https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/schoolcorporalpunishment/1980s-t4235-s50.html#p75565
Apr 08, 2019#1
Who remembers school in the 80s? Our school still had corporal punishment when I started in 1983. The headmaster would give children the slipper in his office.
QuoteLikeSharePin Topic
six of the best
1,115
96
Apr 08, 2019#2
Some schools retained corporal punishment until it was finally banned in UK state schools in 1987. It was used less frequently compared to the 1950s/60s when I was at school. Our daughters went to senior school, a large mixed comprehensive, from 1980. We had heard that they still used corporal punishment there but didn’t really believe it. There was a PTA meeting for parents of new pupils before they started in the autumn term. After an initial welcome by the headmaster we were invited to look around the school and to chat with some of the teachers. My wife and I split up and looked at different areas.
Later that evening, at home, we were talking about the meeting. My wife then said she’d asked the deputy head, a lady teacher, if it was true that the school still used corporal punishment. My wife was a bit alarmed to be told it was still used there but not very often. She told that boys could be caned across their bottoms but only for serious things and then only after previous warnings. She asked if girls could be caned there too. The deputy head said they could but it was extremely unusual and had not been done to any girls for some time.
I was quite surprised it was still used on the boys let alone the girls. I’d been caned at school myself a few times. My wife’s school used no corporal punishment but she’d had the slipper at home from her parents. I remember our daughters were quite shocked when a boy in their class was given two strokes of the cane. Seems he and another boy had been caught fighting in the playground and had been sent to the headmaster.
Our daughters were never punished in school and never knew of any other girls being caned or slippered there.
QuoteLikeShare
Sir John 2
548
71
Apr 08, 2019#3
I left school in 1962 and experienced the cane up until 1960.The reason I escaped during 60/62 was because my school and I believe all others did not to subject 6th formers to CP..although there may have been odd instances…e.g Helston Grammar School.
I am aware that SCP continued to be pretty widespread in the UK until the mid 1970’s but, due to the activities of pressure groups such as STOPP. and the influx of much younger “modern thinking” teachers which started in the mid 60’s, was mostly phased out by the late 1970’s. I suspect instances of CP in the UK post 1980 will be very rare. As early as late 1960 the caning of girls was prohibited in many schools although this ban does not seem to have included the slipper.
However I strongly suspect any Australian members may have stories to tell. I am aware that 2 teenage daughters of an acquaintance who attended a mixed boarding school Down Under (possible somewhere in reach of Brisbane) were caned on their bottoms in the 1980’s . I heard they received it in 1987 when they were aged 16 and 17. In was the practice of the school to write to parents informing them that CP had been administered. On that occassion they received 4 strokes for being caught in the boy’s dorm. The punishment was “witnessed by a female member of staff” so there was a strong negative inferrence that it was given by a male. I never of course saw the letter and gleaned the info from the father when a group of us met up for lunch when he was back in the UK for a promotion boarde . Back then HMG were quite generous with school fees allowances for staff posted overseas.
Because of the circumstances it was difficult to gain too many details at the time .The info came out when I asked how the girls were getting on. I had not seen them for many years. To keep the conversation “going” I asked how he could have placed them in a school with such a draconian attitute to the discipline of grown up girls. His surprising answer was that the girls had been heavily involved in chosing their school and were “over the moon” with their choice and very very happy there ..despite, presumably, the cane being used.I understand that the school had a lot of outdoor activities.
QuoteLikeShare
Stuartsummers
56
8
Apr 22, 2019#4
I left school, sixth form in 1982 at a uk private boys school and cp was certainly in decline by then. The last time i remember in my year was in 1980 when some boys ( aged 15-16 year 11 as it is called now) were caught having an all out fight. They were sent to their house masters of which there were 4. Three sets of boys were caned but a couple werent as their housemaster didnt believe in CP. it was the beginning of the end as younger teachers replaced the older ones in senior positions in the school.
The last time i received cp was also in that year also, i was 15 but it was a slippering(plimsoll) from a pe teacher. Fully deserved i might add!
QuoteLikeShare
beanokid1
228
20
Apr 23, 2019#5
I left school in 1982. The cane was certainly in use, although rarely, throughout my time there. I remember a guy in the fifth form telling some friends, quite proudly, that he had been caned on the hand for petty vandalism. The year head had said “I’m afraid I have no choice but to cane you”; and after finishing the treatment he had said “And if I have to do this again, it will be six of the best across the backside”. So even bum-caning wasn’t quite off the agenda. But it was rare enough that one of the “nice boys” hearing the story said “I thought caning was banned”. The boys hand was slightly red. He said it wasn’t sore, that he hadn’t cried, but that he had yelled “arrr” when he was hit.
QuoteLikeShare
debdebdew80
15
Jul 09, 2019#6
We had corporal punishment at school until 1986 although it was being used less than it used to be. I got the ruler in 1982 aged eight and the slipper in 1985 aged eleven.
