In expiation of the number of off-topic posts I seem to have been drawn into recently here's something more or less on-topic. Apologies if this has been raised before. In my perambulations around the web I came across this posting in a forum dedicated to 'Female Juvenile Detention Institutions in the UK'. The query being responded to is at the bottom of the post.

My inclination is to treat this as fiction, BUT the forum is totally moderated (posts do not appear without moderator approval) and in general appears very sober and a little sad (at least to someone like me who has been fortunate enough to have a relatively happy and trouble-free life). Did the moderators let this post through because they thought it an accurate account of those relatively far off days, or did they simply have no knowledge whatsoever of the topic and gave it the benefit of the doubt?

I have a friend who taught in English special schools in the late 1970's and early 1980's, and for the most part they seem to have been fairly happy places, given that the 'pupils' were somewhat constrained in their freedoms. The regime referred to in the above post is a great deal earlier, and in Scotland, which Country certainly did have a reputation for fairly severe corporal punishment of both males and females.

I recall in 1962 in Scotland giving a lift to school to the teenage daughter of the B&B I'd stayed in who had missed her bus, and being very shocked when she quite matter of factly announced that if we didn't get there in time she'd get belted! As a rather shy 20 year old I didn't seek elucidation of this, I just drove fast! I know now that it would almost certainly have been on her hands, but even so somewhat harsh, and perhaps indicative of the Scottish outlook on CP then and possibly earlier.

Well, it must have been good A-L, because it's been deleted!

No it's not:

"Date Posted: 10:16:29 09/03/05 Sat
Author: Michael D
Subject: Re: Scottish approved schools
In reply to: Karen Collins 's message, "Scottish approved schools" on 08:52:18 06/03/05 Fri

Hi Karen

In the 1930s in Scotland any child aged 8 - 16 could be sent to an approved school by a juvenile court. These schools were renowned for their harsh discipline. Corporal punishment was frequently used involving the cane, strap and sometimes the birch.

I think birching was probably used on for the most serious offences (of which absconding was considered one).

Your Grandmother would have been flogged on her bare behind with a "birch-rod". This would consist of several long switches probably of hazel or willow rather than birch. These would be trimmed and soaked overnight in water/brine to make them more supple and whippy. The switches would then be bound together with cord in the middle and forming a grip at one end. The school gardener may have charged with the job of fabricating such an implement, although I doubt he ever saw it put to good use!

The luckless girl to birched would have been kept under lock and key while waiting for her birching. She may have been secured by ankles wrists and waist in a bent-over position on a purpose made "birching stool" A birching stool was a piece of apparatus that may built by a local carpenter or in the school itself. It made the process of birching more efficient as the culprit was held in a fixed position unable to move with her bottom presented in an optimum position for the attention of the birch-rod.

Any clothing, drawers, knickers etc would be cleared from the area to be dealt with and then the birching would be administered to the girl's bare backside by an appointed mistress. A birching may have been up to 12 strokes. This would either be in private or maybe in front of the school if it was meant to serve as warning to others.

The action of the switches on the bare skin would leave raw weals on the bottom cheeks. After about six strokes cutting of the skin and blood spots would occur where the switches had slashed too often. A well applied birching could leave permanent marking on the buttocks.

In the 1970s I remember hearing a radio interview with a lady who said been birched in an Scots approved school in the 1940s. She said she got it twice! Fist when whe was 12 and again when she was 14!. I remember she spoke with thick Glasgow accent. She said that her second time across the birching stool she got ten strokes it was the worst experience of life!

There must be a number of now elderly women around whose backsides bear telltale faint white scarring of a birching! A permanent reminder of their time at a Scottish approved school.

>Anyone have any info on Scottish approved schools. My
>grandmother was at one in the 1930s. She used to tell
>how she and another girl were birched in front of the
>school for absconding? Does anyone know what this
>involved?
>
>Karen"

Ah... yes it has been deleted - wonder who reads this forum ... but luckily I had this in my cache before I "refreshed".

Y-A-A-L

Thanks to COLIN FARRELL & HIS MARVELLOUS Corpun site.

This is an article re the abolition of Judicial CP in the UK(including Scotland) in 1948.

Glasgow Herald, 20 April 1994
Whip hand of the state
George Hume reports on how delinquent young Scots once ran the risk of the rod
In Scotland today are hundreds of men with vivid recall of the day, as boys, that they fell foul of the law and were punished, in a more than usually literal sense, by the strong arm of the law. They will bear the scars yet, thin white lines on the flesh of their buttocks [in fact I know of no evidence that the marks from that kind of birching were normally permanent - C.F.], that were put there with a birch rod when they were aged no more than eight to 16.

