Maybe this is really weird but I have two daughters-in-law aged 35-40  and both were caned at home by their fathers at least occasionally! One is British, has three sisters and their harassed father is an ex-Navy man and had no qualms about spanking his daughters and kept a cane for the most egregious offences! The other daughter is South Indian which is a whole field for tales of school CP but lives and was brought up in the Middle East  and is one of three girls and she mentions caning, often jokingly, more than you would expect but I’m nervous to ask her specifics. I suspect their implements came from garden centres rather than school suppliers though.

I Researcher, I’m looking forward to your Greater Manchester data, and your ‘minor pointless celebrities’ sounds intriguing!
Referring to other comments made, I believe garden canes should stay in the garden; one should use a thin whippy cane that stings rather than a solid garden cane which will leave bruises.

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Hello Oliver_Sydney,

With reference to your contribution #160, sadly the NYTimes tells me that I must pay to read its articles because I have exhausted my free access, and this despite trying several different URLs.  But no matter, for the benefit of anyone else who encounters the  same problem there are lots of other references to this Octoer 1996 case and a search for boy caned by stepfather goes to european court of human rights produces several in DuckDuckGo and doubtless will do the same in other search engines.

After some two years (the ECHR is very much that sort of court) the court ruled that the beating had been a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights and that the British Government must pay the boy compensation of £10,000 in damages and legal costs.  I am unclear as to whether the money was ever paid as the ECHR lacks powers of enforcement.

The footballer Bryan Robson (Manchester United & England) said in an interview “l got the cane for not playing football properly. We had disobeyed instructions”.

Was the whole team caned or only those involved in whatever manoeuvre they failed to execute? Robson was captain of the football team at Lord Lawson of Beamish Comprehensive School so perhaps he took one for the team?

Brightenlad has previoiusly told us that Robson was caned on his bottom. Was he still wearing football shorts? lf so, was anything worn underneath?

So many questions….

A slight deviation on the original topic, but how about Footballers/celebrities who caned at school?

I’ll kick things off with former England international and Man Utd & Macclesfield Town star Warren Bradley.  According to Wikipedia after his retirement from football he had a lengthy teaching career and ended up as a headmaster at Deane School in Bolton.  Prior to this appointment I’ve found evidence that he was the headmaster at Lostock Secondary School in Stretford Manchester during the 1970s and early 1980s.  During which time he administered the cane to boys and girls.  Lots of evidence in these public facebook groups here, here and here should anyone wish to investigate further.

Hello I, Researcher,

You are credit and a great asset to this estimable Forum with your general researches, and your above concept is, as far as I recall, completely new to the Forum.  If only you had been a member when we still had sufficient contributors to sustain a discussion on almost any topic under the sun, particularly if it involved school corporal punishment!

Alas that is no longer the case.  Even school corporal punishment regularly falls flat on its face on the few occasions when anyone summons up the energy to post on it.  I try to help when I can, but in the case of your splendid initiative even the public Facebook groups will not let me see more than a brief glimpse unless I join Facebook and I have absolutely no intention of doing that before Hell freezes¹.

A great pity.  I would be pretty certain there are other sportsmen and sportswomen, and a few ‘celebs’ to boot, who had careers at the chalkface in which, as was then customary, they wielded the cane or the slipper or the strap and applied them to the bottoms of errant boys and girls.  Personally I have not taken much interest in sports generally, and none at all in celebs.  I can only think of eminent and sadly now deceased mountaineer Doug Scott who might fit the bill.

One of the world’s leading high-altitude and big-wall climbers of his era and the first Englishman to stand on the summit of Everest, after attending Teachers’ Training College Doug Scott taught geography, history, PE and games for ten years  from 1961 at Cottesmore School, a Nottingham secondary modern school he had attended for a period.   When his employers eventually invited him to choose between teaching and mountaineering he selected the latter and went on to a dazzling career with few equals then or since.  He had a distinction which strangely does not appear in the records.  At one of his many lectures I attended he handed me the only raffle prize I have ever won.  Third prize, a bottle of red wine.  I really cannot think why he never mentioned this in any of his books! 

Cottesmore, I seem to recall, definitely had SCP.  There is mention of it here I am almost certain, indeed I think I posted in the exchange concerned.  Whether Doug Scott was mentioned as utilising SCP I cannot recall.  Instinct says probably not, although teachers of geography, PE and games often feature as users of SCP.   Cloudflare is currently declining to let me in to the Forum Search Engine.  Possibly anyone who can get into the Search Engine, knows how to use it and how to link anything found might care to have a look.

Note 1:  In the unlikely event that Jenny still peruses this Forum, yes, I do recall that Hell freezes regularly.  But that’s not the Hell I mean.  And if you are reading Jenny, post, please!

Hello Another_Lurker,

A brief revisit to the publicly accessible facebook groups for Cottesmore here and here show several new (or previously missed) accounts since I uploaded my data from Nottinghamshire just over a year ago.  Time flies and I will revisit fully upon completion my task of collecting data from the rest of the UK (excluding Scotland).  I respect and understand that you’ll never join facebook, however, should you wish to participate any research of your own, you don’t need to actually sign up to have a peak inside the aforementioned groups.  Furthermore, we are very fortunate that Cottesmore was one of the several schools attended by Peter John who prompted some worthy SCP related discussion so its not too difficult to find accounts by searching a key word.

Regarding the late Doug Scott there is evidence he did indeed utilize SCP, usually by the way of the slipper to the backsides of boys.  Regardless of this he appears to have been a popular teacher and held a great deal of respect with one former pupil named Keith stating:

‘he was great fun and a good teacher and became ‘one of the boys’ when away from school.’

Unlike yourself I did enjoy sports as at school it was the only thing I was remotely good at.  Post-retirement from participating I have continued to follow Rugby and boxing and to a lesser degree football, cricket and snooker.   The closest I’ve come to mountaineering was completing Sharp Edge in the Lake District and the Yorkshire 3 Peaks for charity. I thoroughly enjoyed both events and intend to do them again.

In references to regular celebrities, I have zero interest.  I recently came across this list of spanked celebrities (mostly American) and there are very few I’d heard of before.  I know that I’m out of touch regarding a lot with current popular culture as my kids keep telling me.  Furthermore, in all fairness I’d not previously heard of Warren Bradley, it was just a coincidental find, that I thought some would find interesting.

Jamie Murphy, I can shed a bit more light on Bryan Robson’s caning. He details it in his autobiography which he wrote years ago.
It happened during a practice football match. Some other lads were running around the pitch as a punishment for breaking windows, and Bryan, who was playing in the match, decided to pass the ball to one of them. The teacher in charge was not impressed and told him he could join them running round the pitch.
20 minutes later the match was still going on and the teacher didn’t seem to be keeping an eye on him. So when the play was at the other end of the pitch he started to walk instead of running. Straightaway, the whistle went and the teacher ran over to him. He was ordered to report to the Headmaster who gave him 2 whacks across the bottom with a cane.
I would imagine he went straight to the HM and I believe most schools had a policy of no pants under shorts, so he may have had very little protection!

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Hello Andrewmoon,

There is of course sound reason to doubt that Malcolm McD0well’s caning in the film ‘If’ was quite as severe as claimed, and in particular that it was a 10 stroke caning shot in one continuous sequence.

See the thread here in which two of the great and the good of this estimable Forum, both former employees of the BBC and both with experience of film and video production,  not very ably assisted by one of the Forum’s most dubious hangers-on with very little experience of either, disprove fairly conclusively  that the gymnasium caning scene in ‘If’ was shot in one take as is often claimed.