From the earliest days there does not seem to have ever been an excessive amount of caning at Cothill.As far as I can find out only the Head Master ever used the cane.Gully Nickalls writes of an’orgy of flagellation’from ‘one of the assistant masters’during a particular three-week period in 1910,and this may well have referred to the joint Head Master,F.Knowles,who was to leave under a cloud soon afterwards.But M.J.Dauglish is not remembered as being in any way sadistic.Caning(or’the whacks’)was always on the bottom,a part of the anatomy designed to take punishment;unlike the hand which can be permanently damaged.There is no record of public beatings,or of ‘swipings’with a birch on bare buttocks.
Caning at Cothill1