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.

The question of whether this was altogether a good idea was examined by the so-called Cadogan Committee which reported in the late 1930s that it was not, if for no other reason that when it came to curbing juvenile crime it did not. But the war intervened and the report was not acted on for a further decade.

Scottish courts in the 1930s believed in the birch. Four times as many boys in Scotland were whipped -- on the basis of percentages of convictions -- than south of the Border and the punishments permitted were considerably more severe.

In England and Wales boys aged eight to 14 were liable and the maximum penalty was 12 strokes of the birch. In Scotland the age group open to corporal punishment ran on a further two years -- to 16 -- and while 12 strokes of the birch was the limit under 14 those who were that age and above could receive up to 36 strokes with either a birch or a tawse ... the latter instrument being held to be more severe.

Birches were tailored to the size of the target -- the smallest for the eight to tens, a larger model for the 11 to thirteens, and a full-sized affair for their bigger brothers. They were well used.

In 1936, 70 birchings were ordered by the courts in Edinburgh; Glasgow ran a close second with 69 while Aberdeen came in at 26. Altogether there were 230 birchings in Scotland that year, well down on the 925 total of two decades earlier when the courts appear to have gone into a frenzy and scarce a birch tree in the land can have been left unstripped of its twigs. Through the years the average age of the victims appears to have been 12.

How severe was their punishment? Certainly a judicial birching was far removed from a parental spanking. Regulations required that the punishment should be "sufficiently severe to cause a repetition of it to be dreaded".

To give some idea of just how severe that might be it is worth noting that in almost every case of birching in Scotland the court ordered that the boy be medically examined before the execution of the sentence and that the doctor be present throughout its infliction.

The regulations stipulated that if the doctor considered that the prescribed number of strokes could not be inflicted consistent with the health of the boy he could fix a smaller number of strokes and the punishment would be modified accordingly. The doctor was also given the power to stop the punishment "on medical grounds" at any time during the course of it.

To ease the task of the police in carrying out corporal punishment a number of courts and police stations were equipped with specially manufactured benches to which boys could be securely strapped down so that they could not move.

One such is to be seen at the People's Palace Museum on Glasgow Green. It was in use at Govan police station and has holes cut for the feet, straps for the ankles, thighs and waist, and others for the hands stretched out above the head. Any naked 12-year-old held in that position and then birched might, understandably, recall the event half a century later.


The inescapable conclusion here:-judicial juvenile CP even in Scotland was confined to BOYS!

Judicial CP of women was abolished in 1810 & a little later in Scotland.

So, if it wasn't fed through from the courts,I really doubt this was true. I wouldn't have been surprised at bare-bottom canings or tawsings, legal or not, back then, in reformatories/approved schools, but I very much doubt the Scottish Calvinist tradition would have let that happen.


Steve M

Thank you, Yetanotheranotherlurker, very quick thinking on your part! Remarkable how often our paths seem to cross, and on this occasion you've certainly saved me from the embarassment of being thought to post duff links, for which I am very grateful.

It seems unlikely that the Voy servers were overwhelmed by millions of hits from my posting (although of course this esteemed forum's administrators may tell us a different story ) so like Yetanotheranotherlurker I must conclude that an administrator of the Voy forum visits here. If so, and if I have offended them in any way by posting the link, I most humbly apologise.

I said in my posting above that I was inclined to treat the account of the probable birching routine as fiction. However, on seeing Falling Star's post above I commenced my own search for an alternative source of the deleted item, not realising that meanwhile Yetanotheranotherlurker was saving the day! In the course of this search I came across this Scottish Government site entitled 'Historical Abuse Systemic Review: Residential Schools and Children's Homes in Scotland 1950 to 1995' which seems to suggest that there may well have been something rather suspect in the administration and control of corporal punishment in some Scottish Approved Schools within the review period. It is stated that corporal punishment was not prohibited in Scottish residential schools and children's homes 1986, and that it is conceivable that in some cases poor record keeping regarding corporal punishment may have been intended to conceal what took place.

Since the Voy forum posting referred to an even earlier period than this review it is I suppose possible that in some cases girls might have been birched along the lines suggested. If this did happen I doubt there are many survivors, since if punished in the 1930's (or even the 1940's) they would now need to be in their 70's or 80's. Even if there are survivors it is most unlikely they peruse this forum, so I suspect we shall never know. However, maybe someone out there has information from elderly relatives or other sources, so over to you!

P.S. Just seen your posting Steve, and in essence I agree with you, but the Scottish Government report above does hint at a certain amount of departure from protocol.

