Hi, everyone,

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

One little snippet from 'Friends Reunited,' here, to awaken the great, "Were Girls Caned on the Bottom by Males at School' debate!!!!!

I was surfing the posts on 'Friends Reunited,' as I so often do, and decided to re-vist Bacons School.
I found this post that has just ben added. It was added by a lady called Leah, a former pupil, who was 'whacked' at the famous Bacons of Rotherhide School in London, which was once famously championed as the school that had caned more girls than any other school in England!! Some honour! This was the school where one girl called Sue Olds actually appeared on a regional news programme to say she had been caned so many times that she now wanted to leave the school and regularly truanted because she feared the cane

I was thinking of writing to Leah to see if more can be gleaned. Your thoughts please!!!!!
Here is the post:
***********************
"Great place, but I hated the uniform!!! Wasn't ours just dreadful?!!! But I do see the importance of school uniform nowadays. I have some fond memories of Bacons and some not so! Like when in the 5th, I got caught out of uniform and coming out of a pub with my boyfriend. His dad was the landlord. Thought I was so grown up at that time!!!! I got sent to Mr Ing for that. He was totally livid! I said I'd only had two lemonades, but Mr Ing was having none of it. I think he was unwell with diabetes at that time and he was suffering with the most terrible mood swings. For my double offence, as he described it, he chose to cane me. I was due four, but because I initially refused and mounted a strong protest about being caned because I was a fifth form girl, he increased it and gave me six - over the desk. Anyone recall Dracula? I met up with some old friends last year in London. I don't get chance to visit Southwark these days!! Life is just too hectic."
***************

Well how about that? Please visit 'Friends Reunited' to see the post

Hope this is of interest.

Hi Jack. Hmm, I thought 'those' posts had all been removed from Friends Reunited! I really must go back and have a look!

You say:

I was thinking of writing to Leah to see if more can be gleaned. Your thoughts please!!!!!

Personally I wouldn't. Almost by definition anyone on this estimable Forum has an above average interest in school CP. However, this is not necessarily so for someone who happens to mention school CP in conversation, or, indeed, on a forum such as Friends Reunited. There was a rather (IMHO at least) undesirable character on another Network54 CP forum who specialised in just such approaches to females regarding their experiences of CP. That forum has now been shut down by Network54. Possibly the actions of the said individual had nothing to do with the shutting down, but why take risks? There is always the possibility that if Leah objects to your approach and makes a fuss a link back to here may come out at some stage.

JACK

I can't find it on Friends-otherwise we could see from their role when Leah was there & save troubling her.


Steve M

Hi,Steve

It is easy to find this post. Leah's is the onea at the very top on the Message boards
Just get yourself onto Friends Reunited. Go into SCHOOL SEARCH. Add Bacons. In area add London. Then CLICK SECONDARY SCHOOL

Leah's school is Bacons at Pages Walk, Southwark. You will see several Bacons of Bermondsey schools come up. They are all the same school but Leah's base seemed to be at the Pages Walk building

CLICK into MESSAGE BOARD on the far right. It then brings up a list of message boards CLICK into TEACHER MEMORY which is the first board. DEAD EASY!!! Her post is at the top!

Haapy searching!

Thanks, Jack-had the wrong bacon-never liked it anyway!

Now, there's an earlier incident there, sometime from 1970-76, from the girl-who-posted's time at Southwark, where Comrade Ing strode down the assembled assembly & hauled a couple of talking girls out-they were duly caned after assembly, it appears.

As for Leah, she was there 1977-83, so, if this was the Vth form, she copped her six in 1981/2 school year.

I'm assuming Soooze's experiences were 4th or 5th form, so 1984-86 for your sixers, Soooze? Interesting, as that's 2 schools,London & Liverpool where male Headmasters were freely caning girls on the bottom & without any witnessing female teachers around in either instance.

Wonder how many more there were? Oh, and by the way re Ing-another post there refers to his strictness but fairness, so it wasn't diabetes caused Leah's hiding, whatever viewpoint you take on its' desirability.


Steve M

Hi, Happy Lurker,
You are correct, hundreds of posts have been removed. Luckily, I saved hundreds of them at the time, but certainly most have gone now. Guess the removal purge began when ITV bought 'Friends Reunited.'
However,I can only assume some got left behind in the sweep! Leah's posting is new, however, and I can only assume, that, in time, it too, will be removed.
Happy searching!

I'm assuming Soooze's experiences were 4th or 5th form, so 1984-86 for your sixers, Soooze? Interesting, as that's 2 schools,London & Liverpool where male Headmasters were freely caning girls on the bottom & without any witnessing female teachers around in either instance.

Wonder how many more there were? Oh, and by the way re Ing-another post there refers to his strictness but fairness, so it wasn't diabetes caused Leah's hiding, whatever viewpoint you take on its' desirability.

Which is something I have been saying for a long time. I was too young to go to London in those days, but I knew of girls who were caned in the inner-city schools in Liverpool. They talked about it quite freely, perhaps because it was regarded as the norm. My ex openly admitted to being caned by the headmaster on several occasions, and that other girls were caned on a regular basis. I have heard since from ladies who were at school in inner London at the same time, that caning of girls was widespread.
To balance this, I know that there were schools where no caning of girls (or boys) took place. It seems to have been largely down to the headmaster/mistress, and again, as I have said many times, it was more common in inner-city schools. Cilla Black is a case in point.
If you want to psycho-analyse it, my belief is that kids who lived in inner cities in the late 50s/early 60s (my era), were regularly beaten at home, so getting a caning/slippering etc., at school was nothing new, and the teachers knew it. Lest anyone doubt this, go to YouTube and put in 'Liverpool Lullaby' and listen to the words - sung by Cilla Black, and recorded in 1960, which so accurately sums up life in inner-city Liverpool(and doubtless other cities too), in that period. In doing so, it perhaps shows just how common CP was in the home. By the way, 'The Lune' was a very large laundry!
My school was inner-city, and publicly funded, so we took boys (only) from all over the city. The school was run along Etonian lines - we even played fives - and that included plenty of caning. The headmaster during my time there held his position for 26 years, so he was clearly in charge of the school in every respect.

If any further convincing is required, (and I know how young and doubting some of the readers can be!), this is taken at random from a site describing schooldays in Liverpool in the late 50s/early 60s:

Things were a bit more serious in the secondary modern and this was only to be expected. Three or four primary schools would merge, the 'cocks' like cats would mark their territory. 'So and so will put your head down the bog and flush it you know' - the older kids were to be feared. It was reported by older mates who were already indoctrinated into the big school way of life complete with difficult homework that the teachers would cane you at will, throw blackboard dusters at you, keep you in detention for hours etc etc.

Thank you, Falling star-I've been wondering for 40 years what the hell the flipping "Lune" was!

Thought it might be the River-but couldn't see the kid in the song emulating Billy Fury as a tugboat hand; must not digress here re Billy!

But, you can add Manchester to the list. I started going to support Man U home & away once I left school & started work in 1970.

I got friendly with a couple of girls from Salford and Wythenshawe respectively. They were 15 or 16 & just left or about to leave. Both were regularly bending over at school, and not looking for a lost contact lense either-only there it was the strap in classes, cane from the Head.

Both did turn out to enjoy CP my way for "recreational" purposes, so their school experiences were probably shrugged off as par for the course. I think you are right- A_L's "year" was earlier than yours, yours before mine, but it begins to look more and more as if caning of girls was still less than boys, but considerably more than we maybe realised at the time.


Steve M

Hi Steve-mine was day before last day of Xmas term 1984-one I didnt deserve & February(?)1986-one I did deserve an he had to cane us in relays there was about 25 of us got 6 each-not all girls but al least 7 or 8 of us wos.

An my husband's from Patricroft-yeh, girls wos still getting tanned in Manchester 1980's, at least from what he said before. Dont think the strap was dead by then though-I'd ask, but hes not interested in it!


Soooze

Without wishing to hark back too much to the infamous "get real girls were never spanked" thread initiated by arnold lane on 11 October last year, and locked by the moderator at 155 posts, the disinterested documentary evidence helpfully produced by Jack here does reinforce the point I made there, that corporal punishment of schoolgirls in the 1970s and 1980s, while perhaps uncommon, was by no means particularly unusual or remarkable.

Hi, All
I seems that caned Leah of Bacons has added a photo of herself taken in Finland at around the time of her whacking.
Pretty girl at that time! Go take a look

Jack

Steve:

Well that fits the pattern. Wythenshawe was of course the largest council estate in Europe in its time, and must surely have had more than it's fair share of troublesome kids - in fact it still has, but nowadays they are taken to Disneyland or somesuch. Likewise Salford, which was not only inner-city, but deprived inner-city. Not for nothing did the idea for 'Coronation Street' begin in Salford's cobbled streets! I did go out with a lady from Collyhurst many years ago, who was no stranger to the belt, but being a Scouser born and bred, I kept my contacts with Mancunians to a minimum - no offence Soooze!

JACK

Yes, see what you mean.

Anything tell you the botty will be as cute as the lil blonde face?

Ing missed a trick there, but perhaps he wasn't there to lech!


Steve M

Hi, Steve
YEP she looks very cute.
I keep wondering how exactly Mr Ing carried out this punishment. She says, 'Over the desk,' so without doubt, it was on the bottom. I wonder if the original punishment of four whacks was due on the hands, but she got him so mad by arguing, he increaed it to 6 and told her to bend over out of sheer anger at her impertinence.
Will we ever find out! Wish I knew

Jack

Yes, very cute, and an excellent piece of authentic research. I thought that some people might appreciate a direct URL, though you have to be signed in to Friends Reunited to access it:

http://www.friendsreunited.co.uk/SignedIn/ProfileOther.aspx?member_key=715434307

Hi all, as you're all well aware of my proclivities there's no harm in my saying what a splendid thread! Thank you Jack, may your researches on Friends Reunited yield more of the same.

Steve said

I think you are right- A_L's "year" was earlier than yours, yours before mine, but it begins to look more and more as if caning of girls was still less than boys, but considerably more than we maybe realised at the time.

and Nero said

Without wishing to hark back too much to the infamous "get real girls were never spanked" thread initiated by arnold lane on 11 October last year, and locked by the moderator at 155 posts, the disinterested documentary evidence helpfully produced by Jack here does reinforce the point I made there, that corporal punishment of schoolgirls in the 1970s and 1980s, while perhaps uncommon, was by no means particularly unusual or remarkable.

It's good to know we didn't dream it all, but I'm afraid the 'Arnold Lanes' who vist this estimable Forum occasionally still won't believe it if it comes up during their fleeting visits.

I have to say though, Nero, that I'm very sad to see the 'get real girls were never spanked' thread (which is here) referred to as 'infamous'. After all, it does contain my two magnum opii!     Is that the correct Latin plural Alan Turing?

JACK

Flipping Ings was Head when TOMMY STEELE attended it! As Tommy left in 1955, he'd have been head for at least 26 years when Leah was bending over.

Crikey, I reckon he MUST have been set in his ways & I reckon Leah was bound for bending over irregardless of her apparent insolence. It's hard to believe Ings suddenly decided girls were better bending over after a lifetime of holding their hands out.

I think a little research will be going on in the near future on our joint behalfs but under my name. Will keep you posted!


Steve M

Nothing at all against your two magna opera, A-L. I was just using "infamous" in relation to the frequent complaints at the end of last year about how long the thread took to load.

Many thanks to Nero who, as his name would suggest, is able to provide the correct plural of "magnum opus". The point here is that, despite the appearance (by ending in "-us") of being second declension masculine, "opus" is I believe third declension neuter.

JACK

Caramba-we have some paydirt!

Looking through the 3 Bacons sites gives you quite a few further impressions of a concentration camp, and in the midst of these is a girl caned on the hands in class in 1978.