QuoteLikeShare
six of the best
1,115
96
Jul 09, 2019#7
There is no doubt that the school corporal punishment was still being used in some UK state schools right up to the 1987 ban. STOPP and many parents were campaigning for it to end in the 1980s and even in the late 1970s. Even before the ban many schools had stopped using it and most used still used it restricted its use only for serious misbehaviour. There were, of course, a minority of schools that still used it regularly. I believe that the situation at that time was much the same in UK private schools too but the ban didn’t apply to them. I suppose most parents who sent their sons and perhaps daughters to those schools approved of its use.
Family spanking was on the decline in the 1980s too. Many mothers still gave younger children the occasional slaps but some parents still used ‘proper’ spanking at home. A friend of mine still gave his sons the slipper for bad behaviour. A nice decent family who still believed that the old methods still worked. Their two sons grew up into well adjusted good people. I also remember a lady I worked with in the early 1990s phoning in sick on morning. She was back in next morning looking quite well. I casually inquired
QuoteLikeShare
Jul 09, 2019#8
Heaven knows happened there! Shouldn’t have done that. I will quickly finish the post.
I causally enquired if she was feeling better. She, at first, just said ‘Yes thank you.’ I knew her quite well, she was in her late 30s/early 40s. Then she explained, apparently their daughter, who was about 11 or 12 had misbehaved at home. The girl’s father had given her a slippering, the usual way they punished her if she really misbehaved. Anyway it seemed that one of the whacks had landed on the top of her leg and had left a red mark. To cut a long story short they kept her off school next morning as they did not want the mark to be seen, the real reason her mother had taken the day off work. I was a bit surprised at hearing this as I knew of no other parents that still used the slipper by then.
QuoteLikeShare
Another_Lurker
10K
256
Jul 09, 2019#9
Hello debdebdew80,
Pray what heinous crime did you get the slipper for in 1985 aged 11 please?
My own slippering in 1953, also aged 11, was for forgetting my sports kit. Darned if I can remember much about it now except for the embarrassment of having to shamefacedly walk up to the front of the class and bend over a front row desk facing the class to be whacked. Oh, and the annoyance of the girl with whom I shared a two person tip-up bench seat desk. She felt I’d let the side down. We goody-goody, hard-working and academically successful occupants of the back row weren’t supposed to get the slipper!
I also recall the reaction of the boy whose PT shoe the teacher borrowed to do the dire deed. He was one of my main rivals for top of the class and each time I pipped him in a test thereafter he consoled himself by reminding me that I’d been whacked with his shoe.
As to the actual whacks, I can’t even recall how many there were let alone whether they hurt or not, whereas the smacked leg earlier in my school career survives in my memory as though it was yesterday. A curious thing, memory!
QuoteLikeShare
debdebdew80
15
Jul 09, 2019#10
I got it for chewing gum. The headmaster gave me four hard whacks.
QuoteLikeShare
2015holyfamilypenguin
4,320
69
Jul 09, 2019#11
A_L The manner in which you received the slipper was the way the Principal spanked with a yardstick high schoolers. I am sure over the course of her reign of terror at least one girl was hit other than the one that almost got hit for having her bum at the wrong place and at the wrong time.
QuoteLikeShare
six of the best
1,115
96
Jul 09, 2019#12
debdebdew80 wrote:
I got it for chewing gum. The headmaster gave me four hard whacks.
Did your parents know that you had the slipper in school?
QuoteLikeShare
debdebdew80
15
Jul 09, 2019#13
No I didn’t tell them as I was too embarrassed.
QuoteLikeShare
Another_Lurker
10K
256
Jul 09, 2019#14
Hello debdebdew80,
And thank you for your response to my query which is much appreciated. Four hard whacks, quite a severe punishment for merely chewing gum. Was the time or place you were chewing particularly inopportune, or did your Headmaster have a bit of a thing about chewing gum in general please?
As you were slippered by the Headmaster I assume that this was in private and that you were spared punishment in front of other pupils. The Forum has a great many earnest seekers after the truth who avidly accrue information on the MO of corporal punishments. In that context it would be of interest to know if you were required to touch your toes or bend over a desk or whatever and whether any adjustment of clothing to facilitate or exacerbate the punishment was entailed?
Like me you seem to have largely escaped SCP. Would you say that this was because you were relatively well behaved, which your embarrassment at being slippered and reluctance to tell your parents would suggest, or was SCP fairly uncommon in the school please?
QuoteLikeShare
Jul 10, 2019#15
Hello American Way,
You wrote above:
A_L The manner in which you received the slipper was the way the Principal spanked with a yardstick high schoolers.
Indeed so, bent over a front desk facing the class. A dastardly device designed to add to the recipient’s embarrassment by making any facial or vocal evincing of discomfort or distress all too obvious to watching classmates. I think I got the worst positional alternative in each of my admittedly trivial experiences of SCP.
