Most approved schools (or community homes as they became in the early 70s) for both boys and girls are now featured on the Friends Reunited site, although most are not easily identifyable as being approved schools from the FR site.

Looking through the messages attached to these schools on FR I have yet to find a single reference to corporal punishment. Yet up until the 1970s these were schools where very formalised and often severe CP took place as matter of public record.

So this does seem to support the theory that people who were genuinely subject to punitive corporal punishment in their childhood would be reluctant to talk about it about it now. And that many of the CP references on FR or elsewhere on the Internet are probably either trivial, exaggerated or imaginary.

TT

I looked up Court Lees on friendsreunited this was the only approved school I could think of. I expected it to be full of fantasists describing their canings as Rodney School entry use to be but it was just boringly mundane.

I have heard - no idea if this is true or not - that sites like FR are now commonly deleting references to corporal punishment when they identify them, following concerns that such references could cause potential legal problems.

As I say, I don't know if it's true, or if it is what the legal problems are, but I've heard this.

Well, I looked up my old school on an 'old friends' type site. None of the messages referred to corporal punishment yet that school was notorious for the use of the cane in the 1940s and 50s.

I started a CP correspondence on my old boys site for my public school, it was the most popular subject until all got deleted. Nothing else has been deleted as far as I can see. The headboy when I first went there became the head of the army before retiring, there were accounts of how he would draw blood when caning over pyjamas. I was never caned by him but do remember hearing that one boy had to go to see the matron because his bottom wouldn't stop bleeding after having six from him.

Mark,

If your Head Boy went on to be head of the army, you must have been at school with George VI.

He became head of the army in 1936 and held the position until his death in 1952, when the post fell to Elizabeth II who holds it to the present day.

Just how old are you, Mark?

Well it's good to see this thread has drifted right off the point and degenerated into the usual senario of someone making an ill-thought-out post and then Lotta closing in, trying to prove yet again what an old clever clogs she is. YAWN!

TT

And now, suddenly, we are back to the point with the news that on the Tennal School, Birmingham pages of Friends Reunited there is no mention of corporal punishment!

Obviously you are not particularly familiar with terms used in the military.

In Britain, the Chief of the General Staff is often referred to as the Head of the Army (even in official MoD documents).

I believe this is currently General Sir Michael Jackson.

Her Majesty the Queen may be referred to as Head of the Army, as could His Majesty King George VI but the Monarch is not only person the term could be and is applied to.

The number of recorded canings in approved schools in England and Wales in 1966 was 3006. This was out of an approved school population of around 8,500. This meant on average slightly more than one caning for every three children detained, during that 12 month period.

The annual number of recorded approved school canings had plummeted to only 739 by 1970. This was largely due the controversy generated by the Court Lees affair and the ensuing government decision to scrap altogether the approved school system as it had existed since 1933.

TT

It's close to midnight and someone's out there lurking in the dark.
Turn on your PC and see a sight that almost stops your heart.
You try to scream but terror takes the sound before you make it.
You start to freeze as horror looks you right between the eyes.
You're paralyzed

Chorus
'Cause this is Lotta! What a fright!
And no one's gonna save you when that girl’s about to strike.
You know it's Lotta, What a fright!
You're fighting for your life inside a website where she’ll bite
Tonight!

You tell a pork pie and realize that there's nowhere left to run.
You talk of birchings and wonder if you'll ever see the sun.
You close your eyes and hope that this is just imagination
But all the while you hear that Lotta creepin' up behind.
You're out of time.

Chorus
'Cause this is Lotta! What a fright!
And no one's gonna save you when that girl’s about to strike.
You know it's Lotta, What a fright!
You're fighting for your life inside a website where she’ll bite
Tonight!

She’s out to get you, you feel her closing in on every side.
She will obsess you, you know as well she does that you lied.
Now is the time for you to get your lyin’ act together.
All through the night she’ll get you for your porkies on the screen.
She'll make you scream.

Chorus
'Cause this is Lotta! What a fright!
And no one's gonna save you when that girl’s about to strike.
You know it's Lotta, What a fright!
You're fighting for your life inside a website where she’ll bite
Tonight!

A full listing of all approved schools in England and wales in the mid-1960s can be found at:

Boys

www.borstal.skinheads.co.uk/listnew.htm

Girls

www.geocities.com/approvedschool

ASK ME & I WILL TELL YOU ALL

OK, I'm asking you, please tell us all.