Hi Jamestephenson, thanks for the account. It was always fun to go where you shouldn’t have been at school and get away with it. I don’t recall seeing a Punishment Book at school. I did see an empty one that my father had though.

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Jamestephenson wrote: ↑

Dec 06, 2021

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So, I wandered off a bit further. On a Saturday there might have been other pupils and teachers around for sports teams and so on but on a Sunday, I had the place to myself. It was quite an old building with hard parquet flooring and every footstep echoed – I would have heard anyone else long before I saw them.

And that’s when I saw that the door to the first master’s office was wide open. There was note on the door asking the cleaners not to lock it as he had lost his key. I immediately thought of his cane and school punishment book. Listening intently for any distant footsteps I went in and started looking around. None of the drawers or cupboards were locked so I was able to check everywhere. I did find the cane which was exciting to handle but totally failed to find the book I was seeking. If I had found it, I’m 95% sure I would have stolen it. Not sure what the consequences might have been then. This was a time before PIR security systems and CCTV but I hadn’t taken any steps to avoid leaving fingerprints.

James was sorely tempted and succumbed but no lasting harm was done although he invaded a senior teacher’s private space. What would have been an appropriate response if he had been detected? Should the police be called? Should all unsupervised student access to the school buildings be cancelled? Or is there some other way of signaling disapproval while satisfying James’s curiosity?

Wasn’t it a legal requirement for state schools in England to record cp administered? Maybe it was different for private/public schools?

I’m not sure it was a ‘legal requirement’ but but LEAs certainly required these records to be kept. The entries in most SCP record books were fairly vague. The basic requirement was the youngster’s name and age, the reason for the punishment and who administered it together with the date  and only the very vaguest detail of the punishment. Often nothing more than just something like “two strokes of the cane”.

What a fascinating resurgence of this thread!  I am by no means certain that all LEAs required a punishment book to be kept, although many did.  It is therefore possible but unlikely that even if it was a state school jamestephenson‘s school did not actually have a punishment book.  I note that he says of canings that they “were, I guess, formally recorded“.   I take it that the “I guess” indicates that he had no personal evidence that such a book existed.

However a more likely  explanation  of why he did not find the book in the First Master’s office and hence was spared the possibility of a criminal record (or more likely a dose of the cane and an entry in the book) is that it was kept elsewhere, most likely in the office of the school secretary or equivalent administrative unit.

There was a good reason for this.  Persons authorised to administer the cane, such as the First Master, were sometimes difficult to locate, either because they were away on official duties, or were absent for other reason, and quite often in such cases their offices were locked.  It appears that the First Master’s office would have been locked had he not lost his key.  Spare keys were not always easy to locate.  In that case the cleaners apparently had one, but they may have only come in in the evening.

Many schools had governance regulations which provided for some individuals, the chairman of the board of governors for instance, to be able to inspect the punishment book without prior notice.  It was therefore far easier for it to be kept in a location where it was readily accessible whenever the school was open.  If required by an authorised caner administering a punishment it could readily be temporarily transferred to his or her custody.  Also in many schools more than one person was authorised to cane but there was only one punishment book, a further reason for a central location of the book.

Access to punishment books appears to be mired in confusion and subject to many varying rules and regulations, or sometimes none at all.  I wonder if anyone here has ever traced and requested access to a punishment book?  I have often recounted here the incident when, as a little lad, my mother’s cleaner, annoyed at my behaviour, threatened me that I would finish up being caned at school.  She further said that she would instruct one of her daughters who sometimes child minded me and who  had recently been caned to tell me how awful it was.

I was quite apprehensive about this as the girl, Margaret, was a very bossy and strict child minder and I feared a practical demonstration!  However I did want to know about the cane, but alas Margaret never mentioned it.  As a grown up 14 year old I don’t think she wanted to admit to having been caned on the bottom to a 7 year old boy!  Margaret was a pupil at the senior school whose junior section I was about to enter.

I now believe that at the time in the senior school girls were caned over the knickers.  I know an approximate date, I know a (full) name.  It was over 70 years ago and if a punishment book exists I have wondered if I might be able to blag my way to access to see what befell Margaret and why.  Checking facts for an autobiography perhaps.  Must get round to trying sometime!