When the leg of my short trousers was being hauled aloft to almost buttock baring extent to ensure maximum exposure of tender upper thigh to the teacher’s hard hand I would have preferred that the watching class did not get an unobstructed view of that indignity. However I was trapped under the arm of the seated teacher bent over back to the class.
But in the slippering the class witnessing a slipper impacting the trousers covered Another_Lurker bottom was of less concern to me than the possible embarrassment of visibly shedding a tear or otherwise displaying weakness. However I was made to face the class.
And finally IMHO you were being just a teeny bit disingenuous and possibly even a touch deceitful when you wrote above:
……… at least one girl was hit other than the one that almost got hit for having her bum at the wrong place and at the wrong time.
Readers unfamiliar with your days of receiving the gift of education at the hands of the Sisters Of No Mercy should clearly understand what actually happened! The ‘bum’ in question was not in fact in the wrong place either chronologically or with regard to position. It belonged to an unfortunate girl seated immediately in front of you in class. And shortly after the Nun in charge had announced that the next person to make a noise or speak out of turn would get the yardstick you deliberately and with malice aforethought jabbed the said bum with the point of a geometrical compass!
Needless to say the poor girl gave vent to vocal evidence of her undoubted and understandable distress. Happily by some miracle of benign fate she escaped being called out to the front of the class to bend over a front row desk facing the class and be whacked with the yardstick. Unhappily so did you! ????
QuoteLikeShare
2015holyfamilypenguin
4,320
69
Jul 10, 2019#16
That was not at all the way compass scene unfolded. True enough I poked her, but prior to Attila the Nun entering the room. When she did so she saw her turning around presumably disturbing my study.
Shame on you A_L, you make me sound so villainous that readers of the estimable Forum would hold me in lesser esteem. It was not a premeditated assault designed to get her publically spanked. It would have backfired. I was almost going to be Tom Sawyer sparing Beck Sharp what would have been her cruel fate. Had I not intervene I would never get a date. She was not the only one that lucked out.
QuoteLikeShare
Another_Lurker
10K
256
Jul 10, 2019#17
So sorry, American Way, I was convinced I was giving an accurate summary of your previous accounts of the incident! ???? I am sure none of our readers will think any the worse of you. After all you are well established as the Forum’s
A dating ploy eh! Well I know US girls are less reserved and more, errm. outgoing than the European variety, but do they really take kindly to having their bottom poked with the point of a compass? And if so does this not reflect even more unfavourably on middle aged male school staff paddling teen-aged female students?
QuoteLikeShare
debdebdew80
15
Jul 12, 2019#18
Another_Lurker wrote:
Hello debdebdew80,
And thank you for your response to my query which is much appreciated. Four hard whacks, quite a severe punishment for merely chewing gum. Was the time or place you were chewing particularly inopportune, or did your Headmaster have a bit of a thing about chewing gum in general please?
As you were slippered by the Headmaster I assume that this was in private and that you were spared punishment in front of other pupils. The Forum has a great many earnest seekers after the truth who avidly accrue information on the MO of corporal punishments. In that context it would be of interest to know if you were required to touch your toes or bend over a desk or whatever and whether any adjustment of clothing to facilitate or exacerbate the punishment was entailed?
Like me you seem to have largely escaped SCP. Would you say that this was because you were relatively well behaved, which your embarrassment at being slippered and reluctance to tell your parents would suggest, or was SCP fairly uncommon in the school please?
Click to expand…
I was caught chewing gum in class and the teacher sent me with a note to the headmaster. I was expecting a serious punishment, a severe shouting at or even the ruler a few times on each hand as I had once when I was eight. I didn’t expect to get the slipper as very few girls ever got it. No girl in my class ever got the slipper and even most boys hadn’t had it. I was the last girl anyone would think would get that sort of punishment as I was a quite shy well behaved girl. When I gave the note to the headmaster, he read it and gave me a telling off. Then he calmly opened a draw in his desk and took out a large black PE plimsoll. I got a terrible feeling of fear in my stomach as I realised what was happening. He said ‘Debbie, I am going to give you four.’ There was a chair in the corner of the office which he put in the middle of the room.
Then he told me to stand behind the chair and put my feet together. I had to fold back my jumper, I did so and he said ‘ bend over and put your hands flat on the seat of the chair. I bent over and he said ‘ stay down until I tell you to get up.’ Suddenly I felt a terrible stinging slap across the right side. I screamed and felt another across the left and another on the right and another on the left. I was than told to stand up. The stinging slowly gave way to a feeling of numbness. My bottom was very warm and I was crying bitterly. I was than sent back to the class. I stopped at the toilet to check and my botrom was bright red. The teacher made me tell the class what punishment I got and told everyone that the next one who does something so naughty can expect the same.
