Daily Mail, London, 11 June 1910, p.3
.
Excessive punishment by older boys.
| Click to enlarge |
In his presidential address to the Child Study Conference at Tunbridge Wells last night, Sir James Crichton-Browne, M.D., discussed disadvantages of the public schools, and in advocating regular examination by a public medical official, described the result of his own intervention at Eton a year ago in the matter of caning of the younger boys by the older ones.
“Incredible as it may sound,” he said, “I, an outsider, a Scotsman, a plebeian, a medical man, imposed at the point of the pen new rules on that ancient, august, exclusive seminary. It came to my knowledge that in one of the houses there existed a state of matters as regards corporal punishment which I regarded as highly reprehensible. I have no general indictment to prefer — the houses at Eton, under the control of scholars and gentlemen, are, I believe, almost without exception, conducted in the most admirable and humane way.
Headmaster’s action.
“But in this particular house the baleful license given to the older boys to inflict physical pain on boys a little younger or weaker than themselves had degenerated, as such a license is always apt to do, into gross cruelty, brutal punishment being inflicted on the most trivial and ridiculous grounds. I brought the matter to the knowledge of the headmaster. He promptly held an inquiry, and as the result of it wrote to me: ‘I am satisfied that on the part of the older boys in this house there was an excessive and regrettable exercise by them of their authority.'”
Later the headmaster issued to house masters the following orders:
1. That every case of caning shall be reported by the captain to the house tutor.
2. That there must be no canings without previous consultation between the boys who are allowed to cane.
3. That members of “Pop” (the society of the twenty-eight most popular boys who enjoy certain privileges) are not to arrogate to themselves the right of caning.
4. That only the lightest canes are to be used.