But this wasn't by Citizen Ing-one of his Senior Mistresses. And into the black book, too.

So, was Ing doing the same? I fired out a mound of e-mails to likely looking people last night on the pretence of being the son of an old girl of the school asking if they remembered Mum & her encounter with Ing!

I did this for pupils there in the 70's and 80's and kept Leah out of it. Just drummed up a couple of names.

Ye Gods-not only do several replies claim to remember the ficticious girls(!), but we have chapter and verse on Ing. He stopped hand-caning girls after one failed an O level, because she couldn't write.

He also regularly gave girls 4 or 6, boys 3 or 4. This was on the basis that his teachers were more likely to clip boys round the ear than slap girls, so if they'd been sent to him, they were unlikely to have had a short sharp shock beforehand in class. Or he could just have been honest and said caning girls gave him more pleasure, because that sort of claptrap strikes me as a standard S/M caveat!

I've had that confirmed by 3 different ex-pupils who left in 1975,1980 & 1984, and who are not related nor live in the same area. Even more interestingly, A_L & Alan Turing please note, Ing got arthritis in his caning hand and, when forced to switch to the left, developed a powerful wrist-flick to impart more pain.

This MAY have happened to Leah, but in her case, I think she was definitely some time after the bending-over became mandatory for girls.

I have to say I'm glad I re-read Leah's profile; cute as hell but very happily married, so I won't be trying to persuade her into recreating pleasurable CP without a cane or an Ing in site. Pity, because I bet she'd love to!


Steve M

Steve:

As they used to say in Rowan & Martins Laugh-in - veerrry interesting! You may be to too young to remember it, but I do! (full details in Wikipedia).

Anyway, it seems as though Mr Ing's reputation was deserved, and I imagine he must have been the scourge of the school, though apparently not alone in his belief that CP was the way to keep the school in order!

I believe you now qualify for the position of Assistant Research Assitant - well done!

Hi, Steve,
Yes there are certainly a few whacking posts around on the Bacons schools that ITV have overlooked and failed to remove!!!!
What about the one where during assembley, some 1st years were singing on their own at the front and the pupils from the 5th and the 6th started laughing at them. Mr Ing was not pleased and duly had THE ENTIRE 5th and 6th forms queueing outside his office and every single one of them was caned!!!!!!! Can you belive that!
I do believe Leah Ashcroft is correct when she suggests that his illness made him act irrationally.

Yes, Mr Ing was headmaster for nearly 30 years (inclusive of Tommy Steele's time). I'm not sure if you are aware of how his headship ended, either in 1882 or 1983( I will have to check my files), but it centered around the caninfg of an Indian boy, and his parents objected. Plus, he was making some horrensdous decisions and as Leah pointed out, suffering mood swings. So he was suspended on full pay for a year, which meant he would never return becasuse he was due to retire the following year.
Even in around 1978, there were issues involving the Sue Olds girl.

As for caning girls on the backside, the whole issue was surrounded by uncertainty, until that is, Leah Ashcroft came along - and then followed by your piece of splendid research! It was said by the magazine, 'Private Eye, that Sue Olds was trying to hide her blushes on this issue when she was interviewed by the BBC and that they(Private Eye,)knew that girls had been caned on the bottom.

What a fascinating discussion this is! But there is another thorny issue
we must deal with, here. And that is The Bacons School skirt!! Leah said how bad the uniform was. Well, I agree, as it was a thick, woven kilt that went down to lower-calf. In my estimation, there is no way you could cane over that. Way too thick and bulky!!! It would simply have to be raised! We wonder, then, if the girls you spoke to, along with Leah Ashcroft and Sue Olds, had theirs raised?????

It is a bit worrying to hear the girls you wrote to claimed to know a ficticious girl or girls! Very odd.

Again if Mr ing was giving girls extra strokes because he felt lads had already had a clump around the ear, well, that is a mis-judgement

you seemed tempted to write To Leah Ashcroft. I cannot see why you cannot write, even just to ask her to impart more info about her ordeal. From reading her profile, one would not imagine a girl like her getting caned at school!! But this was Bacons - the top caning school for whacking girls in England!

Keep the posts coming!
Jack

We also must ask this: Did Leah Ashcroft deserve the punishment she got?
Six stroks for being out of uniform and seen coming from a public house. It was her boyfriend's dad's pub and she claimed that she was not drinking at all. I think I can believe that.
So was the punishment too harsh? Taking into account, of course, that the original punishment was four strokes. But she protested her innocence, argued, and got six!

Any thoughts?

Jack

Hi Jack

Our uni was an horror, too. Skirts wos thick so parents with no dough didnt have to keep replacing em.

Can assure you all my canings-four-hurt like hell.

AND I had gym knicks,knicks,2 prs tights and slip under it on all bar one occasion!

OUCHHHHHHHHHHH!!


Soooze

JACK

It doesn't look like skirt-raising went on. I didn't say earlier, but 2 girls claimed they were offered a trip over Ing's knee for BB spankings instead, but refused.

He told them it would be less painful than being caned over the skirt. My correspondents' reaction was Ing was dead right about that!

I've had 2 more e-mails this evening, again from unrelated sources, saying the same about Spankenmeister Ing-again neither took up the offer!

The trouble with Leah, or writing to her, is that's not all I'd like to do to her & Sarah will bash me if she found out!

On the did-she-deserve-it debate, the question is when did it happen & if it was lunchtime, was she off the premises without permission? If so, then by the standards in force, she probably had it coming, though NOT for being in a pub per se.

And not 6!


Steve M


Steve M

"So, was the punishment too harsh?"

Maybe it was different in the UK but here in the Colonies if you were accused, reported, or even suspected by a 'grown up' you were guilty. It didn't matter what you said. Your fate had been decided before you ever got there. Protesting your innocence only made things worse.

If things were different in the UK I stand corrected. I am however astounded by the fact that you could be out of uniform and away from school property and still get in trouble at school. That didn't happen here as far as I know.

In Australia, technically speaking at least, independent schools maintain authority over their students twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, year in and year out. It comes from the fact that the law considers teachers in such schools to have the same authority over children as their parents do.

Today, we generally only try to impose our authority in cases where there is some link between the activity the student is engaging in and their schooling, and only in cases, where the parents are not exercising their own control at the time of the incident (ie, we assume that if the parents are around, they should be the ones maintaining control and that their decisions should be placed above ours as important). But we still maintain a fair amount of control. If it happens during school hours, or on the way to and from school, we're definitely going to act.

It used to be different. I know of cases where schools caned boys for smoking on weekends, even though their parents had given them permission.

It works pretty broadly. Yes, the law gives us powers like this, but it also imposes greater responsibility on us. If I was driving down Kings Street on a Saturday night and I saw one of my sixteen year old students trying to enter a night club, I'd be legally obliged to take action. A teacher from a state school wouldn't be. We have a higher duty placed on us, as well as higher powers.

D D unless you are an out and out control freak you would be better advised to mind your own business.
I have never heard anything so daft in the 21st century, do you seriously believe that what people do in their own time is anything to do with you.
If its a matter of law its for the police and the night club owners licence.

6 years ago I had contact with girl who attended this school. I can confirm that everything exposed so far has been totally true. Back then, I kept a record of all our emails but lost them all when my computer suffered a total crash in 2004, and unfortunately, back then, I never backed up my files.
The girl could well have been Leah, as I recall she was at this school between those dates and she had mentioned the kilt skirts and how she hated them. She also told me of when she and 2 other girls, along with a couple of boys, were all caned for being caught down the pub! She definately mentioned they were called in separately (boys first), and that they had to raise their skirts for 6 strokes.
I have other details I cannot supply here, to support the authentisity of this massage.

I happen to agree with you, but what I agree with has little to do with what the law requires of me. I think there are aspects of education law in this country that are decades behind the times but I still can't just ignore them.

Would I grab one of my sixteen year old students off the streets to stop him going into a nightclub? No. But I'd better hope that if he gets into a fight and gets himself stabbed, his parents don't find out I didn't. Because if they do, they could sue me.

And there are cases - either because they are much more serious or because there's a much closer link to school - where I would act.

The point I'm raising was in regards to Bob's comments - pointing out that there are different expectations in different places as he, himself, suggested. I'm not saying they always make sense.

A bit off-topic, so please ignore unless you are Nero or Alan Turing.

Nero, thanks for the information regarding the plural of opus. I didn't thank you last night because, to my shame, I thought 'opera' was just a keyboard slip. It wasn't until I saw Alan's post confirming the matter that I realised that you had in fact answered my question.

As you will both have realised my knowledge of Latin could readily be summarised on the back of a very small postage stamp using a felt tip pen. I did study the subject for a year, but that was in my first year at secondary school nearly 55 years ago. I envy you both your facility in the subject. Foreign languages of any sort have never been my thing.

Steve, I'm not totally surprised that you are getting emails recalling your fictitious students. I've noted elsewhere on this estimable Forum that, although I went to a boys only secondary school, the last time I looked there were several girls in the class list for my year on Friends Reunited!

I think quite a lot of what is on Friends Reunited has to be taken with at least a medium large pinch of salt. It may well be that the people who recall the fictitious students were not themselves at the school either.

As noted early in this thread, I'm not totally happy with the idea of approaching people about school CP incidents via email. Having said that I shall betray my total lack of moral fibre by avidly consuming any further details you choose to post!

A_L

I'm afraid, because my school & the girl's grammar both start as Maidstone Grammar School on FR, we come up first on their search engine with for boys in the end of the title. And that's how we've inherited a couple of hundred girls in our 4,000+ members on FR.

There were a couple of occasions in my 1st year sixth when we had inter-school conferences at our place & girls were around. Unbelievably, the monitor(apprentice praefect) in charge of looking after them got a total attack of nerves, and the substitute wound them all up.

The second time they got it right, putting in charge of their welfare someone who was once described age 5 as never needing to kiss the Blarney Stone-I was a success!

Think they enjoyed the conference,too!



Steve M

Hi Steve. All I'll say is that some people are just plain jammy!

Anyway, enough of these recollections of your misspent youth, are there no further developments with regard to the matter in hand to report?

A_L

Nothing new as yet.

Still a disturbing number claiming cousin Ing seemed to be hitting girls harder or with more strokes, but still no evidence of either skirt-lifting or The Flying Doctor's 24-7-365 naughtiness patrols!

But it is clear caning of girls by an unsupervised male head went on through the 70's & 80's. I've fired off another batch tonight to my contemporaries ie started Sec. in 1963 & those who started the year after Tommy Steele left (1956) to see if Ing was at it all the time.



Steve M

Steve

Just a suggestion based on someone I once knew who mentioned something in similar ilk.

Try enquiries of Moorland during the reign of "Ratty" and his pump.

Steve
If you need a hand with your research into Bacons, let me know
That Leah Ashcroft was such a pretty girl! One wonders if she was ffered the alternative............

All the best
Jack

Steve, your unstinting mass email efforts on behalf of this estimable Forum are, I trust, greatly appreciated by all. They certainly are by me, 'cos I don't have the nerve to do it myself, even if my scruples would permit!

As regards 'The Flying Doctor's 24-7-365 naughtiness patrols' as you put it, I'm not going to get involved in that one in its natural home. However, I have to say that a boy (fee-paying at that, or at least his parents were) was expelled from my school for actions observed by a teacher when the boy was in a public place out of uniform and at the weekend, and that was a day school not a boarding school. There was a school rule based on 'conduct unbecoming'.

Mr Ing and his more severe punishment for girls. Well, if this was the case he possibly wasn't alone. In the second of my mammoth postings in the 'get real girls were never spanked' thread I recounted at second hand an incident which seems, to me at least, to have indicated a headmaster's somewhat greater severity in punishing girls than boys. The official reason for this was apparently that girls were punished with a lighter cane. I commented that at that time (the early 1950s) girls were expected and indeed required by society to be better behaved than boys and any tactics likely to bring this about were considered acceptable and frequently utilised. Maybe Mr Ing still adhered to that principle in the early 1980s!