I filled in quite a few pages of these punishment books myself during my early years as a teacher in the late 70s and early 80s at an all boys grammar school.

Classroom teachers were authorized to administer up to 2 strokes; if a higher number of strokes was deemed necessary the boy was sent to the deputy head teacher. As a young female teacher I was only authorized to administer the strap in my forms 1&2 classes. I think the boys in my later year classes wished I was authorized at their year level as a trip to the deputy head was very feared. He employed a cane over the backside.

When the strap was needed, a student (who was to be punished) would be sent to the office to collect the strap and punishment book. The office kept several books and several straps. The straps where of 2 sizes and styles; a light strap for forms 1&2 and a heavier strap with a split end for the higher years.

The punishment would be administered at the front of the class and then recorded in the book in front of the students and the book returned to the office. I found that a single stroke was usually adequate for the punishment/correction and noted that that most teachers who had entries in the book also mainly awarded just a single stroke. I did administer 2 strokes on occasion for more serious issues or for dropping their hand during the stroke.

Hello hn.whalley,

My apologies for the delay in responding to your contributions.  I don’t have the time available for enjoying myself in this Forum that I once had, and when I do start to contribute I am very easily diverted if there is anything technical like picture problems going on.

It is interesting that you completed formal punishment book entries for the strappings that you conducted in class while teaching at the UK boys’ grammar school.  My impression is that at many schools classroom corporal punishments went unrecorded, only serious ‘formal’ punishments by heads or senior staff being entered.   I don’t think that is what was meant to happen.  I haven’t seen many statements of requirements for a punishment book, but those I have seen generally appear to say that all corporal punishments should be recorded.  But I guess if there was only one central punishment book it tended to repose near to the head, either in their office or in the office of their support staff.   This might have been because the head was the person most likely to cause waves if they required the punishment book and it wasn’t speedily available.  But with centrally held books other teachers often seem to have taken this as carte blanche not to record corporal punishments at all.

Do you happen to know if the individual punishment books at the school you mention were consolidated into a central record at any stage?  Quite often there was a requirement for punishment books to be made available for inspection at intervals by controlling bodies.  The LEA, or more likely for a religious school, which I think you said elsewhere that school was, the diocesan board of governors.  For such inspection a single record would probably have been more convenient than several individual books.

And a quick query unconnected with punishment books.   You mention pupils withdrawing their hands.  That can be pretty tricky for a teacher using a strap of any length as the end of the strap can strike the teacher.   In Scotland various methods seem to have been used to combat this with pupils who tried withdrawing their hands when being belted (tawsed).   Most of the tactics by teachers seemed not only to offer some physical protection for the teacher, but also to make the punishment worse for the pupil.  Making them sit at a desk and hold their hand out above the desk was one.   There is a video clip here somewhere with belting scenes from 2 Scottish films which shows the technique.  I think the film in that case was ‘NEDS’, praised for its authenticity.

If the pupil withdrew their hand again the belt hit the desk not the teacher.  And if they didn’t withdraw it the hand was lower down than if they’d been standing with arm outstretched in the usual fashion so the belt travelled further and gained more momentum, making the impact more painful.   As well as awarding extra strokes, did you employ any similar tactics if pupils failed to keep their hands in position?

By the sounds of it, the use of punishment books varied considerably between schools.  Mine was like the ones A_L described in that classroom slipperings didn’t get recorded, but formal canings did.  I am aware also that some schools didn’t allow class teachers to administer whackings of any sort, and the pupil had to be sent to a senior teacher to be dealt with, so maybe they would have recorded all the punishments.  Also, some schools wouldn’t have allowed the situation hn.whalley described where a pupil is entrusted with the book pending punishment, if they regarded it as private, albeit subject to inspection by the authorities.

At my school most slipperings were administered by PE teachers and really hurt . They weren’t recorded. Canings however were administered by the Headmaster were recorded in the punishment book and if you could read upside down you knew in advance how many strokes you were going to get.

I don’t think private schools would have much truck with punishment books  – after all they were supposed to know all their current intake intimately, and they didn’t take kindly to being monitored by external bodies. And, to be fair, as long as the little darlings ended up with the requisite number of arms and legs at the end of term, most parents (or fathers of boys, at least) didn’t much care how much their sons had been thrashed, it was the kind of character building which justified the fees!