In this way his buttocks were presented at exactly the correct height and angle for strokes from my cane. With measured strokes, I administered the caning, targeting their bottoms to ensure the lesson was not lost on them.

After the fourth stroke had landed Cummings was wriggling and writhing over the back of the chair and gripping hold of the seat cushion as if his life depended on it. The head teacher being a religious person may have been bigoted to wards black/mixed raced people and the boy faced this kind of crap out of school to. The idea that a teacher of his quality could inflict a physical punishment on one of my children is abhorrent. When the headmaster arrived to give us our well-deserved punishment, he was surprised - to put it mildly - that his precious canes had gone AWOL and were no longer in the umbrella stand which was their usual abode. He didn't cane us, perhaps it had been banned by then, but he whacked the chair with it causing the dust to rise into the suns rays coming through the strange netted curtains.I was belted at the age of 5 by a headmaster who accused me of something I didn't do and which I refused to admit to, my punishment was far worse than that of the kids who were guilty and admitted it. However, the book mainly describes in-depth recurring accounts of school children being punished by spanking. The rattan stick, which I assume is a cane, was propped on the wall behind the headmaster’s desk on my last visit, but whatever goes on in his room is the stuff of legend.

I also remember a very Victorian deputy head named 'Wiggy' Walters, he had that proper old miserable bloke look about him, long face, big black rimmed glasses, never smiled, no sense of humour, big jug ears. I administered the caning, careful to strike with enough force to convey the gravity of their actions, yet not so harshly as to cause undue harm. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. But I’ve been in other classrooms where teachers have hurled wooden blackboard rubbers at the back of the class, smacked knuckles with a ruler and twisted ears to get attention and it seems to work. It was with a heavy heart that I explained the gravity of their transgression and the necessity of maintaining discipline within the school.Maybe they were that way by nature or maybe their experiences while fighting in the second world war had somewhat unbalanced them? Hearst UK is the trading name of the National Magazine Company Ltd, 30 Panton Street, Leicester Square, London, SW1Y 4AJ.