Or possibly Mr Ing may have used a less severe cane for girls and felt that a few extra strokes would maintain the equality of the sexes which by then was becoming significant in the peceptions of at least some sections of the population. I can't find any references to back this up, but a certain vendor of supposedly genuine old school canes on an auction site not unknown to you has claimed that the ILEA issued standard canes to schools to ensure uniformity of punishment. I assume Bacons school would have fallen under the remit of the ILEA at the time.

Two types of cane were said to be issued, up to 30 inches long for juniors and all girls, and a longer cane for senior boys. An article in the Guardian Newspaper was quoted as authority for this, date given, but I can't remember it. The specimen on sale, which looked extremely vicious, was claimed to be the juniors/girls type, and was stamped ILEA on the handle. I seem to recall that the vendor, who seemed very knowlegeable, said that grading canes by length was ridiculous, and that this particular specimen, because of its density and characteristics, was more suited to use in a reformatory than a junior schoool!

Before anyone asks, no, I'm not buying 'genuine' school canes as a hedge against the ongoing financial armageddon, although I have to say that given the price this one fetched, it might be a good idea. I just search 'other interests' sometimes when eBay fails to yield anything in the areas for which I buy on there. And no, I can't point you to the auction. I've tried, but eBay search doesn't seem to find finished 'buyer id protected' auctions, which I think this was.

Different A-L, we've already got an 'A Lurker', a 'yetanotheranotherlurker', a 'A_Lurkologist' and a 'youneedanotherlurkerlikeyouneedaholeinthehead' (who's a complete menace because his name pushes text way over to the right ) besides myself. Now we've got a 'Different A-L' as well! I do hope that there is no confusion as to the respective identities of those of us of the lurking persuasion in the minds of contributors to this estimable Forum!

Research, like revenge, should always be got in first! Sometimes though my haste to post lets me down.

As some of you know, I prefer to substantiate any claims I make, so I kept looking following my post above. eBay search had failed to find me the Junior School Cane I referred to above, but happily Google has come up trumps. I haven't found the one I was after, which may have been too old even for Google Cache. However, here, here, and here are three similar auctions. Note that these are all finished auctions and are coming from Google Cache. They won't last very long, and at least one of the linked large pictures has already been deleted, so don't delay clicking if you want to see them.

Further, Google also led me to find that the vendor, Dressmaker51, has posted here in the past in this thread dating from 2004. Vichkiee, I realise that you got a bit of a mauling in the thread above, but if you still vist here maybe you can throw a little more light on the issue of regulation canes, and possibly other matters currently of interest to habitués of this estimable Forum.

Still a disturbing number claiming cousin Ing seemed to be hitting girls harder or with more strokes, but still no evidence of either skirt-lifting or The Flying Doctor's 24-7-365 naughtiness patrols!

I find this rather irritating, I must say. I go to the trouble of trying to explain to somebody how some schools work and it gets turned into a joke that completely misrepresents what I said.

We don't have '24-7-365 naughtiness patrols' but the fact is, the law imposes on us a duty of care and control that extends outside school hours and the law doesn't define it very well, so for legal safety we have to assume it's fairly broad.

I've actually dug out the most recent legal advice we got on this - we spend a lot of money on lawyers each year partly to try and keep up with all of this.

Australian courts have repeatedly ruled that a schools duty of care and control (particularly that of a private school) doesn't end at the school gates, nor at the school bell. It's not an absolute duty - some court decisions have gone in favour of the schools - but the bottom line is this:

"It is well established that a school owes a duty to its students to take care of them when on school property. Courts have, in limited circumstances, extended that duty of care outside the school gates, and usually the duty is extended when the school either has notice of harm to a student, or ought to have noticed, and is able do something to avoid or reduce that harm."

So, if we are aware that a student is at risk outside of school and outside of school hours, or if there are reasons we should be aware of that fact, and there is something we have the power to do about it, then we are obliged to act.

This is where my example of driving down Kings Street on a Saturday night and seeing a sixteen year old student of mine trying to enter a nightclub becomes relevant. I know he's underage, I know it's dangerous for a boy of that age to enter a nightclub (no, it's not incredibly dangerous, but there is a risk involved) and I'm in a position to act. Legally, my duty of care and control is pretty clear. Would I act - probably not. I don't think we should be as liable as we are, and I don't believe we should seek to dominate our students lives 24 hours a day. But I'm accepting a legal risk by not acting because if something happens to that boy, I could be held liable for not acting. That's the fact of the matter.

It's easy to say that schools shouldn't interfere outside school hours, but we've got obligations placed on us that most people don't understand. Even if we agree, we're not always free to do what we like.

And there are scenarios where a school having the ability to take action outside school hours is, in my view, a good thing. Let's outline one of those scenarios - a real one I have dealt with.

Let's say I have two boys - Kenneth and Jason. Kenneth is a bully, and he picks on Jason - teases him about the fact that Jason is slightly overweight.

Jason tells me this is happening. I call Kenneth in and rake him over the coals. I tell him that if there's any repeat of his bullying of Jason, I will cane him.

That night at home, Kenneth puts up an image on the internet on a site frequented by a significant number of students from our school, that consists of Jason's head superimposed on a picture of the body of Fat Bastard from the Austin Powers film (Moderators - please forgive the use of the word, it is the character's name). He also uses his mobile phone to send a text message to Jason (on his mobile phone) telling him that if he ever tells on him again, he'll be bashed.

This has taken place outside of school hours. It's used computer equipment and phones that have nothing to do with school. Should I be constrained from acting because of that? Should I just let it happen?

Doctor Dominum, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind, and I imagine in the minds of at least some other people here, that in the hypothetical case you quote Kenneth should be caned, and as severely as your powers would permit.

I made my own comment on the question of out of hours influence of schools in one of my posts earlier in this thread. I have absolutely no problems with with it, especially within the framework of the legal requirement you illustrate. My own secondary school required and imposed rigidly high standards of behaviour at all times in public, and in private if behaviour was likely to be noted by third parties and might bring discredit on the school.

However, I am of an age with you, whereas many people on this estimable Forum are younger, which may influence their views on the subject. For many years now the attitude in the UK has been that teachers have little right to authority in the classroom, and certainly absolutely no right to any authority outside it. Boys from my school now go to and from school capless, tieless, and with shirts pulled out of their trousers. At a sports facility I visit they behave in ways which would have been unthinkable when I was at the school. At least one teacher from the school also visits there and totally ignores both the boys and their behaviour.

In the case of your cyber bullying example, it isn't just the children here who do it quite unchecked, the teachers go in for it as well, and in school time with school equipment on school premises! You may have seen my recent post on this subject in the 'The first time ever I saw your cane' thread, but if not see the Daily Telegraph article here. If you were to suggest to those teachers, or indeed I suspect to many teachers in the UK, that they had any duty of care to their pupils outside school they would react with derision or horror, possibly both.

DOC

I'll quote you an example from MY schooldays. Granted this was an English grammar school and had no boarders, but....

Somewhere around June 1970, I was arraigned by our Head for using the pub at lunchtime. Now, the fact that I had no lessons that afternoon and was on my way home was of little concern to him.

It should have been, as I'd sat my last A level that morning, and was now out of uniform and on my way back to home, not expected back at school until the end of A-Levels, some 10 days' hence. So it was frankly none of his business.

The points I did beat him down on were, firstly, it wasn't in the school rules, even on conduct unbecoming generalities, which is rather like being tried for conspiracy to do something, a nice little catch-all. And, unfortunately for him, the fact he'd announced it was non-kosher some 3 years earlier in an assembly didn't make it a rule.

More unfortunately, once the stupid prat had gone off on several tangents, we got on to the age question. The one time I got caned for smoking, he had me, as I was 15 then & smoking, though not buying fags, was illegal until age 16.

He suggested the legal line put him in the right. The age at which you could buy and consume alcohol was then 18, so in a few instances, he'd have been right. Unfortunately for Bern, I was 18 that March!

So I just walked out & told him "See ya". Please don't waste YOUR life thinking you own the bodys and spirits of the kids at your school, because parents paying fees doesn't turn the kids into your purchases. I know that's probably not your way of thinking, but you run the risk of at least ridicule if you genuinely believe some of the responsibilities are yours.

As Charles Dickens once said "If the law supposes that, then the law is an ass". So, just relax, mate, the world will not only keep on turning, but probably changing, whatever you or I do.


Steve M

And after a brief foray into other subjects on my part, back to the original topic of this thread. I speculated above as to whether Bacons school was an ILEA school and if so whether Mr Ing might have given girls a few extra strokes to maintain the equality of the sexes as he had to use a less severe cane for them than for boys. For the benefit of those who didn't look at the auctions, the quote I mentioned regarding ILEA (Inner London Education Authority) regulation canes was:

ILEA's regulations included 2 standard types of cane, either with or without a crook handle. The larger size not over 36 inches is for secondary boys. The smaller, not over 30 inches, for all girls and primary school children. Source: The Guardian 27/11/71

In the event it transpires that Bacon's School was a Church of England school. The ILEA forbade corporal punishment after the end of the school day on 30 January 1981, the fourth UK LEA to do so after Brent, Haringey and Waltham Forest, see the extract from the London Evening Standard for that day on the Corpun site here. The item is part way down the page with a photo of a little lad holding a large cane, presumably one of the 36 inch ones! Note that staff who continued to use CP were threatened with dismissal. However, even if Bacon's came under the ILEA, which I suspect it did, as a church school it would have been exempt from the ban.

I suspect that Leah was caned in the 1980/81 school year rather than the 1981/82 school year that Steve suggests. She was caned in the fifth form and left in 1983, there are usually two years in the sixth form. Of course, she may have left at the end of her fifth form year, in which case her caning would have been in the 1982/83 school year. If Bacon's had not been a church school caning would, I think, have been illegal there shortly after the start of the second term of 1980/81 year. As it was Leah, and doubtless many other boys and girls, were potentially at risk for rather longer, possibly even until the national ban on caning in state schools.

Oh no, it can't possibly be two on topic postings in sucession by Another_Lurker!

I don't think anyone has mentioned the other information on Bacon's School available on the Corpun site. For starters an interesting extract from the London Evening Standard of 20 October 1978 is here. The article is the last on the page.

If true the details are positively eye watering! It is claimed that there were 400-500 canings of boys every year, and in one year there were 204 canings of girls. A fifth of all girls were caned, some of them up to three times, and the inference is that that was in one year rather than over their school career! Even by the fairly harsh standards of my 1950/60s education the mind boggles! I bet when the school punishment book fior that period comes out of quarantine several people will be killed in the rush.

For those speculating how Leah was caned, skirt up, skirt down etc., there is a very helpful quote:

The head of Bacon's, Wilfred Ing, today refused to say how his pupils were caned. "Any information is a confidential matter between the home and the school," he said.

I'm afraid unless Steve's researches uncover anything you'll just have to use your imagination!

The article does hint at an ILEA connection in that it says:

The ILEA corporal punishment rule book says girls should be caned on the hand. But the survey uncovered a loophole showing the rules could be interpreted to allow girls to be caned on the bottom.

If some ILEA rules applied maybe my speculation regarding Mr Ing attempting to bring about sexual equality in the caning area is correct, as the school might possibly have used ILEA issued canes.

