It is 46 years since judicial corporal punishment of juveniles was removed from the armoury of courts throughout the United Kingdom — held to be ineffectual. But until that day in 1948 when sheriffs were no longer able to order up to 36 strokes with the birch or tawse, in Scotland corporal punishment was widely used.
Hoax calls to the fire brigade, the placing of obstacles on a railway line, cruelty to animals, the vandalism of public property — all appear, from court records, to have made the perpetrators sure-fire candidates for a visit to the cells below the court, an examination by a police doctor, and a thrashing — once stripped — that left blood as well as tears.