These would have been ready enough to admit that little Jack or Harry needed an occasional whacking to render him obedient or keep down his high spirits, but they would have been repelled and bewildered by Wildman’s excess of paraphernalia. Nor would such teachers or parents have liked his over-insistence, his apparent denial that boys ever deserved to be “let off” a thrashing. There are, as we have seen, many aspects of this difficult problem, but Wildman refused ever to say that it might benefit a particular lad in a special context not to be beaten. This, surely, runs counter to the general view of those parents or masters who still approve of thrashing in certain extreme cases.
Chastisement Across the Ages22