As I've noted in another posting tonight I enjoy delving in the 'back numbers' department of this esteemed forum, and I'm doing rather more of it than usual just now because I can't bring myself to start the rather boring stuff I really should be working on.

In the course of this delving I found here these words of wisdom from Fran, one of the totemic figures of this forum who was slippered in green knickers at Copland School in Wembley, and who (for the benefit of newer readers) is to be mocked only on peril of being banned, as befell one importunate poster in this thread.

"We must all remember that direct identification of material on this forum in many cases leads to its withdrawal or destruction elsewhere."

Which statement seems rather pertinent in view of the disappearing Voy post! It will be interesting to see if the fairly extensive Scottish Government site linked above likewise makes an abrupt departure from cyberspace!

What really shocks me in all this is that the state should enforce and allow the birching of children as young as 8,which is equivalent to a flagellation at that age. And this in fairly recent times,with the approval of most politicians who were supposed to represent the people. And in what was considered the most civilised nation on earth.
This didn't take place even in Nazi Germany during the same era. Not to children anyway.
And even when the cane was abolished from schools in England inthe 70s somehow the law did not apply to approved schools and borstals. This came much later. So boys,and probably girls,were still being strapped in these institutions up to a few years ago. Usually it was not the cane or birch that was used in these institutions but a leather strap. There are several biographic books written on this subject,among them "Borstal Boy" which comes to mind.

I had a similar experience in Scotland some years back when I was on holidays in the highlands. I was only in my very early twenties at the time.

I befriended a young scottish lass, around 18, who was enrolled at the local girls high school. I remember one evening she seemed a bit withdrawn so I asked her what was wrong. She said that she had received a good seeing to from Miss that afternoon at school for something she had not done.

Not being from the UK, I did not really understand what that term meant, so I asked her to explain. However she spoke with such a thick Scottish accent that I still was not sure what she meant, but I did not pursue it any further. In retrospect I think she must have been talking about some kind of punishment that she received from her teacher. However, to this day I am unsure what that punishment was.

If Fran is, indeed, one of this forum's totemic figures, it's not because her green knickers were dusted with a slipper at Copland School. It's because for a very long time he fooled almost everyone into believing he'd once been a schoolgirl who'd been slippered on her green knickers at Copland School.

Alas, he did not fool me - although I am happy to admit his porkie-purveying skills were far above average.

I remember being almost prepared to accept him as genuine until the fateful day he exposed himself to my considerable suspicion by using a certain phrase which is almost a hallmark of the fake female.

Needles to say, I shall not be revealing the phrase.

Further research proved beyond reasonable doubt that the teacher who allegedly slippered Fran was at no time a slipperer of girls.

What do you mean?

Dear Lotta Nonsrnse,
Could you please publish some photos of these chaps dressed as girls on this site?
We can then be more familiar with them.
While on the subject,I've heard from a man who was at one of these Approved Schools as a boy that one of the punishments at this school was to make the boys dress as girls. I cannot confirm this,so does someone have any information about this?
So this kink of cross-gender dressing may have started at these and other schools in many cases,since as you say,and I agree,that these people abound on sites such as this about school CP. It's no co-incidrnce.
Having said that,I have nothing against these friendly people,and I encourage them to keep on writing. Maybe they can tell us more about these experiences too.
Variety is the spice of life.

Eric, I've a friend who is several years older than I am,
who was sent away to an Appoved School for a misdemeanour
he would have had a caution for today.
He's never mentioned being made to dress as a girl, just told me
the regime was tough, designed at breaking your spirit.
I've never asked him details of punishments carried out
in there, but I will.

These accounts about severe treatment at Scottish Approved Schools are sheer nonsense. I attended one of these schools in the late 1970s and apart from the occasional thrashing cp was almost non-existent.

This topic contains more pork pies than an English county fair.

Apart from the occasional slippering there was very little cp for girls in any Scottish school as far as I can remember, and I did all my schooling in Scotland.

As for these approved schools, I never heard of them. They are nonsense.

Hi Bonnie Lassie

These schools did exist, but there was no harsh discipline as suggested by some of the other members of the forum. They were just the same as normal schools. Girls could only be punished by female teachers but not in a harsher manner than in any other Scottish school.

