The birch may not be as bad as all that. Yes, we’ve all read far-fetched stories about romantic poets being given 10,000 strokes; but there are a couple of quotes on the Corpun site by people who were birched on the Isle of Man who said that it wasn’t much worse than getting the cane at school. I read in one of those books about Eton where someone who got the birch not long before they gave up using it (as late as the 70s, I think) saying that he resented the ritual and being made to strip off, but that it actually hurt less than the cane did. Of course, it’s outrageous that young people were ever hit at all; but when he read about a birching it may only mean what the Americans would call “a severe switching.”
Scottish Approved School Punishment17
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