“He had high standards and tried to insist on the principle, expressed in his 1863 prospectus, that boys were to be encouraged to take pleasure in their work by masters who also enjoyed what they were doing. Alas, what was natural to a gentle but commanding person like Wilson, a transparently sincere man who loved […]

The following is from a 1990 history of Geelong Grammar School – Mr John Bracebridge Wilson, Headmaster, 1863 Prospectus: “In conducting the discipline of the school, the Headmaster has ever kept before him the following principles: on the part of the masters strict justice, united to kindliness and forbearance; on the part of the boys, […]

Sir Brian Hone, Headmaster: “As was his way, Hone provided an organisational amber light. If a master wished to punish with a Saturday detention, the ultimate sanction available to him, because Hone abolished most caning, the ‘Saturday card’, defining the offence, had to be signed by a parent and the boy’s housemaster. Because this made […]

He was forced to announce this reversal and his ‘resignation’ to the whole school at an informal assembly held in the quad on the chapel step. ‘We sense it’s going to be painful, but we’re excited. What’s he going to say?… Council has seen fit to overrule his decisions. Those who’ve been expelled will return… […]

Eagle goes on to describe the silence that settled on the school in the weeks which followed these momentous events. He attributes Sutcliffe’s final fall from grace to parental pressure. But Council had not always kept its distance from matters of school discipline, as we saw with Wilson and Bromby. Sometimes, under petition from teachers, […]

Lyle was not one of these but was one of nine to be caned by the school captain, Ken James (OM 1948), in the headmaster’s study. Eagle recalls: ‘Certain boys, and he reads their names, will go to his study directly after assembly to be caned. Others will leave the school immediately but will be […]

It goes on for what seems like ages.’ Supper was held in another Merton Hall building further down Anderson Street, where the mayhem continued. To fifteen-year-old Thomas Lyle’s (OM 1951) amazement and horror, ‘one boy lit a homemade bunger in the middle of Anderson Street and blew a hole in it. While supper was on, […]

The final night of dancing in 1948 was 5 November and the Finlaysons arranged for it to be a combined class, complete with balloons and supper. As it was Guy Fawkes night, day-boys took fireworks to the class and distributed them to boarders as well. One of the culprits recall that it started as innocent […]

Mr Joseph Richard Sutcliffe, Headmaster: “Perhaps not surprisingly, given this bad feeling, it was perhaps only a matter of time before the Council found an excuse to dismiss him. The headmaster was stripped of his control in one of the most dramatic incidents in the school’s history when the Council refused to support his decision […]

‘I never understood how six strokes across the backside from a long cane of a sadistic master was helping me to understand geometry – a subject of which I had no prior comprehension.’ Some pupils far preferred the cane to the anticipation of a Saturday detention. Overall regimentation associated with Public School education before World […]