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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