First of all D D is in a different country to most of us here. His way of conducing himself is purely up to his own interpretation of the rules and laws of that area.
I get the impression that he is a caring and responsible person.
Secondly, my old sadist of a secondary school headmaster would drive around the local streets on occasions and stop anyone whom he knew to be from his school ( and I think he knew most everyone by sight ) and ask them why they were not at school. If anyone had no resonable excuse he would take them back to school and cane them. A note on the reports card and letter to parents would be forwarded. I once got " caught " whilst on my way to the dentist. I had an appointment card and he looked most dissapointed. All in all though he loved his school and resigned when it went comprehensive because he knew it would not work.
Now canes, whilst there were no doubt different official canes dependant on age and sex, the girls I knew who got caned all reported getting a "long cane" sic.
I know that in the early 80s the traditional GLC rattan canes mentioned here were replaced with a 3ft straight model made from sabutan which is quite a fearsome object. I in fact possess one. I am also lead to believe that teachers would use any type of cane in the classroom that suited them, from old bits of bamboo to curtain rods etc etc
Basically they were all acting in loco parentis and any reasonable parental chastisement could be applied without fear or favour.

I have opened a new line of approach on this & it's started bearing fruit.

I intend to stick to Bacon's, by the way, as that was the original post-apologies to Jack & co.

Anyway, I will probably be posting tomorrow or Friday night, as I do have a life to lead outside here & need to clear up my PC of downloads.

And don't worry, A_L, this is music CD's I'm burning off, not spanking DVD's!! I think I will have some definitive answers for you.

By the way, A_L-also in the FR stuff is the fact that Bacons had an annual founders' day service-at Southwark Cathedral, so you may just be onto something re the church, or at least something beyond a normal LEA state-maintained school. Wasn't your alma mater in this sort of position, incidentally-bet you had a founder's day, too?


Steve M

Hi Mimi. Sabutan sounds somewhat fearsome as you say. The only ones I could find for sale were 1 metre long and 13mm diameter. This I think is somewhat larger than most school canes, which I understand were usually something like 7-10mm diameter and somewhat less than 1 metre in length. I assume the replacement school model would have been more akin to those dimensions.

Depending on the date of the changeover you mention, you may well have a twin of the cane used to beat the young lady who is the subject of this thread. It will be interesting to see if Steve's researches indicate that Mr Ing stopped giving girls extra strokes towards the end of his tenure. If so this might be when he got his 'one size fits all' official cane.

Hi Steve, glad to hear you are keeping up the good work. I look forward to your findings in due course. Forget the music though, press on with the important things in life! [Very Big )

Wasn't your alma mater in this sort of position, incidentally-bet you had a founder's day, too?

Yes, no and yes. My infant and junior school was a C of E school, but my secondary school was a public school without specific church related affiliations. The usual note for non-UK visitors, in the UK 'public school' means virtually the exact opposite, although mine did have some scholarship places funded by the local education authority, one of which I was fortunate enough to secure. And yes, we did have a Founder's Day, and a Founder's Day Church Service every year.

Hi A L yes the diameter is about 10 mm, the nodules (joints) have been stripped smooth. It is heavier than rattan and bends in an arc in a stiffer way than rattan.
It certainly packs a swish and a sting.
Perhaps a case of fewer but more severe strokes.
BTW remembering Barry Tavners case, the head used a bamboo cane which certainly left a more spread out bruising rather than wealing, as shown in the papers at the time.

Steve,

Reading your story from your own schooldays, I agree - given the circumstances you describe, it really was none of your Headmaster's business. It was out of school time, you were out of uniform, and you were of age to be drinking.

If one of my senior boys, who'd passed his 18th birthday, decided to go to the pub outside of the time he's expected to be at school, I wouldn't consider it any of my business either. Even if he was in uniform, actually - we do expect our boys to behave in uniform but in the situation you describe he isn't doing anything wrong. It wouldn't be a matter for the discipline of the school. In most cases, I wouldn't even intervene if he was still only 17, but that would depend on my relationship with him.

I don't think I own my boy's body and soul. But I do think I have some responsibility towards them, and that responsibility doesn't completely end at the school gates or with the school bell. That's a matter of law, but it's not just a matter of law.

Steve, my views are formed partly because of the time I grew up. It was just after World War II and a significant number of my classmates had lost their fathers in that war. Some others were like me - our fathers were still alive, but were damaged. For some of us - if our schoolmasters hadn't taken an interest in us, there wouldn't have been any adult male doing it. Those men who took responsibility for us that went beyond the classroom - they gave us an immense gift that I think many of us are grateful for.

We're not dealing with the consequences of major war at the moment, but there are still significant numbers of students in my school who lack adequate parenting for a variety of reasons. Maybe it shouldn't be the role of teachers to step into the breach in this type of situation - but if we don't, who else is there?

I don't generally seek to interfere with my students life outside school, except in those instances where there's a pretty direct link between whatever they've done and the school. I think it's the parents job to exercise care and control outside of school. But if the parents aren't doing it, and also in other cases where the parents deliberately choose a school like ours because they want us to help them do it, then I'll do what I believe to be in the best interests of my students.

Doctor Dominum, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind, and I imagine in the minds of at least some other people here, that in the hypothetical case you quote Kenneth should be caned, and as severely as your powers would permit.

And that is what I did. And I do think it was appropriate. And, perhaps, more importantly, it worked. There was no repeat of the behaviour in school, or as far as I know, outside of it. And I don't think anybody involved felt there was anything wrong with that approach. Not the boys, and not their parents.

I made my own comment on the question of out of hours influence of schools in one of my posts earlier in this thread. I have absolutely no problems with with it, especially within the framework of the legal requirement you illustrate. My own secondary school required and imposed rigidly high standards of behaviour at all times in public, and in private if behaviour was likely to be noted by third parties and might bring discredit on the school.

We do discipline boys for misbehaviour in a public place, but, again, normally only if there's a clear linkage to the school (ie, while the boy is travelling to or from school in school uniform - there are certain members of the public who are all to eager to phone us up and report misbehaviour - which has both good points and bad points about it, I have to say). I doubt we'd discipline boys today for misbehaviour in a private setting, even if it somehow did negatively reflect on the school but I wouldn't absolutely rule it out. It it was particularly egregious, or more importantly if our dealing with it might serve to protect a boy who is in need of protection, I could see it happening.

We're somewhat more flexible on our boys public behaviour than we used to be, we used to expect absolutely impeccable behaviour while a boy was identifiable as one of our pupils, today, as long as it's not actually bad behaviour we're likely to let it pass. I've had people phone us to tell us one of our boys was picking his nose on a train, for example. All right, I wish he didn't do that, but it's not really something we're going to worry too much about.

However, I am of an age with you, whereas many people on this estimable Forum are younger, which may influence their views on the subject. For many years now the attitude in the UK has been that teachers have little right to authority in the classroom, and certainly absolutely no right to any authority outside it. Boys from my school now go to and from school capless, tieless, and with shirts pulled out of their trousers. At a sports facility I visit they behave in ways which would have been unthinkable when I was at the school. At least one teacher from the school also visits there and totally ignores both the boys and their behaviour.

We still insist our boys wear their school uniforms properly, but quite a lot of schools here don't seem to care anymore either. This is the one area where we categorically can't use corporal punishment as it happens - Australian law on corporal punishment in schools is rather limited, but one thing a court has ruled on is that its use to deal with uniform infractions is not permitted. We didn't use it for that very often anyway, but it's now completely off the table.

I don't know the situation in the UK anywhere near as well as I know Australia's, of course, but I was in and around London in September and was actually reasonably impressed with most of the children I saw in uniform. I was exceptionally impressed with one young teacher - I'll check in a minute, I wrote a message about him to another forum I participate in concerning school uniforms. If I can find it, I'll paste it in here, because I think it fits in to this discussion (if not the main forum thread - but these things do mutate). There still seem to be some teachers and schools that are fighting the good fight. As I said, this young man impressed me a lot - I seriously considered trying to poach him.

In the case of your cyber bullying example, it isn't just the children here who do it quite unchecked, the teachers go in for it as well, and in school time with school equipment on school premises! You may have seen my recent post on this subject in the 'The first time ever I saw your cane' thread, but if not see the Daily Telegraph article here. If you were to suggest to those teachers, or indeed I suspect to many teachers in the UK, that they had any duty of care to their pupils outside school they would react with derision or horror, possibly both.

Yes, I have read the article. I actually wrote a comment about it when you first posted it, but the forum was undergoing some sort of maintenance when I tried to post and I lost what I'd written. Obviously those teachers acted in a completely unprofessional fashion. Unfortunately some teachers do. Here as well. Part of the problem here is many younger teachers haven't really been taught what their duty is, or have even been taught the exact opposite - there's been a recent case here of a newly qualified teacher losing his right to teach because he failed to physically separate two teenage girls who were fighting in front of him. He had his registration as a teacher restored on appeal, when he was able to demonstrate that he'd been taught during his university course that as a male teacher, under no circumstances, should he touch female students. That's not what the law says, in fact, it's completely at odds with what the law says, but it's what he'd been taught along with everybody else on his course. I really wonder what other misinformation is being given to teachers here.

Teaching is a pretty difficult and demanding job if you do it properly. Unfortunately it's quite an easy job if you do it badly, and there are some teachers who are attracted to it because they want the easy life. We don't get many of them at my school, because we take very few new graduates and look quite carefully at the history of the experienced teachers we take. We're also allowed to require teachers to work longer hours than most schools can, which steers the lazy away from us (the longer hours are offset by longer school holidays, but in my experience, the laziest people are so obsessed with short term gain, that they still don't want to work for us).

Having said all that, to a very limited extent, I can understand where the teachers in the article you've linked to are coming from. I'm lucky - nearly all the parents I have to deal with are decent parents who are genuinely interested in their children's welfare. Colleagues in the state system here tell me quite a different story - yes, most of their parents are still good people who want what's best for their kids, but when even ten percent aren't that way, it starts to be very wearing, especially because that ten percent cause ninety percent of the problems, and their kids cause problems out of all proportion too. When you are trying to do your best for kids, it must be awfully frustrating having to deal with inadequate parents, because they make your job harder and also are likely to frustrate your genuine attempts to help their children.

Also - one more observation if I may. You seem to object to the fact that this 'discussion' between the two teachers took place in school time, over the net. I certainly don't think it should have taken place in a public forum like Facebook, but quite a few teachers at my school routinely have their laptops open on their desks in the classroom and will chat among each other during lesson time. Obviously you need to do the teaching first, but not all of a teacher's time is spent actively teaching - you need to give students time to write down answers, for example. The nature of schools with teachers in their own classrooms, isolated from colleagues has traditionally diminished the ability of teachers to interact with each other in a collegial setting and technology has opened up new avenues for us to do that. You can seek advice from a colleague. Sometimes you can just blow off steam. We use a private network for this and we expect a certain level of decorum which the posts you describe would exceed somewhat - but there can be value in teachers using networking tools in this way - as long as it doesn't get in the way of their teaching.

The following is the text of the e-mail I mentioned in my last post to A_L: (I was in and around London in September and was actually reasonably impressed with most of the children I saw in uniform. I was exceptionally impressed with one young teacher - I'll check in a minute, I wrote a message about him to another forum I participate in concerning school uniforms. If I can find it, I'll paste it in here). It was written about the 24th of September 2008.

---

I'm in London at the moment, having flown over for a series of meetings and a small educational conference to be held next weekend. I spent this afternoon in Greenwich and coming back to my lodgings I got off the train at Crossharbour, having noticed what looked like a sizeable supermarket from the morning train and needing to buy some things.

When I returned to the station around 3.45 or 4pm, I noticed a number of boys aged 13 or 14 or thereabouts in school uniform - trousers, shirt, tie and blazer, and naturally enough I took a look at how they were behaving and how they were dressed. Their behaviour was perfectly reasonable, but most of them were wearing their uniform in a very sloppy fashion - shirts out, ties loose or even off. Not impressive.

