At my high school sixth form canings were rare but always of special interest to the whole school. Once, a prefect was caned. We never found out why. He suffered no diminution of status as far as I could ascertain. He became a medical doctor and was still practising last time I checked.

6 of us were working on a project after school in a classroom which was not our own.  I can’t remember exactly what the project was but it was something to do with printing and duplication, maybe some sort of newsletter.  The following day we were called to see the headmaster.  The 6 of us were from different classes so we didn’t know what it was related to until we saw the others outside his office.  I still had no idea why we were called to see him and I don’t think many of the others did either.

It seemed that someone had obliterated one of the wall information sheets in the classroom by running an inked printing roller over it.  He asked us who had done it.  I had no idea as I didn’t even know about it and, it seemed, neither did most of the others.  No-one said anything so he announced that he was going to cane all of us.  I was terrified (I think I was aged 12 at the time) and the youngest started crying as soon as he announced the sentence.

The headmaster said the youngest was to go first.  He told him to touch his toes and he administered 2 strokes of the cane and then told him to leave.  I watched 3 others get the same and then it was my turn.  I bent over and touched my toes and then I don’t remember a thing until I got outside the door.  It must have been the fear but I didn’t hear the strokes of the cane or feel them at all.  Even after I was outside I don’t remember feeling any pain, it was very strange.  The marks lasted for over a week so I don’t think it was a light caning.  If anyone else has received a caning without feeling it I should be interested to know.  The same if anyone has an explanation of my experience as I have always wondered why I never felt it.

I put the unjust caning down to bad luck (one of the six confessed to the rest of us afterwards that he had defaced the poster and apologised for not owning up) and that it was retribution for the number of times I had got away with things for which I should have been caned.  I had no anger towards either the boy who confessed or the headmaster who caned us all.

And may I please say a personal welcome to the Forum, at least as a contributor.  You appear to be one of the people I have been urging to post, longstanding members who haven’t contributed.  If so, a double welcome and hopefully you will be the first of many.

I certainly can’t explain your caning experience.  I haven’t been caned so have no idea of how painful it is, but I certainly can’t recall many people saying that it didn’t hurt at all.

I was once slippered at age 11 and can’t remember feeling the one or two strokes at all, but that is a rather less severe version of SCP than the cane and anyway doctors have since told me that I have a ridiculously high pain threshold.  Howeve I have to say that the very high pain threshold wasn’t in evidence when I got my leg slapped as a little lad.  I certainly felt that!

Possibly you may have a high pain threshold too, and although  I would think that having to watch the others caned might have made your own experience worse the emotional state produced might have had the opposite effect.  You say that you were terrified when it was announced that you were to be caned.  Does this indicate that it was your first caning?   Were you ever caned subsequently, and if so how did you perceive the pain on that occasion?

People who have experienced a lot of hard corporal punishment are often less sensitive to pain.  A boy in my first form at secondary school appeared immune to the form master’s size 12 leather soled sandal, used in lieu of the traditional slipper, whereas most boys shed tears when in receipt of it.

When questioned about his indifference to the sandal the fortune boy said it didn’t hurt when you were used to being caned on the bare.  He’d been at a boarding prep school where they caned often, hard, and on the bare bottom.  However as you say you were terrified at the announcement of the cane I presume something like that was not a factor in your experience.

Yes, this was my first caning and no, I was never caned again so I have no comparison.  I seemed to be very good at avoiding it although I don’t really know how.

The school in question was also a prep school but there were day pupils as well as boarders.  I was a day pupil at the time.  I would say that canings were fairly regular although not overly so.  I don’t think anyone complained about them, you expected to get the cane for transgressions in those days.

And thank you for a very prompt response. The prep school where my sandal resistant classmate at secondary school had boarded was a very small local one, effectively two very large old houses, which he and I passed daily on the ‘bus to and from the secondary school.  Before moving to the secondary school in 1954 I’d known a boy at home who briefly attended the same prep school but as a day boy.  He mentioned the cane, but not the ‘on the bare’.  That seems to have been a function of the boarding side.    Before it expired a few years later the school briefly took a few day girls. I’ve no idea what if any SCP regime the girls were subjected to, but I doubt it was the boys boarding variant.