QuoteLikeShare
Jul 12, 2019#19
I was caught chewing gum in class. I got the slipper bent over a chair
QuoteLikeShare
six of the best
1,115
96
Jul 12, 2019#20
debdebdew80 wrote:
I was caught chewing gum in class. I got the slipper bent over a chair
I guess your parents never spanked you at home, Debbie. Fewer parents, in the 1980s, used spanking on their children but a good number still did. A friend of mine used to slipper his sons in the 1980s.
QuoteLikeShare
debdebdew80
15
Jul 12, 2019#21
I never got smacked at home and even in school it was used very rarely. I was the only girl in my class to get it.
QuoteLikeShare
Jul 12, 2019#22
I never got it at home and it was used very rarely in school by 1985. Only two boys in my class ever got the slipper and no orher girls. I will give a full account later as I think it’s important for people to know how relatively recently it was acceptable.
QuoteLikeShare
Another_Lurker
10K
256
Jul 12, 2019#23
Hello debdebdew80,
And thank you very much for your very comprehensive and interesting response to my queries. Before turning to that response may I please first say that I notice you are sometimes replying twice on the Forum. I wonder if this is because you are puzzled as to why your original response has not appeared immediately and decide that it may have been lost. If so I may be able to put your mind at rest.
There are various reasons why posts may not appear straight away. As you are a relatively new contributor it is possible that your posts are temporarily delayed to be vetted by the Forum Moderators. though I am not sure if this practice is still used since we transferred to Tapatalk. If it is used I would think you will quickly be promoted to full posting rights, when it will no longer happen.
I have also noted that, for me at least, Tapatalk seems to have slow periods or even freeze altogether and this can also delay posts appearing. I can normally repost verbatim, and on a few occasions when I’ve done this if the initial post hasn’t appeared as quickly as I expected Tapatalk has put up a box saying I can’t make the same post twice and when I’ve looked again the original post has now appeared. So if you do get a delay it may be worth waiting a little before posting a repeat.
And back to your excellent response. Four hard whacks with the slipper does indeed seem harsh for chewing gum in class but remember that Lynne Simmonds, given 3 strokes of the cane with her skirt raised by formidable Headmistress Miss Janet Dines leading to the notorious 1976 court case, was ostensibly caned for the not dissimilar crime of eating crisps in class. However Lynne was an extremely naughty girl, and in her case a long list of prior offences was ‘taken into consideration’ whereas you were well behaved so a serious (and rare at the school) slippering was I think completely excessive. I note that your Headmaster was of the ‘alternate cheek’ persuasion when slippering. This was the technique generally used by teachers at my junior school and possibly it was thought to give a more painful and effective punishment than random whacks.
It is interesting that your class teacher took the opportunity to use you as a warning to the rest of the class about future behavior. After my leg slapping my class teacher did exactly the same. When I, and a boy and a girl from the class who’d been behind me in the punishment queue returned she made us stand at the front of the class, hands on heads, while she told the class that we’d been very naughty and in future anyone else being naughty could expect similar punishment. It was a fairly effective warning I think. We were all in tears and in my case I’d run back to my own class as soon as Miss B had released me without stopping to pull down the tucked-up leg of my short trousers and Miss B’s handprints were still much in evidence on my thigh.
QuoteLikeShare
debdebdew80
15
Jul 12, 2019#24
My parents never smacked and even in school it was used very rarely.
QuoteLikeShare
Jul 12, 2019#25
I think I’ve figured out how to post now!
Yes I think the punishment was excessive and I think it was very wrong for the headmaster to slipper me.
Sent from my SM-A520F using Tapatalk
QuoteLikeShare
neilmc32
172
25
Jul 12, 2019#26
The Northwich case was a private case brought by the parents who clearly thought three strokes of the cane for a badly-behaved 15-year-old was excessive – fortunately the magistrate didn’t although the case gained some notoriety which may have been the whole point of it all. So four of the slipper for an 11-year-old … maybe seen to be a bit much at the time but 20 or 30 years earlier maybe par for the course. Of course, if you or Miss Simmonds had been a boy there would have probably been no fuss whatsoever.
QuoteLikeShare
six of the best
1,115
96
Jul 12, 2019#27
neilmc32 wrote:
The Northwich case was a private case brought by the parents who clearly thought three strokes of the cane for a badly-behaved 15-year-old was excessive – fortunately the magistrate didn’t although the case gained some notoriety which may have been the whole point of it all. So four of the slipper for an 11-year-old … maybe seen to be a bit much at the time but 20 or 30 years earlier maybe par for the course. Of course, if you or Miss Simmonds had been a boy there would have probably been no fuss whatsoever.
In actual fact the case was withdrawn by the girl’s father as he said that he thought it was all too much for her. I’ve read all the newspaper reports about it and I do wonder if he thought it better to do that rather than see the case go in Mss Dines’ favour.
I’m not surprised that the case made all the national papers. I’d have thought that very few schoolgirls were still being caned across their bottoms in any UK school in the late 1970s.