These approved schools exist in practically every country on earth,be they called by different names.
They are for juvenile offenders who have fallen foul of the law.
They are a step down from prison,since you can't send under-age juveniles to prison.
Their aim is supposed to be to reform them and at the same time continue with their education. That's why they are called Approved schools and Reformatories.
Discipline is usually strict or harsh in these institutions. And although physical punishments have been abolished in most EU countries,this probably still goes on in most other countries. But other forms of discipline are still in effect in our civilised nations. Like being locked up in their cosy rooms at night and adhering to strict time schedules.
There was a documentary on TV recently on one of these girls' reformatories in England at present,in which they seemed to have all the comforts they want,including computors,except liberty.
But I think it was quite a different story in the past,especially before the 70s.
I've seen other documentaries about other countries,especially the USA,where discipline is much harsher in these juvenile centres,where although CP is not used,other forms like humiliation punishments are the order of the day. In one camp(they call them Boot Camps there)it shows girls having to stand at attention for long periods with guards shouting at them in their faces and making them do strenuos physical exercices.
In another boys' camp it shows the boys having to stand naked for inspection by guards,some of them female.
And the list goes on. But some people don't know they even exist.

Yes that might all be true, but what proof have you that these type of schools actually existed in Scotland, and even if they did, it is highly unlikely that any kind of severe cp would be used on girls.

I shouldn't think Scotland was the exception. They existed in practically every civilized country,and still exist today. The other alternative is to send these kids to prison or give them a judicial caning as is still being done today in some countries.
And if canings were common in ordinary scools in UK prior to 1970,you can imagine what it would have been like in these "Schools of Correction".
I'm not sure about the situation in Scotland but I will check on official sites and report back the results.

But according to most of the people who responded to your original posting there is no evidence that any girls were treated more harshly at any of these schools than at any other school in the UK.

In any case since Scotland was I assume part of the UK at the time, the same regulations would have applied at these so called special schools as did generally across the UK.

Despite the many opinions to the contrary I do not believe girls were treated very harshly at school, generally speaking, during this time. There was cp for girls, but probably only used sparingly and most likely quite moderate.

Asquith, you say:

"In any case since Scotland was I assume part of the UK at the time, the same regulations would have applied at these so called special schools as did generally across the UK."

If you really are unaware that following the Act of Union in 1707 Scotland retained its own distinct legal system, and that both then, now, and at all times in between Scots law differed significantly from the rest of the UK then you should go back to school and revise your constitutional history.

Further, if you have read the Scottish Government Report entitled "Historical Abuse Systemic Review: Residential Schools and Children's Homes in Scotland 1950 to 1995" and still have any doubts that even after 1950 some children in special schools and approved schools in Scotland, girls as well as boys, were being subjected to very harsh corporal punishment then your understanding of English differs radically from mine.

The report is already linked from one of my posts earlier in this thread, but to save you back-tracking here is the link again.

The full report makes interesting, if depressing reading, but if you want to comment with any authority in this thread then scrutiny of at least Chapter 3 (The Regulatory Framework: Observations, Conclusions and Recommendations) and Chapter 6 (Former Residents' Experiences) is essential.

I stand corrected. Your knowledge of English history is obviously way superior to mine. I concede that you are most probably correct.

However I do not like to think about girls being mistreated in any way. It simply does not sit well with me.

i agree with you,but unfortunataly you find these opportunists and sadists in nearly all of these institutions. A lot of these abuses are now coming up to the surface all over the news. There are so many cases that you can't keep up with them. The courts in Australia and USA and several other countries are flooded with these cases of ex-inmates seeking repairment for these abuses done in their childhood.

Yes you are right. In the past a lot of young people were taken advantage of by people in positions of trust. Hopefully this will never happen again.

I cynically wonder if some of these people are jumping on the compo band wagon.
I cannot see how things that happened 30 years ago can be prooved or disprooved.
What is abusive? For instance it was perfectly legal to cane someone to the point of shock with bruises lasting for weeks.
Sexual interferance is another matter, again how can it be prooved.

The birch may not be as bad as all that. Yes, we've all read far-fetched stories about romantic poets being given 10,000 strokes; but there are a couple of quotes on the Corpun site by people who were birched on the Isle of Man who said that it wasn't much worse than getting the cane at school. I read in one of those books about Eton where someone who got the birch not long before they gave up using it (as late as the 70s, I think) saying that he resented the ritual and being made to strip off, but that it actually hurt less than the cane did. Of course, it's outrageous that young people were ever hit at all; but when he read about a birching it may only mean what the Americans would call "a severe switching."

mimi, please, please, please drop the (male) addition to your nom de plume! It represents a surrender to the untutored (CPwise that is ) masses who have kicked in the gates of this estimable forum over the past month. Further, it detracts from a name with an honourable past here, a past recently favourably commented upon by no less a luminary than Subscriptions Manager himself! Anyone posting here should first have done a little rummaging through past threads to get the feel of the place. If they've done that they will know that mimi is indubitably male. If they can't be bothered to go through the preliminaries then let them stay gender confused!