That said, back in early 2009 a very believable contributor here who in the mid to late 1950s attended a small boarding school largely patronised by expat and rural  families reported receiving four strokes of the cane on the bare at age 10 from the headmaster.  It was for a very serious offence about which there had been some white lies and dissembling and which had got a member of staff into trouble.  And before he got his own caning he’d had to wait and watch while his female partner in crime got the same punishment.

A fantasy?  Possibly.  But as I say the originator was very convincing.  He was given the third degree by myself and by another contributor.  Both of us at that time were inclined towards the discrediting of fakes,  though I largely abandoned this later when for a time even a fake was better than nobody at all.  Our man passed all the tests and didn’t fall into any of the traps.  I believed him and the other interrogator seems to have reached the same conclusion.

In your case it sounds as if despite the one incident you described in your contribution #902 you were fairly fortunate as regards being caned at school.  So was I,  I wasn’t caned at all.  There was no caning at junior school.  At secondary school the headmaster caned occasionally but most of the caning was done by the prefects.  From the outset, even though the prefects were limited to 3 strokes, I didn’t fancy having to bend over to be caned by a burly 18 year old 1st XV rugby forward or similar with several of his prefect colleagues looking on and I tried very hard to avoid it happening.

The only time I was up before the prefects’ court I was fortunate enough to get lines instead.  When I got my priv status, sort of sub-prefect, early in the sixth form and could send boys before the prefects’ court myself I didn’t but instead just pointed out the error of their ways fairly forcefully.  In later life, when the pain threshold thing began to be commented on, I did wonder if being caned would have been as bad as I’d feared.   If it had happened I might have been as fortunate as you and felt very little or nothing.  But then again I might not!

Your earlier post set me thinking.  I remembered another boy, a fried of mine at the time, who may have had the same experience as mine when getting caned.

A year or so before my experience there was some big rumpus going on in the changing rooms which a member of staff came to breakup.  Every one involved was sent to the headmaster to be caned, around 40 boys.  The whole school knew about it because there were so many of them.  Each was awarded one stroke of the cane.  However, the thing which jogged my memory was the comment afterwards from this friend:  “I think I fell asleep” or something very similar to that.  I didn’t think anything of it at the time.

I now wonder whether he experienced the same thing I did in that the comment “I fell asleep” meant that he didn’t hear or feel the cane stroke either.  I shall never find out but, perhaps, there is someone else who didn’t feel their caning.

On the subject of pain threshold, 2 to 3 years later I did suffer a slippering.  It was in the dormitory, so over pyjama bottoms only, and was for messing around after lights out.  We all got 3 stokes of the heaviest, hardest leather slipper the prefect could find in the dorm.  He grasped the foot end of the slipper so that the solid leather heel was what made contact on the stroke.  He also tried to hit repeatedly on exactly the same spot, successfully I think in my case.  I remember the sting building on each stroke so that the third stroke was by far the worst.  I don’t think the pain I suffered was any different from the others but I certainly did feel it that time.

To open on a lighter note:

tel18 wrote:[We all got 3 stokes of the heaviest, hardest leather slipper the prefect could find in the dorm.  He grasped the foot end of the slipper so that the solid leather heel was what made contact on the stroke.  He also tried to hit repeatedly on exactly the same spot, successfully I think in my case.[/b]

I say, that was damned unsporting of him!  Heel end AND the same spot!  The fellow must have been an absolute bounder!  Most slipperers I observed held the heel end and whacked the buttock cheeks alternately with the sole.

But seriously:

tel18 wrote: I remember the sting building on each stroke so that the third stroke was by far the worst.  I don’t think the pain I suffered was any different from the others but I certainly did feel it that time.

Interesting that you recall most definitely feeling the slipper, whereas you don’t remember experiencing any distress during the caning you described in your contribution #902.  The circumstances and the punishment were very differnt of course.

