What do Punishment Books show?6

Thank you again I, Researcher for posting another Punishment Book extract.  Your current efforts are the life support for the Forum.

I note that five  4th form girls received 1 stroke of the cane on the hand in Dec 78 as opposed to most of the l boys usually receiving 2 on the bottom.

Assuming the extract is a representative sample, this is quite informative and, I think, confirms what has often been postulated in this esteemed forum. Namely, that it was usual, where boys were caned on the bottom, for girls to  receive it on the hand. And that they were often given a milder punishment.

Returning briefly to the Alderman Quilley School punishment book pages contributed by I, Researcher in his contribution #42 earlier in the thread:

I note that nobody has commented on my contention in #43 that as well as the size 14 Dunlop slipper mandated as the standard punitive implement on the front cover of the punishment book, the cane was occasionally used.  See for instance the second item down on Punishment Book page 05, where pupil Stephen Harrison? appears to be recorded as having received “1 cane” for a second offence? of the same infraction (unintelligible) for which Richard Lewin? received “2 slipper” in the first item on the page.   Since the same teacher made both entries it would appear that there was a clear distinction between slipper and cane and, taking the entries at face value, that the cane was regarded as a substantially more serious punishment.

There are various other apparent instances of caning on pages 05 through 08, all administered by the same teacher, the maximum being two strokes.  Although this teacher occasionally appears in earlier punishment records on pages 01 through 04 he or she appears not to start using both cane and slipper until around the beginning of 1982.

A thought I’ve had about the untidy handwriting in punishment books is that when I recall my schooldays, I always thought anyone older than me had bad handwriting because we were taught a different style to that used in the past.    I expect this would have happened several times over time as fashions change.  Teachers themselves would have had to have used less extreme styles of writing when using the blackboard or preparing teaching aids, as they would want to avoid their pupils poking fun at their writing.

However, when updating a punishment book, they wouldn’t expect many (if any!) people to actually read their entries, and certainly not children.  In many schools, the book was regarded as private and kept away from curious eyes.  Therefore, they could feel free to reveal their natural writing style.

Obviously, I don’t know what was going through the minds of the teachers of the past.  Perhaps someone with personal experience of caning schoolchildren might be able to help?

Interesting reference to the size 14 Dunlop slipper that was to be used as stated on the front of the punishment book. Was that the standard slipper used in all schools ? I had the slipper a few times but can’t remember the type or size.

I can’t remember the specification of the school slippers that were used at my schools, but they always looked a lot larger than I’d expected the teachers using them would wear.  They were also a bit tatty, so probably hadn’t been used for their primary purpose for some years.

Hello Sir John 2,

I’ve revisited the publicly accessible facebook group for Bertram Ramsey (secondary) and I’ve found a couple of additional pages that I’ve posted below.  Evidently, a complete book from 1969 to 1983 exists and school possibly had separate books for the upper and lower schools.  It appears that a former pupil of the school named Peter John may have access to it as he has posted extracts that don’t appear on the pages I’ve posted.

In reference to your assumption regarding representation, I think you are likely correct.  However, 4 pages isn’t really a sufficient sample.  If I had access to the complete punishment book I would perform a comparative study.

I don’t remember plimsolls that were used across our bottoms in senior school being anything out of the ordinary. The actual whacks really hurt but the effect wore off much quicker than a school caning. Back in my schooldays a slippering was a punishment that was given far more frequently than a caning. Very few boys escaped a slippering but plenty of lads escaped the cane completely.
I felt the slipper soon after starting at senior school. Our French teacher ran vocabulary tests every few weeks. We were set 20 French words to learn for homework with a test next morning. The pass mark was 15. Anything less earned you one with the slipper for each wrong under 15. My first test score was 11, four of the plimsoll! I’d had the slipper at home before that and didn’t fear it in school. I bent over the front of my desk. The plimsoll really hurt. much  worse than the slipper at home.

Punishment books were not necessarily the fill in and forget records some have postulated here.  It was not uncommon for local authority regulations and private school rules to specify that the punishment book(s) should be produced for inspection at meetings of boards of governors, which sometimes were held as frequently as monthly.  I can also recall links to books containing a ‘how to use’ page which specified that the book should be submitted to the head teacher for inspection at intervals.

It is of course possible that such inspection requirements were honoured more in the breach than in the observance and that if they took place at all they were fairly cursory.  We did once have a contributor who was an admitted practicing school governor.  He made use of his status on occasion to inspect archived punishment books.  Sadly though he has not posted since the beginning of 2020 and I don’t recall him commenting on whether punishment books were produced at governors’ meetings that he attended.

What happened to punishment books when they were full seems to have been fairly hit and miss.  In some cases they were appropriated by staff or pupils to be sold on eBay or added to private collections.  Some were simply dumped in a school cupboard, sometimes only seeing the light of day again when the building was demolished.  In other cases regulations, public or private, mandating quarantine in an archive inaccessible to the general public for many years, possibly until those listed as punished were likely to be dead or too old to care, were rigorously obeyed.  Between these extremes many different fates befell them.

I did make enquiries many years as to the likely fate of punishment books from the senior school associated with my junior school.  It seems that they are probably held in the archives of the local C of E diocese but where and for how long and whether they are publicly accessible is less clear.  And much as I would like to know why the sometime child minder of the juvenile Another_Lurker, the teenage daughter of my Mother’s domestic helper, was severely caned on the bottom at the senior school, leading to her being instanced to me by her Mother as a likely precursor of my own fate when my behaviour displeased her (a story oft told here) I am unlikely ever to invest the time probably required to find out!

It does appear that both Alderman Quilley & Bertram Ramsey used a standardised punishment book supplied by E.J. Arnold & Son Limited (going off on a tangent here’s some company information)

However, some schools used other suppliers like Breeze Hill Secondary in Oldham.  Whilst the previously posted punishment book at Derwent Secondary in Derby appeared to be have been a hard back book with blank pages that had been adapted specifically for its task.

Below, I’ve also posted a picture of 2 of the punishment straps used at Breeze Hill.  The photographs were taken by a former pupil at an open day several years ago.