QuoteLikeShare
dmp
191
11
Jul 13, 2019#28
i ask the question i often do in cases like this… what do you think would have happened if you had refused, and if necessary violently resisted the scp… would the head have just held you down and beaten you… which was not something heads generally seemed inclined to do with girls… would he have called your parents, would they have supported him, or you… it was an unusual and severe penalty for a minor offense… would he have relented and imposed a non corporal punishment… certainly we can never know for sure, but i’d be interested to know what you think the response would have been
QuoteLikeShare
six of the best
1,115
96
Jul 13, 2019#29
It was almost unknown for a youngster to refuse to take deserved SCP. It would have been seen as cowardice. When I was a lad the majority of UK boys’ schools used CP and parents generally agreed with it and many parents gave spankings themselves. I never knew of girls being caned across their bottoms in schools, Compared to boys very few girls were caned and if they were it was across their hands.
QuoteLikeShare
dmp
191
11
Jul 13, 2019#30
but this slippering took place in 1985 at a school that used very little scp and the original posted doesn’t to this day believe it was deserved, so i’m not sure this was a situation where it was either unthinkable to refuse or where the school culture would have regarded it as cowardly to do so… i’m also not sure refusal was either a uncommon or as unacceptable to ones school peers as so now in retrospect some believe… there seem to be plenty of anecdotal evidence of refusal throughout scp’s reign
QuoteLikeShare
Another_Lurker
10K
256
Jul 13, 2019#31
Hello dane,
I greatly respect your views and I can indeed recall at least one claim of SCP resisted here, though I can’t think how to locate it at the moment. However, I am in full agreement with six of the best that it was almost unknown (though we do differ slightly on the issue of girls caned on the bottom).
You say that there seems to be plenty of anecdotal evidence of resistance throughout SCP’s reign. Given that in this instance we are talking about the UK and actual refusal of punishment, rather than just general opposition to SCP, can you point us at a few examples please?
QuoteLikeShare
debdebdew80
15
Jul 13, 2019#32
It didn’t come in to question to refuse to bend over. We were very scared of the headmaster and I certainly felt very intimidated. I was a quiet, well behaved girl who suddenly found myself in the headmaster’s office being told that I’m going to get the slipper, something that was considered the worst possible punishment even for a boy. The fact that I was a girl getting it made it even more embarrassing and intimidating.
Truth to be told, although I think the punishment was excessive, it certainly worked as I never misbehaved again. It also made me rather popular once everyone found out!
Sent from my SM-A520F using Tapatalk
QuoteLikeShare
dmp
191
11
Jul 14, 2019#33
these are from corpun’s news section and all involve some form of active resistance… though not always at the moment of infliction.
1948 five smarting girls on this page https://www.corpun.com/uksc4811.hml and also at the bottom of this page https://www.corpun.com/uksc4812.htm
1955 school boy attacks headmaster https://www.corpun.com/uksc5502.htm
Teacher came off worse in a fight for the cane https://www.corpun.com/uksc5503.htm
1956 the article maintains this was not about the caning… i think its rather debatable Four caned boys struck north in shame https://www.corpun.com/uksc5604.htm
1959 Spanked boy pulls out knife https://www.corpun.com/uksc5906.htm
Boy, 15, hit headmaster with bottle https://www.corpun.com/uksc5907.htm
this covers the end of ww2 to the end of the 50s i’ll post more if you are interested though it should perhaps be a different topic
QuoteLikeShare
debdebdew80
15
Jul 14, 2019#34
dmp wrote:
but this slippering took place in 1985 at a school that used very little scp and the original posted doesn’t to this day believe it was deserved, so i’m not sure this was a situation where it was either unthinkable to refuse or where the school culture would have regarded it as cowardly to do so… i’m also not sure refusal was either a uncommon or as unacceptable to ones school peers as so now in retrospect some believe… there seem to be plenty of anecdotal evidence of refusal throughout scp’s reign
Our school did use corporal punishment quite a bit but it was usually a ruler on the hand. The slipper was used very rarely and was considered the ultimate punishment greatly feared by everyone. Only two boys in my class had the slipper and no girls before me.
Sent from my SM-A520F using Tapatalk
QuoteLikeShare
dmp
191
11
Jul 15, 2019#35
okay i’m going to try one more time, to do the 60s for scp resistance in corpun’s press clippings archive of the UK… the first two times i seem to have deleted my post while trying to write it.
