Praise for caning at 18

A local newspaper praised a pair of 18-year-old sixth-formers who accepted a caning from their headmaster after they freed baby rabbits that were due to be killed for biological studies. ‘We got what we deserved,’ they said.

As published int the Argus (Brighton), 3 June 1959

 

Here’s how a national newspaper reported the story at the time ... but it had three boys, not two.

Boys freed the ‘lab’ rabbits – caned

THREE senior schoolboys have been punished for saving three baby rabbits due to be dissected in a school examination.

They took the rabbits from the biology room and released them in a copse in the grounds of the school, the Varndean Grammar School for Boys, Brighton.

When the boys, all 18, owned up, headmaster Mr. E. J. Hutchins told six-footer Clive Ashworth, a prefect, and Paul Rayment, a deputy prefect:

“You can either hand in your prefects’ ties or take three stokes of the cane.”

Paul, of Bates Road, Brighton, decided to have the cane.

Clive, of West Hill Road, Brighton, said last night: “I thought it was beneath my dignity to bend over, so I handed in my tie.”

The third boy, Roger Cox, of Woodingdean, had no alternative. He got three strokes.

Clive, who is going to study at the London School of Economics next term, said: “We saw the rabbits in a glass-fronted cage in the biology laboratory and decided to set them free.

“After school, we put them in a bag and released them in the copse.

“It was all done on the spur of the moment. We just felt sorry for them.”

Yesterday, Mr. Hutchins told Clive that he would consider reinstating him as a prefect in the near future if he behaved himself.

As published in the Daily Mirror, 3 June 1959.

Picture credit: Generated by Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)

 

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