At my school, only the headmaster used the cane and it was certainly not an everyday punishment, reserved for serious offenses or repeated bad behavior. In practice, it tended to be the same few boys in my class who got it during our whole time at school.

I was one of the well-behaved boys and never got my cane. None of my friends did, either, until an event in our second year.

My friend Alan who sat next to me had offended the teacher somehow in our maths class. He sent him out to stand outside in the corridor. This was not regarded as a particularly serious thing and normally the teacher would call the boy back into class after a few minutes and ask him if he was ready to behave now and let him back into class.

That’s what happened this time. After about ten minutes the teacher asked a boy sitting in the front to tell Alan he could come back. But he wasn’t there. I assumed he’d wandered off somewhere to amuse himself. I knew some of the naughtier boys did this but it wasn’t like Alan.

After about another five minutes there was a knock on the door and it was Alan. He came in and said that the headmaster had said he could come back into class. He didn’t say he’d got the cane (though the thought immediately leaped through my head) and the teacher didn’t ask him. He looked completely normal as he walked through the class and sat down next to me. I whispered to him to ask him what had happened but he didn’t reply.

But at break, he told me the whole story. As he had been standing there outside the classroom the headmaster had come along and asked him what he was doing there. So he said the teacher had sent him out and the headmaster sent him to wait for him outside his office. Alan did as he was told. He must have been a bit worried. The only interaction between the headmaster and boys in our class was when he caned them.

He wasn’t kept waiting long and the headmaster ushered him into his room. He said that there was no point in Alan wasting time standing in the corridor when he could be learning but he had to learn not to disrupt a lesson. He told him to take off his jacket and bend over. This was all very quick according to Alan, no long lecture or anything, he just said he was going to cane him.

Alan had to bend over in the middle of the room holding his legs. He did not have a chair or table to hold onto. I imagine that must have made it worse.

He got three strokes, again laid on very quickly. Alan said it really hurt and he was very glad when the head stopped after the third and told him to get up.

The next day when we changed for PE I saw the marks on Alan’s bottom.