It seems that Andrew lost his temper and hit the boy’s back and shoulder about 21 tunes with, a cane. The boy’s father got medical advice about his son’s bruises, and legal advice about his rights. A few days later Andrew had to appear in the Prahran Court on a charge of unlawful assault, a […]

  Waugh and Andrew made investigations and poked through lies or evasion until they found the culprits. They made them bring money to school to pay for the windows and, as punishment for telling lies, gave them the option of voluntarily leaving the school – it was not the same as expulsion, Andrew explained – […]

Wesley College. This history is older than the others I’ve used so far (from 1967), because I do not have access to a more recent history of Wesley, if one has been written. Professor Henry Martyn Andrew, Headmaster; Reverend James Swanston Waugh, President: “Andrew’s term as headmaster opened ominously. It seems that in February 1876 […]

‘Wesley College: The First Hundred Years’ by Geoffrey Blainey, James Morrisey and S.E.K. Hulme. It contains far less corporal punishment material than others , but there’s still some (not much though from a school whose old boys have often referred to their schoolmasters as ‘the men who tanned the hide of us’). Again, a particular […]

“House captains could cane. Hugh Luiggi (a founding member of Francis Brown 1937-40) remembered a boy caned for insulting the King by sticking his image upside down on a letter. Luiggi thought that caning, the preferred method of enforcing discipline at Corio, was weakened by its frequency and the lack of distinction in degree of […]

Sir James Darling, Headmaster: “After receiving gifts from the school and thanking them with his usual wit and power, the headmaster, with a touch of humour, to everyone’s delight, broke his cane and threw down his mortar board.” “Brian Jones thought that, because it was small, well-ordered and happy, the school of the 1920s was […]

Reverend Doctor Francis Brown, Headmaster: “Students felt he was almost as omnipotent as God, and nearly as distant except on Monday mornings, when a large contingent of backsliders knew his wrath at close quarters through the cane.” Mr E.T. Williams, Housemaster: “Ian Nicholson remembered ‘Billy Lop’ Williams quoting his favourite poem, ‘Drake’s Drum’, in one […]

“A delay like that would have saved Wilson some embarrassment at one swimming sports in the 1870s, when he noticed fearful bruises on the back (sic) and legs of young Ernest Jackson, and learnt to his horror that they were the marks of his own tawse. ‘I always bruised very easily’, Jackson wrote later.” 1920s: […]

“Although, as he told them, he was happy to trust them and risk being let down, and although his ideal when he ser out in 1863 was to rule by kindness, Wilson did beat boys. Those who lied or cheated were invariably caned. Among snippets of evidence about his practice there is T. Aylesbury Brown’s […]

“Gradually, though, Wilson had to become less demanding and even to use the tawse to support a weak master. He also abandoned his opposition to impositions and made detentions the most common punishment. Perhaps the school had grown too large for the enlightened methods he had been able to operate at the high school. For […]