Most teachers use a ‘whacker’ which in general description seems closer to an American paddle than anything else and is applied across the boys bottoms as a teacher feels necessary. There are also reports of teachers simply thumping boys and of one using a rubber truncheon. Quite shocking, really and bear in mind, Partridge is writing as a teacher in this school, who admits some of these measures himself.
Is my memory playing tricks, or did our esteemed HRH The Prince of Wales attend Geelong School? I also have a memory that, at age 12, he was punished for drinking a glass of cherry brandy! Some newspapers said that he had been caned, but I’m not sure if that was true or “newspaper true”. In any event, it might have been before he went to school in Australia.
