I was registered as Brightenlad, but have now re-registered as Andrewmoon after an absence of some 10 years or so.
Continuing the list, Roger Daltrey of the Who recently wrote a book in which he says he got 6 of the best from his headmaster at aged 15. The offence was so bad that he was caned on his bare arse and then the Headmaster told him he was expelled. I suppose at least that saved him from any further canings!
Also Gary Lineker, in his biography admits having been caned, but no details I’m afraid.
I’ll post some more soon hopefully.

Hello Andrewmoon,

Good to see a former contributor returning to the fold in the Forum’s hour of need!

Dashed unsporting of Roger Daltrey’s Headmaster to only tell him he was expelled after giving him six of the best on the bare don’tcha know!

I believe that at least one of the Beatles was caned in school. Unless they were at a private school any UK youngster who was caned in school would have to be over about 42 now. That is working on the fact that very few junior schools used the cane. I’m sure that Cilla Black said she had been caned at school.

John Lennon was caned.

https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com … ennon2.htm

Hello six of the best,

If reports are to be believed being subjected to corporal punishment at school or at home seems to have been virtually de rigueur for certain classes of celebrities of an age to encounter that sort of thing.  The old SF&R site, stuffed full of such reports and much quoted here in the Forum’s early days, is still accessible via the Internet Archive.  The version here, dating from 2004, indicates in the Celebrities at School section that Cilla Black was allegedly given six of the best twice at school.

An even older report, from what I think was an early version of the SF&R site on the old GeoCities hosting platform (whose main claim to fame was that it hosted the very first Another_Lurker website ) has been resurrected as part of the Oocities project, and the section on Cilla Black is to be found here together with a newspaper clip from The Evening Standard of 5 January 1996 in which Cilla Black says that  she was caned twice.  The page gives an interesting insight into the wilder shores of web design in those early days.  Not mine of course!

Once prolific contributor Steve M, who left us at the time of The Great Schism, wrote here that a report in the NME summer annual of 1966 said that one of the canings {4 strokes not 6 allegedly) involved bending over and was for refusing to clean out a grimy oven at the end of a domestic science lesson.

Good to see this tread being resurrected again. We must remember that people who were famous in adult life were no different to anyone else when they were kids. In the past corporal punishment in schools and at home was seen as the right way to discipline. I’ve read of Cilla Black (Priscilla White back then!) being caned in school in a few publications and have no doubt that it happened. Liverpool like most big cities had some rough areas. In the 1950s/60s there were many 14/15 year old girls who had no real interest in academic studies, most wanted to leave school and get a job. School to them was plain boring but they had no choice but to be there. Some of these girls no doubt played up.

Liverpool has always been predominately a Catholic city with Catholic schools where SCP was used more. Perhaps Cilla was one of those bored girls. All of the reports that I have read have never said whether she was caned across her hands or her bottom.

On the general subject of girls being caned in school, the number of strokes are even numbers, 2,4 or 6 indicating that the strokes were applied to the hands. In my own boys school of that era the headmaster usually gave 3 or 6 strokes across the bottom. All that said I am well aware that some UK girls did receive bottom canings at school back then but far fewer than those that were caned across their hands. There were also plenty of boys that were caned across their hands too.

six of the best wrote:
On the general subject of girls being caned in school, the number of strokes are even numbers, 2,4 or 6 indicating that the strokes were applied to the hands.

Hello six of the best,

I follow your contributions with great interest and I am intrigued by your theory that when girls were caned at school an even number of strokes indicated that the punishment was on the hands. As there seems to be at least some evidence to the contrary I would be most interested, please,  to know what has led you to this rather novel conclusion.

It may be of interest that the Forum’s greatly respected Research Assistant 2 concluded in this thread that when girls were caned or slippered on the bottom at school the number of strokes administered was often three.  However he didn’t extend his numbers theory further to take in your conclusion.  Perhaps he too had seen evidence to discourage him from so doing.

I regarded Research Assistant 2 as a great asset to the Forum.  I was most relieved that when in my early days here and still inadvertently using the same name as a former contributor I jocularly remonstrated with him over the strange case of leather mini-skirts featuring as an item of UK school uniform he did not implement his threat to retire.

Hi Another_Lurker.

I only base my comments on personal knowledge of the era when I was growing up and from what I have read generally. I only know, with any degree of accuracy, of one particular UK LEA of that time and even then these details were not commonly available. I only knew of how various schools in that area applied them. I knew nothing of the private sector there ether. My boys grammar school and other senior schools locally used the cane and slipper. I knew of the other schools’ methods from friends who attended them. Some boys secondary modern schools caned boys across their hands.

I was somewhat naïve about girls school (girls in general until 14 or 15!) but did hear that some girls school caned across hands but only for more serious offences. I knew of no girls being slippered in local schools back then. I was given to understand that if a hand caning was more than one stroke it was given on both hands, one stroke to one hand then one to the other. Associated with hand caning was ‘one, two or three on each’ hence the even numbers theory. I suppose that some schools may have used ‘three on the non writing hand’.

I am fully aware that SCP varied greatly area to area and even from school to school. I have read of Walsall in the West Midlands. Schools there used a leather tawse but unlike Scotland, where the tawse was only used across hands on both boys and girls, Walsall used the tawse on the boys’ bottoms and on the hands of girls. I’ve seen copies of newspaper reports of the time referring to this.

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Hello six of the best,

Were I to rely on SCP in my schooldays and in my area I would tend to assume that there was a great deal more SCP of schoolgirls nationally than there probably actually was.  I sometimes have the impression that your experience may lead you in the opposite direction.   But perhaps it is better to under–estimate than to over-estimate in such a contentious area.

McCartney and Harrison both got caned at school as well. Many of us here have said SCP was accepted by pupils and parents which it was by some. Not by Harrison’s father it wasn’t. Came from the Dane school of thinking about SCP. Clocked the teacher the next day. Amusing account of the incident by McCartney on YouTube. Search for George Harrison Father or perhaps some more IT literate person here will provide the link.