He justified the severity of the punishment by recalling the parting advice Irving gave him before resigning as headmaster: ‘Andrew, don’t flog rashly, but when you do flog, flog well, that you may not be required to do it again.’ The court did not agree with this parting advice, nor with the energetic way in which Andrew had interpreted it, and fined him £5.

Andrew emerged from the court house not as a villain but as a hero. The Argus condemned the court’s verdict in an editorial on 25 February 1876. Corporal punishment, it argued, ‘is even more necessary here than it is in the mother country, because domestic restraints are so much weaker in Victoria, and the physical and mental development of the young proceeds so much more rapidly.’ Letters appeared in The Argus, mostly praising Andrew.