The supervising teacher probably only witnessed the later part of the incident and it is not clear what, if any, explanations were asked of those concerned or others. However, the outcome was that the boy received three or four strokes of the cane while the girl was apparently unpunished. Would you consider this fair, Angela? Perhaps I should repunctuate that. Would you consider this, fair Angela?
To give a different insight, however, in another Birmingham grammar school, this a girls-only one and a little later (early 1950’s). I was told quite independently by two girls I became friends with at different times after they had left school that their deputy headmistress was responsible for discipline and had in her room a chaise longue over the end of which she required girls to lean with skirt lifted above the waist whilst she administered the cane, reportedly with some energy.