Formal punishments were rare, but informal ones could be frequent: detentions weren’t used, and sometimes the teachers felt that lines or standing in the corner wouldn’t be an adequate deterrent. So a variety of techniques was employed. When I was in the fourth year, the aforementioned senior master used a blackboard pointer quite regularly: this was about eighteen inches long, and tapered towards the end. Any boy who misbehaved was ordered to the front of the class and told to touch his toes, and a whack with the pointer was administered to the seat of his short trousers. On one occasion, one of the boys bit another one in a handicraft lesson, and when he started to stand up after his whack he was told to bend over again for a second one. He was starting to cry as he went back to his desk.