I’ve not posted for a while, but here are a few up-dates.
During the long Court Case in America between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, one of the character witnesses called was Johnny Depp’s sister who described their upbringing. Apparently their mother disciplined them regularly and would often “cut a switch” to beat them with.
The actor Damian Lewis, who starred in the Band of Brothers series was born in London and went to the same Prep School, Ashdown House, as Boris Johnson, although not at the same time. Damian was a boarder there and he was caned regularly for talking after lights out, being caught in the girls’ dormitories and other misdemeanors.
Ghisaine Maxwell has been in the news a lot this year; apparently she and her brothers and sisters were beaten by their father with a range of implements including hairbrushes, straps, slippers and even a riding crop. They had to pick which implement they were to be beaten with.Sent from my CPH2145 using Tapatalk

Hello Andrewmoon,

Your above contribution may be yet another indication that it was never a terribly good idea to beat one’s offspring.  I know nothing about Johnny Depp and his sister or Damian Lewis.  However Ghislaine Maxwell is of course the daughter of the rather flawed media mogul Robert Maxwell and is herself a convicted sex offender recently sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in the USA.

Whether her father’s somewhat eccentric corporal punishment practices had any eventual effect on the issues that led to her downfall I have no idea.  A British Judge would I think have considered this in the course of sentencing.  I don’t know if that was the practice in the US Court.  But one must wonder if things might have been better for many people if Mr Maxwell had confined himself to verbal reprimands and withholding pocket money.

Perhaps we can add our prospective PM Liz Truss to the list of celebrities receiving CP at school. An article in a newspaper stated she attended West Primary school in Paisley from the age of four where strict discipline was enforced with a leather belt. Carefully worded though and I suspect it might have had little or no use during her time there. She was born in 1975 so would be there from 1979. Perhaps I_Researcher can use his legendary powers to track down any recipients during that time frame.

Neil Kinnock, the Welsh windbag former Labour Party leader, attended the Lewis School for Boys, a grammar school in Pengam, south Wales. In his last year in the sixth form, he and some other lads took an Austin A30 car belonging to the history teacher and wedged it between two pine trees in the wood at the edge of the rugby field. Kinnock relates the consequences-

When the news got to the headmaster he went absolutely typhoon crazy. He called in everyone involved to be caned, seven of us, a couple of whom had never been in his study except for anything other than awards and applause, real goody-goodies, all in a line in the corridor outside. Standing next to me was a lovely lad from Tredegar called Neil Stradling and he as shivering with fear, so l said “Hey Strad, you go last in the line because with all these cuts to inflict he’ll be completely exhausted and he might not even do it to you” “Thank you very much, Kinnock” he said.

Five guys go ahead of me – whack, whack, whack – and then out they come. l go in next and bend over the stool – this physics laboratory school whose legs had been cut so it was on a slant to give him a better elevation when whacking you across the behind. He duly gives me six.

Then he calls “next” and Stradling comes in while I’m still there. He slowly makes his way to the stool – and sits on it. I’m laughing so much I am down on my knees with the tears running down my face while the boss, absolutely out of his skull with fury and frustration, lays about my back and shoulders with the cane. And the he shouts “Get out! Get out of my sight, the both of you”. And Stradling got away without a single stroke.

It’s always been a source of sadness for me that when Tony Blair finally procured a Labour victory he never tackled the criminal headmaster scum who had made so many of his compatriots’ lives a misery. We could have filled the jails with these old men and Neil Kinnock could have been first in line to get his revenge.

ln fairness to the school, Kinnock does not say his life was made a misery and revenge does not seem to have been a preoccupation.

Tony Blair was a Statesman (whatever became of them?) and would surely have seen a better use for the eye-watering sums it takes to prosecute and imprison someone in this country than locking up cane wielding schoolmasters!

The dire threat from A_L of another post on trams unless there is more activity on the forum has prompted me to a second post this week.
Gina Miller, who became infamous in her courtroom battles with UK government during the Brexit battles, can be added to the list of
celebrities who were caned. Her mother was a strict disciplinarian who gave her the cane for any misbehaviour. Sadly she does not record
where it was applied but as she was brought up in Guyana it would be reasonable to assume she would wear shorts at home. Scenes from
Happy Valley spring to mind.

Th broadcaster Richard Madeley writes in the Daily Telegraph that he went to an all-boys’ grammar in the East End of London called the Coopers’ Company. lt was rough and filthy with a poor calibre of staff and didn’t have a very good reputation.

Corporal punishment was routine. The music master had responsibility to administer the cane. He was having an affair with the English teacher and she came in when it was Madeley’s turn to be caned. He  doesn’t say what his offence was. Madeley says “There was some quasi-sexual thing going on. Even at that age l could tell they were both a bit excited.”

The school also had what Madeley describes as a “very odd” games master. He didn’t want boys wearing “namby-pamby” underpants under their rugby shorts, and so when they filed out of the changing room he would pull the boys’ shorts towards him by the waistband to check they weren’t wearing any.  “Behaviour that today would have people in prison for sexual assault”

ln a single anecdote we have a music master in charge of caning and a games master who looked down boys’ shorts! lt might make sense to have one master administering caning to ensure consistency (number of strokes, hardness) but one would have thought the head or deputy would have that job. l wonder if the music master had volunteered! The games master could have ensured compliance with his rule by being around the changing room chivvying boys along as they changed but perhaps his method suited him better.

Happily for Madeley his parents moved to Brentwood and he went to a mixed middle school called Shenfield High School which had a completely different ethos. You have to sympathise with the decent lads left behind in a school like Coopers.

Hello JamieMurphy,

Great to see you contributing.  Never have contributions been more needed than they are now!

I believe that our once prolific contributor Sir John 2 attended the Coopers Company grammar school.  He has made a number of contributions mentioning the school dating back to 2011, the most recent of them being this one from May 2022, although he does not actually name the school in it.

Alas these days his nautical adventures in his yacht and trips abroad seem to leave him little time to contribute here and his recent indication of a possible early return has not yet materialised.  If he sees your contribution I am sure he will find time to comment, and I’ll hang on for a little time before responding to your excellent contribution as I wouldn’t want to preempt anything he might want to raise.   There seems no doubt though that the school was indeed fairly liberal in its caning policy.