Memories: Reality of caning not as bad as imagining it

 The case of Michael Fay, the 18-year-old who has been sentenced in Singapore to receive six strokes with a cane on his bare buttocks, has divided the United States into two camps: floggers and non-floggers. The debate is highly emotional, and for once America seems short of experts.

Which is where I come in. As an Englishman, I was sent to boarding school at the age of 7 and was mercilessly flogged until my late teens. I have been beaten with gym shoes, birch and metal-tipped swagger sticks; on buttocks bare, pajamaed and trousered; by head masters, house masters and prefects. If that’s not expertise, what is? – in 1994, Christopher Robbins recalls, the reality of a caning isn’t nearly so bad as the mind’s dark imaginings preceding it.

True, I have never been strapped to a bench and thrashed with a half-inch, soaked rattan cane, but while this is no doubt more painful, the psychological effects must be much the same. I would like to tell Michael that the reality of a caning isn’t nearly so bad as the mind’s dark imaginings preceding it. Sure, it hurts like hell -- but not for long. Initially, there is a ferocious stinging. It soon fades. The strokes leave angry welts, there is possible (and in Singapore, probable) bleeding and the wounds throb for a week -- but permanent scars are unlikely. Take it from someone who has been beaten black and blue but whose rear end is still smooth as a baby’s.

The first time is the worst. I can never erase the memory of the terror and misery of that initial beating at the age of eight. I had been caught running down the stairs from the dormitory, on the left-hand side, while talking. Three rules broken at a stroke. I was in for it.

I waited outside the headmaster’s study, knowing I would be beaten. Waiting is the worst part. Michael already knows this. Floggers know it too, and use it. I suffered in that cold school corridor for two hours, my stomach knotted in anticipation and fear of the unknown. I remember a small boy’s despair and misery . . . the utter loneliness.

And the smell of the headmaster’s study, a combination of furniture polish, books and pencil shavings, a scent as distinct as Chanel No. 5. To me it was the smell of the wrath of God. The headmaster, a doctor of divinity, pronounced the sentence. I was to receive “Six BB” -- six slaps of a gym shoe on the bare bottom.

The punishment over, I shot from the study like an arrow. I was given advice on pain management by veteran victims of the gym shoe, some of whom actually had healing potions and ointments in their lockers. The most soothing remedy seemed to be lowering one’s rear end slowly into a basin of cold water.

It was never quite so bad again, even in the upper school where masters used the birch. Caning was certainly never an effective deterrent. Bad boys like myself formed a hard core of repeat offenders.

Awaiting the punishment always remained a stressful psychological experience, one I never mastered. The caning itself depended greatly on which master was dishing it out. There was one who needed to work himself into a fury to administer the blows. He made boys hold onto the rear of a chair while he charged across the study at them, waving his cane. He would trip over chairs in his anger, send coals flying from the scuttle, knock small china objects from side tables. Once, reduced to helpless laughter by his antics, I was immediately given another three strokes for dumb insolence.

Other masters were more studied in their methods, some downright cruel. One bent boys over a sofa and counted to 10 between each stroke. He called these “love taps.” Another coated his cane in chalk so that each stroke was marked on the victim’s behind, and one lash could be piled on top of another. He referred to this as “grouping.”

Worst of all were the beatings delivered by one’s peers, the house prefects. Offenders were marched to the gym where the horizontal beam was lowered and the victim forced to drape himself across it. A metal-tipped swagger stick -- the military batons used in the school army cadet force -- were used. Not so bad as the birch, unless the metal bit caught you, which was nasty.

The humiliation and fury of being beaten by a boy of a similar age is total. Anesthetized by rage, I felt no pain. But the hatred engendered as a result of these punishments was so pure that for days afterward I became utterly nihilistic, capable of blowing the school to smithereens if only I’d had a bomb!

It has been said that boarding school boys who have been beaten regularly over the years develop a sexual taste for this in later life. I find this incomprehensible. The only good thing about being beaten is the same as the only good thing about banging your head against the wall: It’s wonderful when it stops.

To face the beatings, it was necessary to follow a code. The aim was never to cry or show pain, an ideal not always achieved by everyone. But the intention was always to march stiffly out of the study after a beating without complaint; some stylists even managed a “dry “Thank you, Sir.”

Michael should take note. To face the ordeal, he must develop steely fortitude. It may not alleviate the pain, but it will certainly lessen the humiliation. As an American watched by all the world, he should adopt the code of the Far East and not lose face. The schoolboy in me would then think he was a bit of a hero.

Of course, Michael lived in Singapore as a resident, not as a tourist, so must have been aware of the draconian laws of the state. Still, this sentence has been hanging over him since October -- more than six months. To me, that constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

The wisest words of all come from Michael’s father: “If they’re going to cane him, cane him quick and let’s get him home.” Now there’s a man, I’ll wager, who felt the strap himself in his youth.

As published in the Washington Post, United States, 17 April 1994.

Picture credit: Unknown.

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