1962 ” Kathleen is ready for a caning” which seems an entirely inappropriate title for the actual situation and “Friar Tuck is called in to be caned after Mr. Grundy stops revue at school” https://www.corpun.com/uksc6207.htm
1963 “Apologise, head tells a father” https://www.corpun.com/uksc6306.htm
1964 “Search for Wellington schoolboy” this one is a bit marginal https://www.corpun.com/uksc6403.htm
1969 “Cane for 15 boys who marched with teachers” resistance if ultimately unsuccessful https://www.corpun.com/uksc6911.htm
QuoteLikeShare
70sboy
79
6
Jul 15, 2019#36
debdebdew80 wrote:
dmp wrote:
but this slippering took place in 1985 at a school that used very little scp and the original posted doesn’t to this day believe it was deserved, so i’m not sure this was a situation where it was either unthinkable to refuse or where the school culture would have regarded it as cowardly to do so… i’m also not sure refusal was either a uncommon or as unacceptable to ones school peers as so now in retrospect some believe… there seem to be plenty of anecdotal evidence of refusal throughout scp’s reign
Our school did use corporal punishment quite a bit but it was usually a ruler on the hand. The slipper was used very rarely and was considered the ultimate punishment greatly feared by everyone. Only two boys in my class had the slipper and no girls before me.
Sent from my SM-A520F using Tapatalk
Click to expand…
Our school never caned of slippered girls, late 70s, but I did hear about a girl down the road who went to the local mixed secondary getting the slipper.
QuoteLikeShare
neilmc32
172
25
Jul 15, 2019#37
I think that possibly the 1970s was the peak period for corporal punishment of girls in England and Wales schools. This was due to the rise in co-educational schooling, and “women’s lib” meaning girls increasingly began to match boys with bad behaviour, which led some schools to treat girls just like boys when it came to CP. However some schools wouldn’t cane girls and only used the slipper or equivalent, and I believe caning on the hand became the norm in many co-ed schools which to me is a retrograde and unsafe step, but head teachers (especially males) would be aware of the potential for controversy involved in ANY caning on the bottom. This tended to tail off in the 1980s as local authorities, and maybe individual schools’ heads and governors, became more and more unhappy about the use of CP in general.
I would also be of the opinion that the excessive and brutal caning of boys waned markedly during this entire period, partly due again to co-ed schooling, more women in teaching, parents actually getting enough bottle to start confronting abusers and a better quality of teacher emerging through teacher training colleges – God knows where some of the “whacko” types originated from, I suspect that pre-1970s qualifications were somewhat looser.
I have talked to several woman of my generation or slightly younger, i.e. with a 1970s education, who were at times caned, slippered, strapped or whacked with a ruler in school and did not consider it all that great a deal, it tended to be moderate and very occasional. So the “Lotta Nonsense” type people who claim such things never happened are plain wrong, but I am very suspicious of anything which looks and sounds like a scene from a kinky spanking film.
QuoteLikeShare
Another_Lurker, six of the best like this post
Another_Lurker
10K
256
Jul 15, 2019#38
Hello dane,
Very comprehensive responses to my challenge, thank you, and incidentally a tribute to the huge amount of work (and doubtless some financial expense) expended by Colin Farrell and his associates in maintaining the superb Corpun.Com website. We all tend to take that excellent facility for granted. We shouldn’t!
There is a minor error in the first link in your contribution #33 which I am sure most will spot easily, the file extension should be ‘htm’ not ‘hml’ And on to my comments:
Striking, refusing to attend school to be caned or otherwise subjected to SCP, was always an option where the punishment was notified in advance. But although this didn’t always make the press those following this course were quite often given the intended punishment anyway when they returned to school. In addition they lost valuable days of schooling during their absence, and their parents or legal guardians were usually technically in breach of the law unless they had made acceptable alternative educational arrangements. Not a wise choice I don’t think, especially if like me you were of a nervous disposition and apprehensive about SCP. The thought that I was probably going to get it anyway would have weighed heavily, better to get it over with!
And on the subject of getting it over with, I’d think that in the UK most corporal punishment wasn’t flagged in advance. You committed an offence, you found yourself at the front of the class or sent straight to a senior teacher, the cane, slipper or whatever was produced and you got whacked. Now of course you could have fled the scene. But if you did it would be the duty of teachers to intercept and detain you, since during school hours the school was responsible for your safety and arrangements to get you to home or wherever safely would not have been in place. In practice you’d quite possibly have escaped but, as already noted, you’d probably have got whacked anyway on your almost inevitable return to school.
Attacking the teacher who was about to punish you and actively resisting with force. Well yes, a possibility. Though perhaps not for debdebdew80, who gave rise to this discussion. She was a frightened 11 year old Junior School girl told she was going to be slippered by a Headmaster of whom she was in awe. But take an older and bigger boy or girl. Well I have to tell you that for quite a bit of the time post-WW2 SCP was in existence in the UK the courts weren’t overly sympathetic to children who committed violence against responsible adults.
Boy or girl, if you’d injured the teacher you could possibly have finished up detained in an institution where the CP could be a great deal more severe than was likely in school. One of my youthful acquaintances was ‘sent away’ to just such a place, though not for attacking a teacher. Actually it was for breaking windows in every house along the road with a catapult using heavy lead pellets which I’d provided the technical expertise to cast from lead toy soldiers, a budding metallurgist even then! Happily I wasn’t involved in the despatch of the missiles so didn’t experience a spell in an institution where unsympathetic staff deployed heavy canes on scantily protected bottoms in response to misbehaviour.. He did though, and I think any schoolchild would have been extremely foolish to take that risk.
