This is an image I have stumbled across many times over the years - if I had the time to hunt it out I probably have an original magazine with it in stashed away somewhere. I always get a little frisson of excitement when I come across it again.
The secondary (age 11-18) school I attended was an old traditional British grammar school. Sadly, it was an all-boys school. They did use corporal punishment including canings across the backside in very serious cases although the use was in decline and it was actually stopped altogether before I left. However there was plenty of evidence in the school archives that previous generations had been much more regularly caned for misdemeanours.
Most significantly, from the point of view of this image, morning assemblies were in a large oak panelled hall with imposing oil paintings of famous people from the school's history. The headmaster stood in assembly on a raised platform at the front of the hall. The major part of the platform was filled by a massive and extremely heavy old table - probably oak or mahogany. Although public canings were never a part of the regime when I was there I always wondered whether in more historical times, boys had been paraded in front of the whole school to be bent across this sturdy table and soundly caned. I think if this had ever happened there would have less apprehension and shock on the faces in the audience and more thinly disguised glee but I'm sure the apprehension of the recipient would have been similar.
3 comments:
My father who was born at the beginning of the twentieth century did go to a school where public beatings in assembly were given. They were not on the bare backside though but that did happen in private.He ran away from home at the age of 13 to escape the brutality of home and school.
Old Tom
I love thia drawing of a naughty school girl, being caned on her bare bottom, in front of all the assembled school.
I always seek authenticity, James. And Thank the Lord your fab Blog deals with authenticity !
I have the advantage of having being raised in a strict, Christian family in Georgia, where corporal punishment was just a normal fact of life. I was born in 1959 & so those times of yore were super-strict. And super-happy-normal too. We knew no different.
I like the photo: that is exactly how I gotten whooped at home with the cane: knickers down, soundly on a bare botty, in front of God. But not in front of those pupils !! Or indeed friends. It was in private & was real Hell, & my sister & we screamed a bunch. But it was just good, strict normal parenting James...as it would have been in the UK also, in the 1960s. The Church & authorities strongly advocated bare bottom discipline for naughty lil' brats. Mom's dreaded cane was a quality, well-crafted, thin, very flexible rattan switch. We called it the "hornets nest!" It was terrible on a bare bum! As it needed to be, James. Mom never spared the rod.
Let's be clear, James. CP at school in Atlanta (even in the early 1960s), was with the paddle over clothes. CP at home was on bare buttocks for y'all. Big difference ! I never gotten spanked at school.
Oh my! I cannot stand too much, those folks who talk about bare bottom CP at school, it did not happen. I also never gotten spanked in front of friends. I never gotten spanked in the park or outdoors. And my mother also never spanked my friends - thank the lord they never gotten the cane on their bare backsides in our house. Oh my !!! But I sure did see a bunch of my friends get bare bottom whoopings in their houses, already. And in public, naturally.
Oh my! I have stated some facts. I am different from some, in that I seek reality, James. I have experienced a lot of CP as a Christina daughter of yore & then as a strict, loving mother to my two daughters (they gotten raised, same as their mom, with the "spanking with love" maxim & the cane on their bare bottoms when deserved, & are now happy & grown-up in their mid 30s). In my experience, a well-smacked, very bare, red sore botty was just a fact of life. And a fact of good parenting.
Regards & thanks.
Brenda xx
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