Then, from somewhere, a young man who must have been one of their teachers appeared. He was in his early or mid twenties and was wearing a windbreaker, and was rather unshaven. I'm not sure if he got off a train (the boys were waiting for a Bank train as was I, and a Stratford train came through while we were waiting, so he may have got off that) or came up onto the station, but immediately upon arrival, he took the boys, fairly mildly but effectively, to task for the state of their dress. I was only a couple of yards away, so I could see and hear it all. He seemed to have a small book that contained the school rules and he actually read the boys a section of it that told them they were expected to wear their uniform properly on their way to and from school. The boys were all straightening their ties, shirts, doing up buttons, as he reprimanded them and reminded them of the rules. Our train arrived, and we all boarded, and again I was very close to them so I could hear their conversation. He was obviously popular with the boys and, well, to be honest, they were far more familiar with him than I would particularly encourage although that's often an issue for very young teachers and it's not a major sin at all, as long as the man knows how to bring the barriers down sharp when they have to come down. It seems fairly obvious from their conversation that he was a former pupil of the same school, and recently enough that a lot of the current teachers had taught him as well. The boys were asking him if various teachers taught him, and specifically asked about one particular incident where he had been among a number of boys who had misbehaved for a particular teacher - it sounds like that teacher may have told them about it (which is also something I wouldn't particularly encourage - with this young man, his rapport with the boys and their respect for him, probably means no harm would be done, but you do need to be careful not to undermine younger staff).

He told them about the rules - and a little loophole (it seems that if a boy enters a public library after leaving school, then they are no longer travelling from school and can take their ties off). The boys also asked him about the way he was dressed, and information emerged that made me far less concerned about what I initially saw as a somewhat scruffy appearance. His windbreaker bore a badge that said 'ROYAL NAVY' and he told the boys he was off for training on HMS... President, it sounded like, though I may have misheard that - and was dressed appropriately for that. It also reasonably explains the unshaven appearance - he could well be in the process of growing the traditional Navy beard (I'm not sure if the RN still has the old rules on facial hair, I know the Royal Australian Navy retains them so it seems likely).

He also told the boys that it was very unfair, but the same rules didn't always apply to him, as applied to them - the 'benefits of being a grown-up'. One boy asked if the fact that he was able to dress in a particular way because he was off for training, meant they could wear swimming costume on the train if they were headed to a school related swimming activity. He told them, No.

I was quite impressed by this young man, and moderately impressed by the boys in the most important ways. Yes, their uniforms were unacceptably sloppy but they responded appropriately when taking to task, they were polite, respectful. And their teacher obviously knew his job as well.

I'm going to try and work out what school they attend and contact the school to commend the man and the boys. There's obviously some schools that are still getting quite a bit right.

---

Unfortunately I wasn't able to work out what school the boys were from. I tried to look on line and work out what schools were in the area, but could find nothing that seemed a match for the school badge, or anything else. It might have been a good thing, really, given that I'd have like to take that young man off their hands.

DOC


Thanks-I'm seriously glad to hear that the 2 words missing from your reply to me are inherent in your attitude-COMMON SENSE! I know we ought to expect it automatically from Oz, but still pleased you have it!

If Bernie had had just a smattering of that, things would have been a lot more pleasant for many of us. I've met up with 7 contemporaries or the year above/below me at MGS in the last 4 years & all 8 of us still talk first and foremost about him.

We had a TV ad here "You never forget a good teacher". And you sure don't forget the bad ones, either!!

Bern's initial problem was treating pupils and staff with equal contempt. When he did the same for the PTA and the Head Boy, whose Father was on the Board of Governers, it was the Chemistry Masters'(and he was one himself) equivalent of dropping the jar of magnesium in the lab-hot!! He was even outlasted at MGS by another Chemistry Master who literally did that-Rudi Landa-luckily just a significant part of the Chemistry lab went up in flames & no boys or Rudi!

If you have time in London-take a walk around Canary Wharf. I did it last October & could believe the ambience of all the people, especially as that was when the scale of this financial meltdown was starting to become apparent. Once again, lack of common sense & see where it leads you!



Steve M

Interesting that for a three year period up till late 1977, the ILEA obtained its supply of Kaboo canes at very favourable rates, from a Ken Brown in Leeds. Supplied in lengths of 20inch primary school and 28inch secondary or senior schools

In this short period (estimate 3 years of trading), ILEA controlled schools were supplied with more than 4,000 canes with a further order of 1,000.

The GLC suspended orders when it was discovered Mr Brown used his shop as an accommodation address for buyers of sex aids and pornographic books


Link: http://www.corpun.com/uksc7710.htm

It is quite possible then that Bacons were using canes from this supplier at least up until 1978/79, depending on how often canes were replaced, and stock held by the LEA. With the high numbers of canings at Beacons it is highly unlikely Leahs encounter with the cane came from Mr Browns or ILE held stocks, but not impossible.

If this was the case, then the length of cane supplied according to the report was 28inches, it gives no indication to the thickness so the 28inches secondary may well have been supplied in two thicknesses. If Mimis recollection that the GLC Kaboo was replaced with the straight 30inch Sabutan 1980,- give or take a year , Leah may well have been a recipient of the latter.

A_L

I suspect the pics found on a certain auction site may well be fake. Wax finish rather than lacquered finish gives that aged appearance, plus remarkably straight with the crook perfectly shaped for their supposed age. They dont claim to be original but having spent time at two schools that fell within the Inner London Education Authority, I have never seen a cane with the marking ILEA, exercise books other consumables yes, - Mimi however might be able to tell you differently.

Ketta

Ketta, not wishing to appear pedantic but the Sabutans were 36" long.
D D the pupils you saw in uniform that was in any way smart were almost certainly from one of the really posh private London schools.
The great unwashed wether in uniform or not dress in the most sloppy way possible, both boys and girls. Not all of course but about 95%. In Greater London the majority are of ethnic minority. I suppose saying ethnic minority is incorrect because the minority are in fact Anglo Saxon.

I've been in touch with teachers at Bacons.

3 of the 4 were there late 70's/early 80's to around 85/6. None remembered the GLC action having any effect on Mr Ing.

All three of these teaching contemporaries of Leah were surprised at the number of canings. 2 were in a first teaching post, so comparisons are not much use, but the third had taught in 2 others, boys-only & mixed & was astonished that a school where quite so many beatings went on was actually NOT continually experiencing crime waves-it was fairly well-behaved, but they felt that all this caning didn't improve standards whilst they were they(in this case 5 years under Mr Ing, by the way)and possibly even lowered them.

All 3 talked about why Mr Ings retired. One authorised version-see A_L & two exactly similar descant versions of events. All 3 were unhappy about the number of girls caned, and one of the 2 females mentioned that Mr Ings never asked any girl if "it was that time of the month" before they were bent over.

I'll post the 4th teacher's views later. They are crucial to this whole case, and I'll then go on to describe what I have been told finished Mr Ings, and what the 4th teacher(there from 1950-1977)had to say about it.



Steve M

As promised:

The 4th teacher was there before Mr Ings came as head. There was, in his view, no discernable difference between the discipline before and after the new Head arrived. It was relatively strict, but never oppresive and compared to the previous school (boys only) the teacher was at prior to Bacons, HIS new post was enjoyable.

Things were no different until around 1970 in the teacher's view. Ing became a little more stern and strict as the alleged swinging sixties manifested themselves, but teachers generally still dealt in class with potential trouble so Ing had less to sort out.

What left many teachers completely stunned was a staff meeting in 1970 (he thinks). Ing suddenly came out with the bald statement that liberated young women were the biggest danger to discipline he'd known, and immediately followed that by deciding "Unless you feel there is good reason to do therwise" that girls would in future be caned on the backside. He also expected his staff not to be reticent in sending girls to him for caning given the present disciplinary problems.

The 4th teacher was glad that, 5 years later, he took early retirement, because the atmosphere had deteriorated greatly. He described himself as feeling like a mechanical punishment machine by then and that's why HE went. He is still unable to understand why Mr Ing ever came to that conclusion and still regrets his early death, regardless.

Will conclude in a minute, otherwise this post will get too long.


Steve M

Hi Ketta. What a splendid bit of research to find the Corpun article about Mr Brown and his canes, which I completely missed. We really should hear from you a lot more often on this estimable Forum!

With regard to the eBay canes, I'm certainly no expert. I'm happy to say that I've never been on the recieving end of a cane, and indeed I've only seen what I know to be a genuine school cane 'in the flesh' once. That one was displayed very prominently on the table at my one appearance before the prefects' court at my secondary school. Since I suspected that I was in imminent danger of experiencing it I took careful note of its appearance. Happily I escaped with lines.

That cane certainly looked very similar to the canes in the eBay pictures, shiny, brown, almost straight with maybe just a slight curvature, and with a very symetrical crook handle. In fact very much like Doctor Dominum's cane in the picture here from the 'Kinky Teachers - maybe not?' thread. Doctor Dominum: I hope that you will forgive me for linking to your PhotoBucket picture!

As regards the ILEA marking on the auction canes, the vendor stated in at least some of the 'ILEA' cane auctions that:

Please note: this cane is stamped, it is not printed or a transfer. Also, I only have a limited supply of these canes; when they are gone, they are gone!

I take 'stamped' to mean indented, rather than just on the surface, but I may be wrong. Possibly this could be easily done anyway, but in that case one would expect the vendor to indulge in something similar on more of the canes sold, which doesn't seem to be the case. In my earnest seeking after truth and information I have looked at this vendor's auctions a few times, and the majority of the canes sold are sold without any embellishment other than a description of the dimensions and characteristics of the cane. Quite unlike, for instance, what goes on on eBay with some tawses, where I've seen items without any evidence of provenance whatsoever sold for high prices because they were claimed to have been sourced from 'a miss who taught maths in a senior school for girls' or similar. As I noted, the eBay vendor, Dressmaker51, contributed to this forum in the past as Vichkiee. The thread concerned is linked above.

Mr Brown's canes presumably superceded the ILEA 30inch (for all girls and primary school children) and 36inch (for senior boys) canes referenced in The Guardian article on 27/11/71. I have not been able to check the Guardian reference. If anyone is in a position to do so (large central library possibly) it would be most interesting to know if the article exists and what it said. It may well be buried on the Corpun site somewhere, but if so I haven't found it yet. I presume that the eBay vendor Dressmaker51/Vichkiee may have had a copy. Please Vichkiee, if you still visit here, enlighten us, you may even get some clients! Dressmaker51's current offerings are here, as you can see there is no effort to claim any special provenance for these canes.

I wonder if the change to Mr Brown's shorter 20 and 28 inch canes was dictated by a desire to provide a less painful experience for pupils or by financial considerations? No prizes for the right answer! But then why would they later switch to the (I suspect fairly expensive) 36inch 10mm Sabutan canes as stated by mimi? All in all, a fascinating bit of social history, if we could unravel it!

Right, best explain the 4th teacher is 82 & I spoke to him by telephone. I asked him if what follows was in his view likely. There was a long pause & he said "I cannot comment, simply out of loyalty"

Back to the other 2 teacher's story. There was a young female French assistant and she had a spot of bother with a group of 7 boys & girls in the 4th year.

This was discovered by a senior mistress who gave the assembled miscreants a verbal tongue-lashing lasting 15 minutes, and then wheeled them off to Mmse's class to apologise to her-in French. The remainder of Mademoiselle's stay at Bacon's was pretty pleasant.

Ing was off ill when this happened. When he found out, he demanded names from the senior mistress who told him the matter was closed. Not for Mr Ing. He made an educated guess at which girls were involved. There were 4, summoned to his office & bent over for 4 strokes each.

Mmse got to hear and went to protest to Mr Ing-why had these remorseful enfants been punished again. Had Mr Ing just remained patronising in telling her she didn't understand our ways fully, perhaps no more would have been heard, butm then again, as you'll see.........

Unfortunately, he asked If Madamoiselle would like to sample the cane & see it was no big thing. I have to say this was almost certainly a flippant remark, but in these circumstances, was open to misinterpretation. Madamemoiselle was off to the LEA to complain about it in a trice.

