SEVERE CORPORAL PUNISHMENT
If anyone thinks being caned is fun they should have attended English boarding school in the nineteen fifties. It was a frightening ordeal. It hurt like hell and marked many of us for life. If you do not believe me, why otherwise do you think I am now contributing to MMSA Stories archive.
It was meant to hurt. I read the following advice in a book, published in the thirties:
Corporal punishment should be used as a last resort, when other means of discipline have failed. To be effective it has to be painful. It should be administered to the buttocks, ideally with a cane, by an adult of the same _s_e_x_ as the delinquent. Avoid, if possible, (presumably it was not always possible) the infliction of the indignity of baring the buttocks, especially in public. Hit harder without completely uncovering.
At prep and public school the dreaded summons to the head's study was the start of a fearsome ordeal. Caning certainly worked judged by the yardsticks of deterrence and retribution. It also taught stoic self-discipline and self-control in the face of adversity. For the offender, the only redeeming feature was that you became a hero with your contemporaries and enjoyed a strange respect from Sir, who once he had thrashed you, showed a grudging respect.
At prep school caning was done with a short (2 1/2 ft) thin swishy cane with shorts (up or down) and underpants (invariably up). At public school a thicker, longer cane was used usually without adjustment to dress.
Many people boast how they enjoyed being thrashed or how they pushed their teachers to the limit to provoke a caning. Don't you believe it. We were all terrified. Any obsessions came later, tempered by time and more resilient buttocks.
To illustrate this point I want to retell a story from my public school days which has stayed with me all these years and which I am preparing to confess to a latter day 'schoolmaster.' It begins for me when a student master stormed into the 'Intermediate' dormitory one hot summer night, cane in hand. There was, I remember, too much noise and several of us, including myself, were out of bed.
'You two,' he indicated G. and myself with his cane, 'Come with me.' The others out of bed had managed to escape his gaze.
We put our dressing gowns on and reluctantly followed.
'You first,' he pointed at me. 'I'll see you first.' I looked round but it really was me.
He closed the study door. 'Take your dressing gown off. I'm going to give you the stick.' he said.
'But sir, you're not allowed to without Mr H's permission,' I mumbled.
He looked furious. 'And do you think he would fail to give it. You can have the choice of being caned by me now or see him tomorrow. Its up to you.'
'Please sir, I'll see Mr H. tomorrow,' was my cowardly reply.
'Very well. Get out and send in G.'
I scampered out, relieved I had at least postponed my caning. The prospect of having just my pyjama to protect me overruled any thoughts of getting it over and done with or fears of the ridicule which might greet me in the dormitory. G. gave me a strange look and went into the study. Moments later there were the familiar sounds of severe corporal punishment, six strokes in all. I quickly made my way back to the dormitory. G. followed and so did the student master who warned that he would report us all to the housemaster the next day.
It was clear that G. had received a rather severe caning, six strokes with only his pyjamas, while I had been spared.
'Why didn't you get it as well,' someone asked.
'I told him he wasn't allowed to cane me without permission,' I weakly intoned.
'And do you think that will get you off,' G. contributed.
I knew it would not but I had been terrified of a caning in my pyjamas. Next day our housemaster summoned members of our dormitory apart from G. to his study and with the briefest of preliminaries gave us each six apiece, subject to a protection which consisted of trousers, slightly thicker than pyjamas and underwear of our choice. When he saw me he gave me a glance and said, 'You should have let Mr M. beat you, but if you prefer it from me I am flattered. I don't intend to disappoint you.
I suppose I was not disappointed, just relieved. The others mocked me and told me he should have taken my trousers down for being such a coward the night before.
I have often reflected on what should really have happened. To be caned in my underpants would have been roughly equivalent to the punishment turned down the previous evening. I deserved extra punishment for the cowardly defiance of the student master. Would an extra three or six then and there (beyond tolerated limits) or later have been appropriate. Should I have been sent to the student master for him to cane? All these possibilities are out of my hands as I have left my final fate to another survivor of those far off days. He attended a nearby public school but was marked in a different way and I am assured that he swings the cane with gusto.
Paul Staley