Bripuk: It is only in more recent years that the interest in school corporal punishment books has increased. In the more distant past many schools kept daily diaries. Some were required to do so and others by choice. These diaries recorded many things including attendance, special events and visitors as well as SCP. Back then CP was used in most schools and was seen as the most usual way to maintain discipline.
When most schools came under local government there was more demand for CP to be recorded. Many of the local authorities had some basic rules about CP but I believe that these rules was fairly flexible. How hard or often the cane was used varied school to school.
The record books seem to have differed area to area. Where a school only caned across hands there was no real need to detail this. I’m sure that some schools particularly girls only schools caned only across hands. Many girls schools did not use SCP my wife’s included. These school tended to report bad behaviour to parents which may have led to discipline at home.
The required details in virtually all record books would have been the date and the pupil’s name and perhaps form. Then the ‘offence’ would have been recorded. The punishment details were the part that may have varied. Hand or bottom, cane, strap, slipper and the number of strokes and who had carried out the punishment.
As others have suggested that many classroom punishments went unrecorded. My form master in my first year as grammar school used a fair amount of CP during lessons. He used a ruler or slipper and occasionally the cane. His punishments stung but they certainly weren’t excessive. It has to be remembered that back then in the mid 1950s many parents still used spanking at home. I was occasionally spanked at home so the ruler or slipper in school was much the same. At home there were no rules about how many whacks could be given and many had their trousers or knickers down for a spanking.
A caning from the headmaster was certainly written in the punishment book and sometimes a letter was sent to parents. This, for some, might lead to a further punishment at home. My first headmaster’s caning was with two other boys who had been in the same trouble as me. I had a demonstration of the three strokes before it was my turn to bend over the desk!
Someone here recently asked if there was any possibility of school corporal punishment being reintroduced again. I believe I can emphatically say there is no chance of that. Too much else has changed. The relationship between youngsters with schools and indeed their parents is so different now. In my opinion for the better!

Whilst investigating Hampshire I came across these pages from a Punishment Book from Alderman Quilley Secondary in Eastleigh.  They’re not the best quality and I may try and tidy them up a bit at a later date.  As far as I can tell all the recipients were male, though in the comments on one of the pages one girls recalls her mother giving her the slipper across her backside.

Hello I, Researcher,

The Alderman Quilley school punishment book images are an interesting find.  Sadly the originals shot with a phone are, as you say, very poor quality.  I had a go at page 1 and although I could effect some improvement overall it wasn’t sufficient to decipher all the semi-legible bits with confidence.

The school seems to have been co-ed, as there are references to what appear to be slipperings for in-school offences against girls.  I would though agree with you that only boys seem to have been recorded as recipients of SCP.  The corporal punishment regime does not appear to have been very severe, with the maximum being 2 strokes, sometimes listed as on the hand or on the backside, but more usually just “slipper”.  One teacher, whose writing is very illegible, appears to refer to “cane” rather than “slipper”, but may be writing something else entirely different.

You write in #42 above:

……… in the comments on one of the pages one girls recalls her mother giving her the slipper across her backside.

I seem to have missed that as I didn’t have much time available to decipher the pages apart from detailed look at page 1.  I thought  had it there but decided what I’d taken for ‘mother’ and ‘slippered’ was probably ‘neither’ and ‘skipped’ or ‘slipped’.  Which page is it on please?

The cover of the punishment book betrays a sense of humour with its added annotations of “of delinquents” and “nb.  Naughty pupils will be beaten with a size 14 dunlop slipper”.  One wonders if the school purchased the size 14 dunlop  slippers specially for the purpose or if they had a teacher with very big feet!  

Hello Another_Lurker,

I fear my original comment was misleading.  The exact comment from a girl named Tracey (born around 1966) were:

‘I was used to it! My mum always gave me the slipper across my backside!’

These were her personal comments on one the images posted and not actual comments by teaching staff.  I apologise if you wasted your time looking for it.

Hello I, Researcher,

Absolutely no time wasted at all!  Like all your excellent finds it was worth more time than I could devote to it.

Nearly all the punishment books I have seen appear fairly illegible in substantial sections.  Given that in the days when British punishment books were compiled teachers would have had to be able to write tolerably well to convey information via blackboard or whiteboard I sometimes wonder if the illegible script in punishment books means they were subconsciously ashamed of what they were recording and this affected their writing.  Just a theory, and I am aware that many here are unlikely to agree with me!

The emoticon file address on a personal drive in Tracey’s comment reminds me of how one of our once prominent and ultimately controversial  former members announced his identity to the world in just such an attempt to link an image hosted on a personal device back in 2006.

Hello Another_Lurker,

I complete agree about the illegible script theory, that is also likely used in medicine for similar reasons.  I will upload some more pages later that are of better quality.

One of the downsides of tapatalk is the lack of an edit option,  Consequently, I request that an admin edits my previous post to remove the text linking to the emoticon image.

Great Stuff I, Researcher

Thanks for posting the Punishment book. Bang on topic.

I was somewhat  surprised to note that it was the policy of Alderman Quilley  to record slipperings;  One assumes the Head was literally  a “by the book” person.  My own enquires over many years have led me to conclude that slipperings were usually not entered .only canings.

My theory for the illegibility of punishment records is that the reason/excuse for the punishment was spurious and the teacher assumed he would not be interrogated on his handwriting. The truth is probably that it was jotted down in a hurry with no need for legibility as with blackboard writing (although that could sometimes be indecipherable out of context).

As promised here is a page from Bertram Ramsey Secondary School in Middlesbrough from 1978.  Unfortunately, this is the only page I have.  Just to clarify, I don’t own any originals, these are just images that I’ve managed to procure during my investigations.