‘They say corporal punishment scars a boy – which is a lot of cock! We treated it as a great joke – those bloody detentions really hurt!’ Morrison concurred: a public rebuke ‘was more stinging than a flogging’.’

For boarders, caning was common. One in 1929 was caned 24 times in one term; once the cane broke. Otherwise, officially only the Principal could administer corporal punishment, so conceptually caning seems to have been regarded as different from the routine physical intimidation that occurred in the classroom.