Asquith, sorry if my posting above was a little abrupt. Happily you are obviously well schooled in the doctrine that a soft answer turneth away wrath! I agree with you about girls being mistreated, it doesn't sit well with me either. We might though, due to what I suspect is our considerable age difference, disagree about what constituted mistreatment at various stages over the past 60+ years.

Annabelle, you didn't 'attend' a Scottish Approved School in the late 1970's. No one 'attended' approved schools, they were sent to reside at them by a variety of agencies for behaviour that, by the standards of the time, was deemed to require correction. Further, by the late 1970's approved schools no longer existed under that name as a consequence of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968. However, I recognise that there is a possibility that we may only be separated by semantics. Would you be willing to identify the establishment you were at and confirm that your 'attendance' there was not voluntary?

Yes,Mimi,drop the Male please.
It looks horrible. And indecent!
Doesn't suit you.

My one failing in life is a wish to please.
Therefore I will compromise and state male on any new threads every month or so if and when I feel like it.
Now thats accertion if thats all right with you lot, might even be assertion

Just seen Lotta Nonsenses post which contains the line - Further research proved beyond reasonable doubt that the teacher who allegedly slippered Fran was at no time a slipperer of girls.

If we are talking about the same guy and same school I cant imagine how anyone can prove this as I know for sure he died some time ago. Anyway I know that he did slipper both boys and girls but by far mostly boys as I was there during the time he was doing it. In fact he slippered me twice. Since he was a very big and fit PE teacher and nutter rugby player this was really painful. I seem to remember something about him being presented with a slipper on retirement. Our school was a mixed secondary modern with a really grim old headmaster who regularly used the cane on boys and made examples of people. Luckily I avoided that!

"I know that he did slipper both boys and girls" says Aaron.

The only way Aaron can know the man slippered girls is if Aaron saw him slipper a minimum of two girls.

Is that what happened, Aaron?

My psychic powers are predicting a reply along the lines of "No, but . . .", every word after the first of which will, of course, be superfluous.

Hi Lotta,

Having myself apparently been nominated by certain persons (or rather by multiple personalities of one person) as this estimable Forum's second ultra-sceptic, I can only say I have a long long way to go before I can match the syntactical beauty and inescapable evidential logic of your condition for Aaron to claim that the teacher in question slippered girls!

Aaron:

Do you remember kinky music teacher at Copland, Donald Sammons? He had more degrees and diplomas in music than anyone I have ever known. They were all from places that few people have heard of.

It seems unlikely that we shall hear from Aaron Copland on the subject of Donald Sammons. (Given his choice of nom-de-plume, perhaps he is Donald Sammons?)

Don is left-handed and such orchestral conductors are sometimes difficult to follow. He once informed me that he had conducted the B.B.C. Concert Orchestra. These are a hard-bitten lot, almost at the top of their profession but they didn’t frighten Don. “I told them if they didn’t like it they just had to b-well put up with it” he said.

All this happened before I knew that Don had any connection with Copland School. He would not have been interested in the girls’ green knickers, though. He is a man of an alternative persuasion.

Good evening Big John. It's always an honour to encounter the Senior Management of this estimable Forum in these non-administrative threads. Got to rush though, I'm told someone's mentioned green knickers in a post somewhere in this neck of the woods!

Eric wrote:

"And even when the cane was abolished from schools in England inthe 70s somehow the law did not apply to approved schools and borstals. This came much later. So boys,and probably girls,were still being strapped in these institutions up to a few years ago. Usually it was not the cane or birch that was used in these institutions but a leather strap. There are several biographic books written on this subject,among them "Borstal Boy" which comes to mind."

-- You are mistaken on certain points.

CP was not in fact abolished in ordinary state schools until 1986 and it disappeared from approved schools (which by then were called Community Homes with Education or CHEs) at much the same time. Nobody was being strapped in any such institutions "up to a few years ago", unless you count 20 years as "a few years".

It was a leather strap in Scotland, but a cane in England and Wales.

Approved Schools were not, on the whole, the horrendous places some people now seem to think. They were quite different from Borstals, which were junior prisons, so your reference to Brendan Behan's book is not actually relevant. People are understandably confused by the rather opaque terminology so they tend to get these things muddled up.

Still, there was quite a lot of CP at most boys' approved schools, just as there was then at many boarding schools, on which they were modelled. I am fairly sure there was much less of it at the rather fewer girls' approved schools, but it was provided for in the official rules.

I have written an article which attempts to unravel some of this confusion at
http://www.corpun.com/counukr.htm .

Colin