Numerous books have been written about England's most famous public school. Eton has always been a law unto itself and in the past this included an idiosyncratic approach to corporal punishment, with numerous arcane rules and procedures.
Eton was particularly notorious for allowing older boys to beat younger ones. In fact, the majority of beatings were inflicted by pupils rather than masters, except in the case of floggings with the birchrod. These 'executions' were the responsibility of the Head Master, or in the case of younger boys, the Lower School Master, and were attended by much ceremony. The famous Eton flogging block, over which the victim had to kneel, is now on display in the school museum but in the past was kept ready and waiting in a corner of the Upper School.
In one of the many books of Eton memoirs a boy recalls being flogged:
I was caught misbehaving in the chapel, singing a rude, ribald verse to some psalm. I was summoned to the Lower Master for a flogging. You had to take your trousers and underpants off and kneel on a block, held down by two college servants. You were birched on your bare bum. I was trembling all over, as white as a sheet, absolutely terrified. I got six strokes, which actually drew blood, and when I got back into my class everyone was shouting 'Where's the blood? Where's the blood?' I had to take my shirt-tail out and show the blood spots.
Some boys considered a caning (given over trousers) to be more painful than a flogging. Canings were certainly much more commonplace. Indeed, to quote another memoir:
Beating was just part of life. You were summoned ceremonially to the Library by the senior boys of the house after evening prayers. I was deemed to be a sort of subversive influence and the House Captain decided that although I had not flouted any particular law I had accumulated sufficient small omissions or sins to warrant a beating. It was extremely painful - a genuine, old-fashioned beating which drew blood.
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL SCHOOL
Christ's Hospital, the famous bluecoat boys school, was founded in the City of London in Tudor times and has always been a genuinely charitable foundation, offering an affordable public school education to boys whose families could not manage the fees charged by normal boarding schools. Pupils wore (and still wear today) long cassock-like bluecoats, knee-breeches and yellow stockings - a form of charity dress - and in the old days discipline was strict, enforced by the cane ('titching' in school slang) and the birch ('brushing').
However, as a Victorian history of the school was proud to point out, the Christ's Hospital birchrod was nowhere near as fearsome as its counterpart at Eton:
If the bluecoat boys can be said to be chastised with whips, boys at the public schools to which the sons of 'the upper ten thousand' are sent, are tormented by scorpions. The difference in weight between the Eton birch of twelve ounces and the Christ's Hospital birch of three and one half ounces is very considerable; the difference in leverage - which is this case after all means the power of hard hitting - is something enormous. A modern 'Blue' may rejoice that, having happily escaped the misfortune of being the son of a Peer, he is not black and blue.
(This illustration from the book shows the two birchrods.)
A contemporary Victorian report upon the school states that flogging with the birch was reserved for more serious offences. The sentence was enacted by the beadle (not a master, but a sort of policing authority within the school) who applied the strokes to the bare bottom of the culprit. Twelve was an absolute maximum, four a minimum, and the normal number eight. The birch itself was described as 'slight, not a very formidable weapon.'
Some idea of the frequency of 'brushings' in Victorian times is provided by this same report: in the years between 1873 and 1876, forty floggings were ordered. When the headmaster of the school was asked whether it might be possible to do without the birch he replied that 'for some kinds of offences, such as indecency, bullying and the like, the birch is a very effectual way of aweing the boys.'
As noted on the introductory page, the leading public schools were in the vanguard of the move away from corporal punishment in the 1960s and 1970s, as reported in the newspapers at the time. (Read this contemporary report.)
In the subsequent decades, one of the annual guides to independent education always made a point of noting which schools still permitted caning, and the total declined year by year. With the abolition of the cane in state schools, the small band of independent schools which still made use of corporal punishment were considered worthy of press reports. (Read this sample report from 1994. The journalist was obviously short of material, and padded out the piece with irrelevant 'revelations' from the past history of Eton College.)
In earlier times, when thousands of 'whackings' took place every year, very few of them were deemed newsworthy. Now, any instance of corporal punishment within a school which excited public attention, perhaps because of the subsequent objection of the parents to the correction of their son, became the subject of excited press scrutiny, and perhaps another case for the European Court of Justice. (A notorious case from 1992 is illustrated here.)
That corporal punishment would eventually be declared illegal in all schools was inevitable and yet another venerable British tradition has now bitten the dust. Thus future generations who view the picture below may well be puzzled as to the exact function of the strange implement the gowned schoolmaster is concealing behind his back. (Click HERE if unsure of the answer.)
The golden age of the English public school is well evoked in this fine drawing by H M Brock
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