There was or is a Birch Block displayed in the old schoolroom at Harrow School as part of their guided tour.
Young Ladies blush as the tour guide (drats usually an old male git)indicates how breeches were lowered and bare buttocks thrashed by prefects with rolled up sleeves.
Some were Spanish I think.
It would be intesting to see all the facial reactions however some look more knowning as the beatings are described than one would have thought!
The block was there in the 1980s and may still be?
On the topic of Eton-we attended a minor school which was Headed by a Headmaster of Eton some years before he assumed the position there.(CHosen from 1000 applicants!)
Six years actually.Under this Heads'aegis Corporal Punishment was alive and well.
Slightly reformed though.The dreaded Heads'study bare bot occurrences of the 1930s-appear to have ended in 1945.(Possibly due to the mass realisation that
Birching so frequent in the SS concentration Camps was "cruel".)
Prefects had lost the right to cane some years earlier except the Head Boy with his arm in a sling due to an unfortunate rugby accident was unable to do so thankfully!
However throughhout the 1970s C.P was frequent,it was left to underlings and juniors.
Under this Head I would describe the C.P situation as "out of control".
Many of the enthusiasts were later proved to be corrupt and more often as not homo-sexual.
Yardsticks were broken across boys bottoms in front of class,
Slippers were used on bare PE legs pulled up buttock shorts,
Canes were used over clothed backsides.
Offences were trivial as often as not.
Being last through a door,paper airplane in class,failing to attend D.T,
general slackness of undefined nature,
The Birch was no where in evidence.
There was only one woman teacher in the whole school.
So under this future Head of Eton all this went on
and I hear at Prince Charles'school in the form of "out of control"bullying.
This is more nasty than a Birching.
It was continual and produced continual unhappiness and fear.
Surely slashing a young boys bot with a savage cane for an offence they couldnt help producing sado masochists and sadists was unfair?
Does anyone have experiences of Eton in modern times?
I call it the Prince Harry phenonomen-the production of bitter,sadists,
with a chip against authority and society therafter and an attraction to the dark side of history-SS uniforms etc?