And unfortunately for Mr Ing, three only of the 4 girls caned were involved. The 4th, an Indian GIRL, had nothing to do with the incident and had in fact been off sick on the day it happened. So, when HER parents complained, together with Madamemoiselle's less-than-gruntled attitude, things had to happen.

I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions, but Mr Ing's 1970 outburst sounds awfully like misogyny to me. Which is where his troubles possibly started?


Steve M

The Sabutans were supplied by a shop called the "Cane Store" in Seven Sisters Road. They cost about £4 each and were advertised in his catalogue which also sold cane for craft work. You could get rattan by the 20' for half nothing.

Steve, you are a star! I've no idea how you do it, but your results are amazing!

I find the whole story of Bacon's somewhat salutary. As you may recall I joined with Lotta Nonsense in a sustained attack on a contributor here, whose name to my shame I cannot recall. His 'crime', insofar as I was concerned, was to claim that substantial numbers of girls were being caned and subject to corporal punishment in secondary schools long after I, and indeed some other contributors, thought was the case, and indeed that such punishments increased rather than decreased in the 70s and 80s. If there were many other schools like Bacon's he may well have been correct! If he's still out there (and I'm sure he'll recognise himself) I'd like to apologise. If anyone finds me doing something similar in future please jump on me!

I also find the case of Bacon's quite bizarre. Although I've never been caned I conclude from what I read both here and elsewhere, that as applied in most schools it was a severe and extremely painful punishment, much more so than say slippering.

I can understand that a fair proportion of boys, who are almost forced to push the limits and behave badly to assume the roles in life for which they are destined, might commit offences meriting a severe punishment like caning. But how on earth can one envisage that one girl in four needed to be caned every year, some of them up to 3 times! Over 200 canings of girls in a year, nearly half as many as canings of boys!

The only explanation I can conceive is that given in Steve's post above. That Mr Ing believed that 'liberated young women were the biggest danger to discipline he'd known' and accordingly decided to beat the living daylights out of them! The view that liberated women, young or otherwise, are a bad thing is still around even now. In the 70s and 80s, leading up to the abolition of CP in state schools, it was much more common in the male population. How many other headmasters held that view, and how many of them decided that caning more of their female pupils might keep the tide of girl power at bay? Soooze's headmaster for instance, was this his motive?

I'm also puzzled why Mr Ing's staff didn't query his decision, or, if they felt unable to do so, leak it to someone who could query or rescind it. Maybe they did, possibly they felt that the Church or Local Government authorities involved were unlikely to take action and thus involved the press. But, if the newspaper articles on the Corpun site are anything to go by, this wasn't until 1978, when the abolition of school CP was already becoming an issue in general public discussion. Was Mr Ing beating girls on the bottom 200 times a year from 1970 to 1978 without anyone thinking it excessive or plain out of order. If it was happening at Bacon's how many other schools was it happening at?

It is possible that the reason we know about Bacon's was that it was a unique case, but I wonder. I shall track down the postings of the contributor I mention above and reread them with interest. He may have been right!

The only explanation I can conceive is that given in Steve's post above. That Mr Ing believed that 'liberated young women were the biggest danger to discipline he'd known' and accordingly decided to beat the living daylights out of them! The view that liberated women, young or otherwise, are a bad thing is still around even now. In the 70s and 80s, leading up to the abolition of CP in state schools, it was much more common in the male population. How many other headmasters held that view, and how many of them decided that caning more of their female pupils might keep the tide of girl power at bay? Soooze's headmaster for instance, was this his motive?

While I don't think I was all that bad, I must confess there was a not entirely dissimilar aspect to my decision to cane the girls I caned in the early 1970s. I don't think I thought 'liberated women' were a bad thing, but I did rather resent the idea that I might have to change the way I was doing things simply to accomodate a bunch of girls and given that they were constantly saying that they wanted equality - equal treatment - well, that's what I decided to give them.

Modern psychological evidence is that corporal punishment generally works well for boys with a low chance of side effects, but is much less likely to be effective for girls, with a much higher chance of negative side effects. We didn't have that research back then, but I think many teachers probably understood that instinctively. I didn't pay enough attention to that. It was easier not to. And they'd given me the excuse.

xAnother_Lurker above is not a new recruit to this estimable Forum, nor does it signify agreement with what some of you might well wish to do! The sad truth is that my keyboard is dying and producing the odd random character, but until it gets worse I'm too mean to shell out the £5 required for replacement!

Mimi, thanks for details of the price of the Sabutans. Though sounding fairly cheap I suspect this was probably still more expensive than Mr Brown's products unearthed by Ketta. Can I ask, please, if you already knew when purchasing that they were the type supplied to the ILEA, or if the vendor indicated that this was the case?

Steve, sorry, I hadn't read your last post prior to my posting above. I got a phone call and was mid-post for a long time. Usually in those circumstances I check if the thread has been updated before I press the button but this time I didn't.

Mr Ing's downfall is even more bizarre than events at Bacon's generally. Leaving aside the arbitrary caning of the four girls (did your informant indicate that the three boys involved weren't caned?) one wonders what he'd have done if she'd have said yes to a taste of the cane! I almost suspect he'd have caned her! After all she must have appeared a 'liberated young women' to have the nerve to challenge him, and therefore was probably percieved by him as part of 'the biggest danger to discipline he'd known'!

Seriously, I've seen a report of a Malaysian headmistress 'caning' one of her male teachers after an argument, see report here. However, for the headmaster of a C of E school to joke about it to one of his staff seems to indicate that Mr Ing felt extremely safe in his stance on caning. Subsequent events must have come as something of a shock to him!

One would have thought that there would be newspaper reports galore. However, you did indicate in earlier postings that at least some of Mr Ing's staff were fairly loyal to him. I also got the impression from your reports, and those of other contributors to the the thread, that other than feeling that girls were sometimes punished more severely, his pupils weren't too upset at his actions either. Given those circumstances, the school govenors etc. may have managed to keep it quiet.

Jack, you said in this thread on 5 January:

I'm not sure if you are aware of how his headship ended, either in 1882 or 1983( I will have to check my files), but it centered around the caninfg of an Indian boy, and his parents objected. Plus, he was making some horrensdous decisions and as Leah pointed out, suffering mood swings. So he was suspended on full pay for a year, which meant he would never return becasuse he was due to retire the following year.

You obviously had some details of what happened in your memory. Did you find those files and how do they tie up with the account given by Steve's informant?

Everyone, what is the general feeling? Was Bacon's unique or should those of us who, like me, previously thought that not much severe CP of girls took place after the early 60s and that in any event the number of girls so punished was always very much lower than the number of boys, now change our opinion? Are a minority of our regular contributors who have always opposed this view, and occasional posters such as ink-lined plane, the 'unknown' contributor to whom I proffered an apology above, and who in this thread and various others promulgated the idea that very substantial numbers of girls were subject to CP from the 50s to the 70s, actually correct?

My own feeling now is that if it could happen so extensively at Bacon's, and if the headmaster involved could avoid major scandal even after such a dramatic departure it probably happened elsewhere. Ink-lined plane didn't particularly specify aversion to female liberation as the reason for an excess of schoolgirl CP. He (I assume it was a 'he') favoured political correctness, with overtones of extension of state control. Despite this, maybe he was right after all!

In response to Another_Lurker's question to everyone: I think it is indisputable that many more boys than girls were caned at school, by an order of magnitude. The evidence is that many education authorities had regulations which enforced this distinction (and also, despite the noise, that many more instances of boys being punished are described on the Friends Reunited messageboards).

But that's an average, and there will be variations. There could well be other schools, apart from Bacons, where equal opportunities ruled.

I'd also point out that "lower by an order of magnitude" and "substantial number" are not mutually contradictory. I'm on record as having estimated that probably tens of thousands of women, now aged between 40 and 70, had been caned at school; and that the number is most unlikely to be lower than about six thousand.

>>>>>Modern psychological evidence is that corporal punishment generally works well for boys with a low chance of side effects, but is much less likely to be effective for girls, with a much higher chance of negative side effects.>>>>>

Doctor, that is interesting and news to me...and of course there are a number of other educational differences between boys and girls, I understand. There have been suggestions that to get the best of both genders they need to be seperated, but the Equality lobby don't seem anxious to act on that information.

Whilst change to the gender balance was much needed, people seldom get the balance right when instigating reforms and the total removal of CP from govt schools probably means boys are being disadvantaged - ie subjected to correctional techniques that don't work well for them and not getting those that do.

In your position, of course, such would not apply. But do you have a view on the impact CP removal has had on boys in mixed government schools?

Doctor Dominum, I'm afraid that this is a rather belated response to your last post in this thread, but I feel I need to comment. I don't think you need in any way to justify or defend your canings of the three girls over 30 years ago, here or anywhere else. It was your explanation of that event which caused me to say in the foundation post of the'Kinky Teachers - maybe not' thread that you were certainly not a kinky teacher in the parlance of this estimable Forum.

A kinky teacher, presented with the opportunity to cane boys, girls, or both, according to his (or less likely her) proclivities would simply get on with it and enjoy it. They might well post here about their activities, but it would be along the lines of 'hey, look what I had the opportunity to do and you lot missed out on' not a detailed analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of their actions and extensive academic research to back them up.

Alan Turing, as we've at least one new habitué here who may well be interested it might possibly be worthwhile reposting the link to your excellent post on the subject of the likely number of girls caned at school in the period you covered. As you are probably aware, the new search engine, if you can catch it in one of it's brief functioning periods , will let you link direct to the individual post. I haven't yet found a way to do that without the new search engine, other than putting a unique page link in every post. I did that for a time but soon got bored with it.

Here it is.

Doctor, that is interesting and news to me...and of course there are a number of other educational differences between boys and girls, I understand. There have been suggestions that to get the best of both genders they need to be seperated, but the Equality lobby don't seem anxious to act on that information.

Yes. I'm a strong supporter of single sex schooling, although in an ideal situation, it should occur in a context where there is still supported and organised contact with the opposite gender - my school has strong ties to a sister school to try and achieve this. This is actually one of the other educational interests that I spend more time on and in discussion of that I recently mentioned in a post here to the person calling themselves 'Please Sir, May I Have Another'. I'm a strong advocate for single sex education, my school was one of a number of Australian schools that recently sponsored a visit to Australia by Dr Leonard Sax, an American, who is one of the most prominent current experts in this field. I commend his work - particularly Why Gender Matters to anybody who is interested in it. He summarises a great deal of research (including the recent research into gender differences and reaction to corporal punishment) in an eminently readable and accessible fashion.

There's actually starting to be a shift, where I am at least, towards addressing these issues, and the 'equality lobby' is starting to come on board. They naturally have concerns about making sure that any change doesn't have bad side effects (especially for girls - 'equality' in education always seems to mean making sure girls are especially protected, even when you are trying to help boys) but they understand that the research is showing the possibility of better outcomes for both boys and girls if it's done right.

Whilst change to the gender balance was much needed, people seldom get the balance right when instigating reforms and the total removal of CP from govt schools probably means boys are being disadvantaged - ie subjected to correctional techniques that don't work well for them and not getting those that do.

In your position, of course, such would not apply. But do you have a view on the impact CP removal has had on boys in mixed government schools?

Let me preface my answer by stating that I am not a particular supporter of corporal punishment in government schools. I am not entirely opposed to the idea (for political reasons, if for no other - it's a very, very bad idea for a senior figure at an independent school to say anything that might be interpreted as suggesting something I regard as positive for our pupils should be denied to state school students!) but the element of coercion that compulsory education imposes, coupled with the limited or sometimes non-existent choice parents and children have within the state system troubles me on this issue. There are some children who should not be exposed to corporal punishment, and parents are, I believe, entitled to some say in whether or not it's used with their children. It's much harder to deal with those issues in the state system as compared to the private system.

