Birches were tailored to the size of the target — the smallest for the eight to tens, a larger model for the 11 to thirteens, and a full-sized affair for their bigger brothers. They were well used.
In 1936, 70 birchings were ordered by the courts in Edinburgh; Glasgow ran a close second with 69 while Aberdeen came in at 26. Altogether there were 230 birchings in Scotland that year, well down on the 925 total of two decades earlier when the courts appear to have gone into a frenzy and scarce a birch tree in the land can have been left unstripped of its twigs. Through the years the average age of the victims appears to have been 12.
How severe was their punishment? Certainly a judicial birching was far removed from a parental spanking. Regulations required that the punishment should be “sufficiently severe to cause a repetition of it to be dreaded”.