Comic: The ‘Gem’ collection 1
The Gem was one of the most popular of the story papers that chronicled the goings-on among boys at school during the heydays of the English school stories from about 1900 to the late 1930s. They ran in many of the story papers (as ‘comics’ were called then) and there was very little real difference between them.
The boys were at public school – that is
elite private fee-paying boarding schools. They moved in groups of four or five
chums and as was customary in real life at the time, they were often subjected
to corporal punishment.
The papers had no qualms in depicting such
punishment and the story papers of the time abound with drawings of boys being
caned (hand or bottom), slippered, birched, spanked, beaten with a cricket
stump, and … yes, flogged with a whip.
Here are some examples, including some
from the earlier days of the Gem. Click on the issue number to download
the full paper from the Friardale website.
Click here to read more about the Gem.
Picture credits: Amalgamated Press.
For
more from The Gem, click here
For
more on Comics or Story Papers, click here
Traditional
School Discipline
Traditionalschooldiscipline@gmail.com
In days past I guess the cane was just one option, but probably by far the most common. I've heard of a certain boarding school (before my time) where the headmaster would give boys six of the best with a riding crop. That must have been agony....
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