The Rule of the Strap

 

The traditional instrument of punishment in Scotland during the days when it was still legal for schoolteachers to whack their pupils was the leather tawse. The most famous makers of these straps were from the small town of Lochgelly.

Andy Arthur, in a long essay on the history of the tawse in Scotland, writes that ‘around the year 1884. Saddler Robert Philp made a pair of tawse to his own design for his son and daughter, pupil teachers at the East Public School in the parish. His creation was split into a pair of thongs at the “punishment end” and was both stiff enough to stand up straight but flexible enough to swoosh through the air and make a good contact with the target, ideally wrapping around the hand to cause maximum effect. He rounded off the edges of the leather and used no stitching in order that his instrument would leave no permanent scars.’

Andrews writes, ‘In use the tawse was held over the shoulder and rapidly flicked forwards. Teachers were encouraged to practice on a piece of chalk on the desk – a successful strike got a puff of white dust. This became a trick of many experienced hands to try and scare children into compliance. But while judicial corporal punishment was abolished in 1948 with the authorities recognising it just didn’t work as a deterrent, the educational establishment hung on doggedly to their legal right to apply it to children right down to the age of 4 as they saw fit.

Extracted from The Rule of the Strap, by Andy Arthur, Threadinburgh, 2024.

Picture credit: A two-tonged Lochgelly-pattern tawse. The punched hole was for hanging it on a wall in full view of a class (Threadinburgh).

 

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