That disclaimer out of the way... you're asking a very interesting question. I think it's undoubtedly true that over the last thirty years or so, there's been a shift in education in this country (and it seems to be true of a number of other countries as well) towards making education better for girls. This was undoubtedly well intentioned and was, overall, a good things. Girls were disadvantaged and steps were taken to address that disadvantage. The problem is that, as you say they didn't get the balance right. They assumed that improving things for girls would only have positive effects for girls and didn't consider that changing things might not be universally good. By many measures, girls had achieved equality in education by the mid-to-late 1980s, but the push to make things better for girls continued.

This has all been pretty well acknowledged at this point. It's not just my viewpoint. There's been a recent Parliamentary inquiry into the crisis in boys education, and some useful recommendations have come out of it.

One area where I think problems have developed is in the area of discipline, and that does include corporal punishment in some ways. Most Australian states had corporal punishment policies that distinguished between how girls and boys were punished in government schools - South Australia was the only exception. Once Equal Opportunities laws came in which required boys and girls to be treated in the same way, every state decided to apply their policy for girls to both girls and boys and banned corporal punishment (New South Wales did, briefly, reintroduce the cane for both boys and girls after its initial ban, but that's the only exception). That's how it happened in almost every case. The policies that were regarded as working for girls became the norm, boys were the ones who had to experience change.

I recently discovered a book from 1988 called A Fair Go For All: Guidelines for a Gender-Inclusive Curriculum which was produced by the Victorian Department of Education for guidance in their schools as to how to make them all gender-inclusive. Though it comes from five years after the ban on corporal punishment, the following excerpts, I feel, illustrate the issue of practices for girls on discipline becoming dominant for boys as well:

A non-sexist discipline policy combines a balanced attitude to the sexes and does not differentiate between them either in forms of discipline or the reasons for disciplining. In other words, the same behaviour is considered unacceptable and disciplined accordingly regardless of the sex of the student.

.....

In particular, as discusssed in Section 1 of these guidelines, schools need to take care that they do not differentiate between modes of discipline for girls and boys, or view behaviour on the part of girls more harshly than the same behaviour when performed by boys because it is seen to run counter to the expectations of feminine behaviour.

.....

Discipline policies have, in the past, reflected a masculine attitude of dealing physically with problem behaviour. They involved the infliction of pain and we basically confined to use on boys. With the requirement for the removal of corporal punishment, the major focus of discipline, nevertheless, sometimes still remains on the boys. Boys overwhelmingly receive teacher time and attention for disciplinary reasons. Gender differentiated forms of discipline tend to stress difference between the sexes usually with the view that females are weaker than males, and, therefore, need to be treated differently when it comes to discipline.

---

In simple terms, 'masculine attitudes' of dealing with misbehaviour were now unacceptable, and boys and girls had to be treated identically.

Not a good approach.

Whether corporal punishment is in use or not, boys and girls, in general, respond differently to different forms of discipline. If corporal punishment is available, this is one area where it's particularly true, but it's not the only one.

Some interesting views here after my efforts!

I ended up feeling sorry for Mr Ing, believe it or not. After all, I've been a life-long believer in girls and women being soundly spanked, but I've kept it out of my working life, or at least the workplace!

In his case, something just seems to've flipped. All the evidence suggested Bacons was not chock-full of canings before 1970, and the number of boys being beaten at the height of things is also quite astounding.

I was interested in the veteran teacher's words that staff were still dealing with a lot of matters in class prior to 1970 to keep the pressure off him. So, was it badly-behaved all along, or did Mr Ing feel his authority was threatened by this?

Doc may have some views on that bit-different system or not. Would you, Doc, have regarded it as failure if senior teachers like yourself couldn't sort out a great deal of trouble and screen the Head from it, unless it was the most serious stuff that he had to know about?

Whatever, it does show that Headmasters COULD have done what they liked without let or hindrance. As long as the legal view was that it was just and reasonable chastisement, which basically meant keep it to a maximum of 6 and NOT on the bare bottom, please!

And NO, I still shan't contact Leah-even I have my principals, A_L, plus Sarah's Christmas presents included a new 35cm aluminium saucepan, and her left arm is now nearly back to full elevation, so I'm not risking one wrapped round my bonce on the blind side, even for Leah!


Steve M

Hi Steve. Nasty things, those aluminium saucepans!

Much as I'd like to know Leah's side of the story in more detail, and indeed more of what went on at Bacon's, I'm glad we agree on not contacting her. Now if she happened to post here, that would be a different matter, but Carol Vorderperson still hasn't responded to my appeal in one of your recent threads despite her 'retirement' and I doubt if we'll hear from Leah either!

I do wonder if the Bacon's punishment books survived, and if they did if they'll ever emerge from the archives. Very probably they were quietly destroyed or 'lost' when it became clear that as regards use of the cane Bacon's wasn't quite your typical secondary modern.

All told, an interesting exercise and an excellent effort on the part of yourself, Jack and several others. However, I don't suppose many people will have shifted their stance on the issue of how common school CP of girls really was by very much. I've moved a bit I think, and I shan't be quite so ready to do my Lotta impersonation if someone trips over my preconceptions in future.

Doc may have some views on that bit-different system or not. Would you, Doc, have regarded it as failure if senior teachers like yourself couldn't sort out a great deal of trouble and screen the Head from it, unless it was the most serious stuff that he had to know about?

It's a difficult question because it sounds like a rather alien concept to me. I've never worked under a Headmaster who expected to be screened from things in that type of way and I'm not sure a person who would ask that or need that should be in that position. In my school, it's my role as Deputy Headmaster to be the final authority on virtually all disciplinary matters, freeing up the Headmaster from such duties, and so I don't pass on much to him about these things, but I'm not actually shielding him - I'd have no hesitation speaking to him on it if it seemed appropriate, and he'd have no hesitation in being told.

Would I regard it as a failure if I couldn't sort out trouble and wanted his help? No, nobody can except to be 100% effective in 100% of cases and while I'm an extremely experienced, and I think, extremely competent teacher, so is he - if I can't find a solution, I'll seek out advice and ideas from anybody I think might be able to help - my Headmaster, certainly, and some other teachers who are, at least technically, my subordinates. For that matter, I routinely seek advice on all sorts of issues from even junior members of staff. Any teacher can have a good idea and I find junior staff are quite often aware of things I haven't heard about yet.

That said, senior staff in any school should be capable of handling just about any issue by themselves that is in the capability of a school to handle. If they can't, it's likely to be sheer luck if the Headmaster can come up with an idea they haven't tried - unless you're working in a system where he has powers other teachers don't.

Hi, Everyone!!!!

Jack, here, who started this thread with reference to Leah Ashcroft being caned by Mr Ing at Bacons
With response to Alan Turling, 'another Lurker and Steve M, who I thank, kindly, for his wonderful research and fabulous work. Well done, that man, it was great and fully appreciated!

I think all of us together on this thread must pull together and get as much info as we can about Bacons and it's caning policy on girls. But not just Bacons, but other schools, too!!! Why not 'He who dares wins!

This part is for 'Happy Lurker,' mainly. He asked if I had accessed my files on Mr Ing getting suspended Well here is one:

This is from The Daily Telegraph


Dated: 4th October 1984.

Headed: Suspended Head in Caning Row to Retire

By Sarah Thompson
(Daily Telegraph Education Staff)

TEXT :

The headmaster of Londons most notorious school in the eyes of the anti
-caning lobby, is to retire at Christmas after 18 months suspension on a full salary of £17,000.
The governors of the Bacon Church of England comprehensive in Rotherhithe, suspended Mr Wilfred Ing in March last year.
This followed a row over statements he made to the Press about the Rev. Tim Wooderson, a governor, who had represented the family of a child allegedly beaten at the school.
After negotiations with the National Association of Headteachers, the governors and the Southwark Diocesan Education Board agreed to suspend Mr Ing, headmaster for 32 years at the 1,000 pupil school, on full pay until he retired.
Meanwhile, an acting head has taken over his duties and the Inner London Authority has advertised the post.
In 1978, an ILEA survey referred to a school where 689 beatings were carried out in one year. It was later found to be Bacons School.
ILEA banned corporal punishment in its own schools shortly afterwards but has no power to do so in church schools.
But Mr David Hart, general secretary of The Headteachers Association, said yesterday that differences of opinion between Mr Ing and ILEA representatives on the governing body, eventually led to Mr Ings suspension.
We defended Mr Ing to the hilt, he added.
Mr Peter Ward, deputy director of Southwark Diocesan Education Board, said, Corporal punishment started to reduce while Mr Ing was there and is now being phased out. '
*****************END OF REPORT************************

Well there you have it. So, as you can see, Mr Ing was head for 32 years. To be at a school for that long, he must have been good at his job, thus running a successful school, and was surely immensely popular. I therefore, agree with Steve M, in that, I feel very sorry for Mr Ing at the way his career ended. His illness obviously contributed to his illogical decision making and the increase in canings, along with the well documented mood swings. In another report that I cannot locate at the moment, it stated that he lost the support of his staff. The pupil that was at the centre of this row was an Indian boy.
And thinking about it, what kind of rash decision was it when Mr Ing caned the entire 5th & 6th form after assembly because both forms were laughing at first formers singing a hymn on the stage (see that post on Bacons friends reunited message board)

To confirm what another poster to this thread said, that although Bacons was a within the ILEA area, it was a church school and the ILEA ban on corporal punishment did not apply
I reserve a wry smile for Mr Peter Ward at the end of the Daily Telegraph report, who concluded that during Mr Ings tenure, corporal punishment had started to reduce!
What with 689 canings in one school year? Now just who was he trying to kid?
One wonders if Leah Ashcroft was one of the last girls Mr Ing caned. Also, she would have been at the school when Mr Ing got his March 1983 suspension. And ending on the gorgeous Leah Ashcroft. I see that on the Bacons photos section on Friends Reunited, Leah has added a colour version of her photo. WOW! What a stunning looking girl.


More to follow..
Thanks to all the respondents to this thread
Jack

JACK

Totally unconnected with all my research-in 1983, aged 31, I was happily involved with a 16 yr old girl.

I'd say, looking at the colour photo, I wish I had a time machine in this study right now, 'cos you know where I'd be heading! A definite BABE! Maybe I was with the wrong nymphette in 1983!!!


Steve M

Hi, Steve M,

.............and the thought of her being caned is too much, as well!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks

Jack

JACK

A bit bewitching-best thing I've seen regarding school since PJ Sholes in Rock N Roll High School 30 years ago. The opening sequence of her & her fellow girls dancing in the gym to the Ramones is sheer poetry.

Iron self-control having to be exercised here to stay off the e-mail to her!


Steve M

Hi Jack, thank you for the additional information regarding Mr Ing's retirement, and for starting what is proving to be a most interesting thread.

I am amused at you designating me 'Happy Lurker'. Yes, by the standards of some of my friends and associates I think I am fairly happy. For some time I've had a post in mind on the theme of happiness. I might even get round to it eventually!

As a Telegraph reader I should have seen the report on Mr Ing. Sadly in 1984 I was working long days during the week and often right through the weekend, so there wasn't much time for reading, newspapers or otherwise.

You clearly have material filed of considerable interest to the earnest seekers after truth like myself who frequent this estimable Forum. Does your collection only encompass Bacon's or is it fairly comprehensive within the field of school CP? In either case I look forward with interest to your future contributions.

The 689 canings in one year quoted in the Daily Telegraph article does seem a formidable total. However, it matches pretty well with the London Evening Standard article of 20 October 1978 available on the Corpun site, which I linked earlier in this thread. That claimed 400-500 canings of boys and 204 canings of girls in a particular year, which, if as according to the Telegraph the ILEA survey was in 1978, was presumably pre 1978. Indeed, we may be able to say, combining the two reports, that in that year, possibly 1977, there were 485 canings of boys and 204 canings of girls, giving 689 canings in all.