If you continue your search for items in support of your case for resistance to SCP into the 1970s you’ll probably encounter the ‘Heaton Riots’, so-called, when schoolgirls in North-East England staged rather vigorous protests, involving the assistance of the police to suppress them, when a Headmaster announced that in future girls would be strapped for misbehaviour as well as boys. (Most of the press had it as ‘caned’ rather than ‘strapped’ as reporters often assumed that all SCP involved the cane and used it as an almost generic term.)
Should you choose to quote this case, remember that the strap for girls was reintroduced in the school anyway. Further, not very long afterwards the girls’ behaviour on that occasion was ‘taken into consideration’ when the Local Education Authority decided to introduce a new ‘super strap’. Though still a pale shadow of the formidable tawses deployed in many Scottish schools this was larger, heavier and intended to be more effective than the existing authorised version.
I’m afraid my advice to schoolchildren contemplating resistance to SCP would still have been grit your teeth and take your whacks with the best grace possible. Or do what the juvenile Another_Lurker did for the most part; be good, and if you can’t be good don’t get caught!
QuoteLikeShare
dmp
191
11
Jul 16, 2019#39
i probably won’t post into the 70s, anyone interested can just read through corpun’s excellent archives. i would say that you are almost certainly right that resistance came at a high cost, and it probably was wiser to submit. i for one will always see the resisters as heroes, their standing up to authority’s brutality will always be what fuels my dreams, not the 99% who did what was safe and expected and in my opinion easy. i find it so strange that in the UK it would have been seen as cowardly to refuse to submit, it always seemed to me that courage was taking the road less traveled and incurring risks to follow what you felt was right.
QuoteLikeShare
Another_Lurker
10K
256
Jul 16, 2019#40
Hello neilmc32,
With regard to your above contention that a combination of the increase in co-educational schooling and women’s lib may have brought about a peak in the SCP of schoolgirls as late as the 1970s you may recall former contributor ink-lined plane who postulated very much the same thing in the foundation post of his thread Mixed secondary modern- Schoolgirl CP ‘paradise’? which is to be found here.
I confess that I was rather scathing about ink-lined plane at the time. He annoyed me considerably by what I thought was an unjustified attack on public school boys in that foundation post and additionally I was rather more dubious about some claims of the SCP of girls then than I am now, though to nothing like the extent ink-lined plane chose to attribute to me.
I have since apologised for my attitude to ink-lined plane when issues on which he wrote have come up in various threads, though regrettably he had departed the Forum by that time. His thread makes salutary reading for any who doubt that right into the 1970s a substantial number of schoolgirls were still subject to SCP in English schools..
QuoteLikeShare
70sboy
79
6
Jul 16, 2019#41
neilmc32 wrote:
I think that possibly the 1970s was the peak period for corporal punishment of girls in England and Wales schools. This was due to the rise in co-educational schooling, and “women’s lib” meaning girls increasingly began to match boys with bad behaviour, which led some schools to treat girls just like boys when it came to CP. However some schools wouldn’t cane girls and only used the slipper or equivalent, and I believe caning on the hand became the norm in many co-ed schools which to me is a retrograde and unsafe step, but head teachers (especially males) would be aware of the potential for controversy involved in ANY caning on the bottom. This tended to tail off in the 1980s as local authorities, and maybe individual schools’ heads and governors, became more and more unhappy about the use of CP in general.
I would also be of the opinion that the excessive and brutal caning of boys waned markedly during this entire period, partly due again to co-ed schooling, more women in teaching, parents actually getting enough bottle to start confronting abusers and a better quality of teacher emerging through teacher training colleges – God knows where some of the “whacko” types originated from, I suspect that pre-1970s qualifications were somewhat looser.
I have talked to several woman of my generation or slightly younger, i.e. with a 1970s education, who were at times caned, slippered, strapped or whacked with a ruler in school and did not consider it all that great a deal, it tended to be moderate and very occasional. So the “Lotta Nonsense” type people who claim such things never happened are plain wrong, but I am very suspicious of anything which looks and sounds like a scene from a kinky spanking film.
Click to expand…
Our school had a modern approach to subjects, girls and boys had to do cooking, needlework, woodwork, metalwork and technical drawing but when it came to discipline there was no equality.
QuoteLikeShare
Another_Lurker
10K
256
Jul 16, 2019#42
Hello 70sboy,
No criticism, just a gentle hint. It really isn’t necessary to quote whole posts or big chunks of posts if you’re only commenting on one point, especially if, as in your case, your comment follows the flow of the thread. Huge chunks of quoted material make a thread look untidy and render it more difficult to follow. They also generate false positives when using the Forum search engine.