In the case of the slippering you were older and you must have known and expected that if caught messing about after lights out you’d get slippered, so finding that you were indeed going to be whacked wouldn’t have come as a nasty shock, unlike the caning.  Unless you wore very, very thick pyjama bottoms there was substantially less protection over the target area than in the case of the caning.  And finally the slippering was three strokes and, in view of the prefect’s MO, likelly to be particularly painful.  Perhaps the slippering was simply a more severe punishment than the caning and, lacking any mind numbing effect such as that which might have occurred  as a result of your shock at finding you were to be caned, you experienced its full impact (sorry!).

tel18 wrote: I remembered another boy, a fried of mine at the time, who may have had the same experience as mine when getting caned.  ……  A year or so before my experience  ……   Every one involved was sent to the headmaster to be caned, around 40 boys.  ……  Each was awarded one stroke of the cane.  ……   the comment afterwards from this friend:  “I think I fell asleep” or something very similar to that.  I didn’t think anything of it at the time.

Interesting.  There may be factors in common with your caning though.  School friend are often of similar ages.  If this was so with you and your friend he would have been even younger than you were when you were caned.  Possibly he too was shocked on finding he was to be caned.  If so this might have been exacerbated if he didn’t know in advance how many strokes.  If indeed shock and fear can cause some sort of mind-numbing effect perhaps he ‘sleepwalked’ through the punishment under the influence of this.

I suppose in both your cases what I’ve called a mind-numbing effect might simply be an enhanced adrenaline ‘fight or flight’ reaction to the sudden prospect of an imminent and hitherto unknown experience expected to be very painful.  Hmm, does that explain my memory of my first and totally unexpected experience of SCP, the smacked leg, as really hurting?  I wonder.

At various times, and sometimes all at the same time, this Forum has had a variety of persons who might reasonably be described as caning experts.  People who’d administered the cane, people who’d been caned rather a lot including  some who received canings in the course of adult recreational roleplay, and people who’d both caned and been caned in the course of scientific investigation of caning.  Alas we are now a much depleted band.

However it would be interesting if anyone who feels they have the requisite expertise would comment on whether they think first canings, possibly coming unexpectedly and as a nasty shock, are likely to be noticeably less painful during the actual punishment than subsequent canings, when the nature of the beast is no longer an unknown factor.  Logic suggests the opposite ought to be true but ………….

Yes, the friend was a similar age, although several months older than me, so he would have been a bit younger than me, no more than a year, at the time he was caned.  I know that it was his first time too.  I would be surprised if shock was an aspect in his case as I don’t believe that the punishment was immediately after the crime, anything untoward in the changing rooms always involved a caning and I also don’t believe that he went in to the office first, so he would have known the number of strokes being given to the others.

I hadn’t considered shock in my case but it is certainly possible.  I had no idea why I was called to the headmaster’s office and I hadn’t done anything wrong that I was aware of.

I believe shock has been know to affect memory e.g. no recollection of what happened in a car accident and adrenaline from the fight or flight response can increase the pain threshold so it may have been a combination of the two.  I too would interested if an “expert” can shed any light on it.

About the punishment
Administered by Head, or Staff member: teacher
Gender of staff member: Female
Location punished (Classroom, Office, Hallway etc): office
Type of punishment (Cane,Slipper,Paddle etc): cane
Number of strokes: 7
Applied to (Hand, Bottom, Legs etc): bottom
Position adopted (Standing, Bending over Chair, Desk etc): bend over and hands on knees
State of dress (Over Trousers/Skirt, panties, bare etc): fully clothed
Privacy (In private, In front of Class, With another teacher etc): private

About the school
Name of School:
Town:
Country: China

Effectiveness
Were you ever punished again for the same offence?: Yes, but not punished
Do you consider the punishment effective?: Yes

Any other relevant info:

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And may I please say a personal welcome to the Forum.

I am uncertain of the status of school corporal punishment in China in 2002.  Was it still legal then or did your school turn a blind eye to the law.  Was caning used very frequently please.  That seems likely if you were given a very severe (by UK standards at least) 7 strokes for the relatively trivial offence of not doing your homework.  Was it a mixed school, and if so were girls also subject to caning please?

For the benefit of our many readers who will be too lazy to consult a translation service I trust you will not object if I note that your ‘signature’ apparently translates as:

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