podosky believed that the cane “didn’t do me any harm. As a matter of fact it helped me … pulled me into gear”. He was not alone. Several past students viewed this divisive form of punishment as “very just and satisfactory”, because “that was it – it was all over”. 

Picture credit: Sting Pictures.

 

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