QuoteLikeShare
six of the best
1,115
96
Jul 16, 2019#43
I agree with Another_Lurker. It is quite possible to edit quoted passages. I even edit out line spaces. It gets even worse when 2 or 3 people use the same quote in successive posts.
QuoteLikeShare
70sboy
79
6
Jul 17, 2019#44
You’re right, maybe the site owner should think about omitting the quote button for better user experience?
QuoteLikeShare
Another_Lurker
10K
256
Jul 17, 2019#45
Hello 70sboy,
I wouldn’t want to suggest that quotes from previous posts never have a useful function. I frequently quote short snippets from the contribution I’m commenting on. However I do this directly in BBCode rather than by using the quote button.
The problem is I think that by default the quote button quotes the whole of a sometimes quite lengthy selected post whereas quite often only a small segment is relative. Further, sometime the post selected for quoting by contributors is still clearly visible on the page in close proximity to the post in which it is quoted.
It would be better I think if the quote button was designed to quote selected segments rather than whole posts. As six of the best points out quoted posts can be edited down to the relevant section, but many people may not realise this or may not want to take the trouble to do it.
When the Forum was converted from Network54 to Tapatalk the Tapatalk conversion process mangled posts containing HTML and CSS (which were permitted in posts at Network54). That was bad enough. But it also inserted vast numbers of whole post quotes, which was a horror story!
QuoteLikeShare
70sboy
79
6
Jul 18, 2019#46
Yes, a snippet button that allows a certain amount of characters would be ideal
QuoteLikeShare
Another_Lurker
10K
256
Jul 18, 2019#47
Hello 70sboy,
I can’t give you a quote button for snippets, I don’t run Tapatalk.
However if you type as shown below (ignoring the bold text for visibility and without using the trick I’ve used to display the quote BBCode opening and closing tags with their square brackets):
[quote]copy and paste the snippet you want to quote here[/quote]
You’ll get something that looks like this in your contribution when it appears in the thread:
here is the snippet you copied and pasted
Don’t inset a blank line after you do this. Continue with the rest of your contribution on the next line.
QuoteLikeShare
Jul 18, 2019#48
Hello 70sboy again,
Oops! Forgot a bit!
If you want to include the name of the person you are quoting in the quoted snippet leave an extra blank line then use this format, again ignoring the bold text etc., etc.
[quote=Another_Lurker]copy and paste the snippet you want to quote here[/quote]
Which will give:
Another_Lurker wrote:
the snippet you copied and pasted will appear here
Don’t inset a blank line after you do this. Continue with the rest of your contribution on the next line.
QuoteLikeShare
70sboy
79
6
Jul 19, 2019#49
Another_Lurker wrote:
Don’t inset a blank line after you do this. Continue with the rest of your contribution on the next line.
Or you could reply and delete all the unnecessary text.
Some forums have a reply button so the answer starts with the person you’re replying to with @name and they get a notification which I think is a good idea.
QuoteLikeShare
jack118118
9
Mar 28, 2020#50
debdebdew80 wrote: ↑Jul 13, 2019
It didn’t come in to question to refuse to bend over. We were very scared of the headmaster and I certainly felt very intimidated. I was a quiet, well behaved girl who suddenly found myself in the headmaster’s office being told that I’m going to get the slipper, something that was considered the worst possible punishment even for a boy. The fact that I was a girl getting it made it even more embarrassing and intimidating.
Truth to be told, although I think the punishment was excessive, it certainly worked as I never misbehaved again. It also made me rather popular once everyone found out!
Sent from my SM-A520F using Tapatalk
did he take his time to slipper your bum ? did tap the slipper couple times on your bum before each stroke ?
did you have to bend right over tight ?
QuoteLikeShare
Another_Lurker
10K
256
Mar 28, 2020#51
Hello jack118118,
The person posting as debdebdew80 does not appear to have visited the Forum since 17 July 2019 so it seems quite likely that you may not receive a response to your query.
However as your contribution record seems to indicate that you are a member of the Forum’s elite ‘Earnest seeker after the truth’ community I will endeavour to assist you. The answers to your queries seem to be readily accessible, mainly in this thread.
In 1985 aged 11 debdebdew80 was slippered by her headmaster for chewing gum in class. The usual MO for SCP in the school was the ruler on the hand. debdebdew80 was the only girl to be slippered in her class, and only 2 boys in the class received the slipper.
debdebdew80 states that the headmaster gave her a telling off before administering the slipper but otherwise there is no mention of the headmaster unduly prolonging the punishment and her account seems to indicate that the four strokes were fairly rapid, with no mention of preceding taps. The punitive posture required was to stand feet together and bend over the back of a chair, folding back her jumper and placing her hands flat on the seat of the chair, and to remain in position until instructed to stand up.
A full account of the punishment by debdebdew80 is to be found here. Hope that helps.
