why did some headmasters chalk their cane ,my old head master didnt, so i cant really see the point of this. i can only imagine the reason for this was to see where each stroke had landed, and that he could miss the same spot on the next stroke, or if sadistic enough, he could land on the same spot.it would have been very painful to have all the strokes landing on the same spot and even would have broken the skin. i guess it did happen in times gone by . when i was caned the headmaster, would wait a few seconds after each stroke, and i guess he could see where each one had landed.( i had even strokes on my bottom, a few centimeters apart). as we used to wear very thin trousers, a welt would soon appear and be visable to the headmaster.
When I was at primary school one of our male teachers told us that ar his High School in Gisborne one of his teachers used to chalk the cane so that the stroke showed across his seat, then he tried to dust it off with succeeding strokes so all the strokes landed on the same line or near enough. PAINFUL.
Although it never happened to me, it happened to a cousin that went to a city school in Hamilton. I was about 12 years old at the time and he was 15. He got four strokes and the marks were still across the seat of his grey shorts when he got home from school, although they were smudged. I was visiting them with my mother as there was no optician in our town and I needed new glasses and we had travelled by bus to Hamilton and after the appointment at the opticians were visititing my auntie’s home until it was time to catch the bus back home.
My cousin told me quietly that he’ed been caned for not doing his French homework.
There is also the scene in the Aussie movie Flirting where the Master chalked the cane prior to caning the star of the movie, Noah Taylor, on the seat of his pajamas.
My own opinion about this-for what it’s worth-is that if the cane was chalked for every stroke this would draw out the caning for far to long and quite possibly take anything up to two or three minutes to administer six-the-best for example.
I think a lot of this ‘cane chalking’ that you read about is more fiction than it is fact.