Favourite for August

Something of a tradition going on here.  If you got corporal punishment at school and especially if it had been across your bottom, there was often an expectation that you would display the marks for inspection by your school mates.  In my opinion, this worked at its best in the English tradition where the cane would have been the most usual implement.  There is nothing more dramatic than seeing six red cane stripes across a pale creamy bottom.  It was a good way of earning some kudos from your classmates and, hopefully, some admiration for how well you'd coped with your ordeal. Being English, I may be biased, but I don't really feel the marks left by a paddle or strap are nearly as good and when times changed and it became more normal to cane across the hands, it would be unusual to get interesting marking.

In the fascinating book "Terms and Conditions - Life in Girls' Boarding Schools 1939-1979" by Ysenda Maxtone Graham there is an account of three girls who decided to run away from their school and took refuge with a local family who phoned the school to arrange for them to be returned. While the school representative was very friendly and concerned for the girls when they were with the family, the tone changed as soon as they were on their way back to the school.

The girls were kept in confinement in the main part of the house that night: the scented, carpeted, mahogany, potpourri side. Later the next day they were released back into the community but we were told we should not speak to them.  With horror and fascination we watched as Joanna slowly pulled up her skirt, pulled down her white summer pants and showed us five red parallel stripes across her buttocks.  All three girls had been caned.

The detail that I found surprising was that it was five strokes - there are plenty of examples of extracts from school punishment books on the internet to give us an idea of what was normal practice. Overall, the majority refer to caning on the hand and are typically one, two or three strokes - sometimes all on one hand and sometimes on both - so rarely more than six strokes in total. Where there are references to caning on the bottom it seems to almost always be two, four or six strokes. The examples of caning on the hands are often for relatively trivial offences like talking in class.  At schools like mine that level of offence would generally have led to writing lines or an after-school detention whereas caning across the bottom was only for really serious offences - I never heard of a case where they didn't get either four strokes or six strokes.  So, as I said, five sounds strange - however, the book is all drawn from first hand accounts so I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the story.   

Curious to know from friends across the pond whether in schools an the USofA there is any tradition of inspecting the marks after being paddled at school?

Oh yes, almost forgot the image!

Credit to Xerotics for an excellent authentic school image.