Punishment Book: The Bourne Experience

 

A punishment book for Bourne primary and secondary school, Lincolnshire, UK, kept over a 60-year period from 1923 details more than 600 incidents of corporal punishment.

Rex Needle, in an article online (here), says Joseph Davies was appointed headmaster in 1887. After hearing that a teacher had caned 26 boys in one afternoon, many with more than one stroke, he limited punishment to one stroke on the hand and ordered that all cases should be reported to him. The ruling was accepted reluctantly by some teachers but eventually produced results with a reduction in offences. 

Mr Davies retired in 1920 after 33 years and the Punishment Book to record all offences was introduced three years later when it is evident that caning had begun to decline, albeit slowly.

During the period from April 1923 until the record closed in April 1984, there are over 600 entries, an average of ten punishments a year, with one, two or three strokes of the cane for offences such as unruly behaviour and being abusive to the staff. The usual procedure when a pupil transgressed was that the teacher sent him to the headmaster and he carried out the caning in his study and each pupil is named in the Punishment Book. 

To read more of the article, click here.

 

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