According to Steve's researches it was 1970 when Mr Ing announced his 'cane on the bottom' policy for girls, and that more girls should be sent to him for punishment. Presumably he was already caning a proportion of the boys, so with a caning workload like that there's little wonder that, again according to Steve's researches, he got arthritis in his caning hand. Such devotion to duty often comes with a price to pay, but at least he was able to keep up his high standards by developed a powerful wrist-flick with the other hand to impart more pain!

For the sake of completeness, a couple more quoted newspaper reports concerning Bacon's. I discovered them when searching what I term my archive for something else. Archive is a misnomer really, it's just a folder with a huge amount of junk and the odd useful item. I think, though I can't be sure, that these may have come from the sadly now departed SF&R thread on Network54. I wouldn't have been likely to say 'sadly' in the latter days of that forum, but censorship is always odious - unless it's applied to fun posters of course! In these extracts the paragraphing is my own as they were saved as .txt files.

EVENING STANDARD, 30 October 1978

GIRL WHO'S AFRAID OF GOING TO SCHOOL
They are waiting to cane me if I go back - I can't stand it again' By Sue Reid

Teenager Sue Olds will not go back to Bacon's Comprehensive in London's docklands because a cane is waiting for her. Fourteen year old Sue faces a dose of the cane before she is allowed back into class at the 1,000 pupil Church of England school - revealed recently as a 'top-caning' comprehensive. And today after three weeks' suspension for truancy she said: "I cannot go back there. I have been warned I will be caned and I cannot stand it again. "I want to go to another school. They have caned me 6 or 7 times at Bacons - once in front of some boys - and every time I get ill."

Bacons came out top of a survey on caning by the Inner London Education Authority. It showed the school caned a pupil once every two hours. More than 200 caning incidents on girls were recorded at Bacons in one school year. A fifth of the girls were caned and 26 received it three or more times.

Sue confirmed today there was regular caning at the school. "One girl has been caned every day. When I have been caned my hands and thumb have been badly bruised and I nearly always cry. "After I played truant I was told I would be caned. I refused and now I have been suspended." An ILEA spokesman said today that corporal punishment was a "confidential matter between the school and home".

If correct the above seems to indicate that Sue Olds was caned on the hand rather than the bottom, despite the hints in Private Eye mentioned by Jack earlier in this thread.

EVENING STANDARD, 13 September 1979

CANED GIRLS STORM FACES SCHOOL by Bruce Kemble

AN INQUIRY will be urged today into a London comprehensive school after a report that girls there are caned regularly. School inspectors say the Bacon's Church of England co-educational school in Bermondsey, South-East London caned one girl in six. Now the governors of other London schools are to demand an investigation by the Inner London Education Authority.

The report, published today by ILEA's own school inspectors, says 18 per cent (18%) of girl pupils at Bacon's School received corporal punishment on a total of 204 occasions in 1976-77. "During the two terms of 1977-8 17.4 per cent (17%) of its girls had received corporal punishment on a total of 150 occasions." Yet more than half (a total of 57 per cent) of the pupils interviewed by the inspectors attended schools which had not caned any pupils in the period studied.

Mr Wilfred Ing, headmster of Bacon's School, refused to comment on the disclosures. Last night angry parent Mr Peter Scott said: "It's one of the best schools in South London because of the discipline. Most of the parents have consented to the use of corporal punishment."

So it looks as if the school year 1976/77 was the year when girls were caned 204 times. Interestingly, if canings per term were pro rata, the total for 1977/78 might have been even higher. There are said to have been 150 canings of girls in the first two terms of that year, indicating a possible total of 225 for the year!

A_L

Well, that's what I call justification-keeping that archive has come in handy. Wonder if Sue Olds was going to get it from Mr Ings, though? There's evidence on the various FR sites of Bacons that senior teachers were caning on the hands for girls in the 70's.

You also have to wonder if the journos got hold of a punishment book which didn't specify hands or bottom and assumed it must be hands all the time for girls. You can bet someone put the words in her mouth.

And, from all these statistics, I'm surprised Private Eye didn't did Ralph Steadman to do one of his ersatz Bateman cartoons:--

"The only girl in her year who WASN'T caned at Bacons"!!


Steve M

Hi, 'Another Lurker' (Sorry! i do not know your name!!!)
This is Jack SNAP! You beat me to it!!!!!!
To add to the newspaper piece I added on Saturday, I was just about to post to the thread those two very newspaper clippings you have added today So thanks for that. Cheers!
With ref to Sue Olds. Yes, indeed, 'The Evening Standard' cutting with Sue Olds saying she has been caned seven times and cannot return to school, clearly shows that she was caned on the hands. She mentions the bruising to thumb and fingers. But the same girl gave a TV interview to a BBC London early evening news programme and it seems, from various sourses who saw that news item (I did not see it..DRAT!!!), that she was trying to hide her blushes about getting it on the bottom and coupled with Private Eye's research (whatever that was)that thay had uncovered positive vibes that pointed to girls getting caned on the bottom. But with both of theaforementioned, nothing is for certain

But now, of course, we have Leah Ashcroft on Friends Reunited. So now waht are we to think?

Thanks to all the contributors, thus far Keep them coming!

Jack

Hi, Steve M

I think you'd be OK writing to Leah Ashcroft

She can only ignore it if she wants to. But HARK! I have heard from another poster on another forum, that he wrote to her and she did write back.

Interesting

Jack

JACK

Looks like someone will be shedding more light on the subject soon, then!

I hope our other Forumite has asked the lovely Leah to post-that WOULD be a coup!


Steve M

Hi, Steve M
The issue, too, is, that if girls were caned on the bottom on occasion at Bacons, then with them wearing that seemingly horrendous, long heavy tartan kilt, it would without question have to be raised!!! And that issue is what is killing me! That lovely, blonde Leah and the issue of did Mr Ing ask her to raise her skirt? He simply must have done, I would have thought. Otherwise, Leah would not have felt a thing.

What a great thread this is!
Jack

Hi Jack. Names first, in view of your initial comment above. I started on this estimable Forum as 'A Lurker', which seemed appropriate, because I mainly lurked, with a very occasional post. Then I was made aware that there had previously been an A Lurker on the forum so I switched to Another_Lurker. Since then I've started to post very frequently, so 'lurker' isn't really appropriate, plus there have been a whole lot of new contributors with 'lurker' somewhere in their nom de plume. I ought to change it, but the regulars seem to have got used to it, and most don't bother with the 'Sunday' name, they just call me A L or similar. It does seem to antagonise some occasional contributors though. I assume they don't know what a lurker is in the web sense and associate it with dark alleys and hooded figures.

You say:

they had uncovered positive vibes that pointed to girls getting caned on the bottom. But with both of the aforementioned, nothing is for certain

But now, of course, we have Leah Ashcroft on Friends Reunited. So now what are we to think?

Well my guess is that despite Mr Ing's 1970 request that unless there were good reasons to the contrary girls should be caned on the bottom, many of his teachers continued to cane on the hands. Steve says above that there is FR evidence of this. We know that Leah Ashcroft was caned by Mr Ing, and on the bottom, or at least that's what she implies. However Sue Olds was probably caned by said hand caning teachers rather than by Mr Ing. The reference to 'in front of some boys' suggests a classroom environment, or at least the general school environment. I don't suppose Mr Ing would have wheeled in a few lads to watch him cane a girl!

I don't go for Steve's theory regarding misread punishment books, they wouldn't have been available to the press, or that words were put into Sue Old's mouth. This girl had a grievance. At 14 she'd be quite old enough to realise the implications of girls being caned on the bottom and how this might help her case and she'd have used it if she could. She was also a girl who was truanting, and hence no angel. I don't think embarrassment as a result of telling her story would have been a problem for her, she was willing to be interviewed by both press and TV, and was quite savvy enough to drop in the bit about being caned in front of boys to help her case.

For the same reasons I don't think she suspected that she was due to be caned by Mr Ing on her return, at least not on the bottom. If she was due to be caned by Mr Ing, and if he always caned on the bottom, I think she'd have said so. It would have certainly gained her some sympathy and she would have known that. Indeed, and I'm playing the devil's advocate here, sadly we may possibly be looking at evidence that even Mr Ing didn't always cane on the bottom. You'd certainly expect that in the circumstances, bad record, bringing the school into disrepute, it would have been a headmaster's caning on her return, but as noted, if she'd thought this would be on the bottom I'm pretty sure she'd have said so to the media.

I rest my case m'lud!

Hi Steve. I don't think Jack is saying someone here has contacted Ms Ashcroft. He refers to another forum.

Hi Jack. If you're getting informaton on the topic elsewhere I think, as a habitué of this estimable Forum you have a duty to tell the rest of us:

1. What that information is.
2. Where you found it!

Also please do not go on about kilts raised for punishment, long or short, tartan or otherwise, because:

1. Skirts or kilts don't necessarily have to be raised - see Soooze's posting in this thread on January 5 2009, at 23:14, where she indicates that she was protected by somewhat more than a thick skirt for most of her canings and, in her words, 'Can assure you all my canings-four-hurt like hell'. The problem with skirts or kilts and caning, so I am reliably informed by sources far more expert than me, is when the skirt or kilt stands proud of the bottom and thus slows the cane before impact. This is quite likely to happen with a short kilt, but much less likely with a long kilt, the weight of which would tend to mould it to the figure.
   
   
2. Some of us here are getting on a bit and, due to untoward influences during our schooldays can become excited at the thought of kilts or skirts raised for punishment. When you're getting on a bit excitement = danger!

A_L

Great post-I think you have pulled a rabbit out there. Jack's original post has rather taken off & he did ask way back if we reckoned Leah was the exception rather than the rule in being asked to bend over rather than hold here hand out.

The question is whether Sue had been dealt with previously by him, although even if not, it is by no means impossible that he didn't always cane on bottoms with girls.

If that was the way it is, then I sincerely hope the motive for having them bend over was purely the severity of the offence. You are more statistically-based than I, but even I can see it would be dandy to get hold of a punishment book and find out a bit more about which girls were caned.

Unfortunately, we'd then have to ask them for their school-age photos, just to ensure even the shot-putters amongst girls were being asked to bend over as well as the absolute babes like Leah. And no gentleman could do that.

The other thing is the sheer quantity of canings per se. Bacons sprawls over 3 sites & I suspect its' total roll was around 2,500 at most. If that's the case, then over a quarter received CP in any given year, probably more-that is sheer bloody insanity. Didn't someone bother to think if it's always like this either the entire school should be expelled & sent to Borstal or maybe it's long since lost any deterrent value?

The benefits of hindsight! Talking of which, I suspect the sight of Leah's hind quarters in a moulded kilt(you are dead right there, I believe)is what Jack needs to think about-unfortunately, Jack, it's now 25+ years & one husband,two teenage kids too late to rub it better for her.


Steve M

Posted on Saturday by Alison Cousins.

Went on a camping trip and we let a stink bomb off on the coach. It really stunk! Eggs and Cabbage water flavour! Miss Davenport went BESERK!!! One teacher told me I was "a nearly pupil," and that I was a member of 'The Wandering Tribe' because I was always wandering about in class!!!! Alison has potential but never quite fulfils it!!! said one end of term report. I recall somebody nicking the shower heads on another trip away.
I was a bit of gal and a live wire at school, and I bet I was the most whacked girl they ever had. During my time I got caned five times and the slipper once. Caned twice by Mr Ings, twice by Drac and once by Miss Davenport! Miss Evans said I was hopeless on one occasion. But HEY! I have done OK. Nice job, nice house, great kids and a loving husband!!! And after all that, I expect my kids to do well at school!!!!!! Ironic, eh?

Look at the photo, too ...

ALAN

I did read the profile before going on to the photo.

Honest!

And now we need to find out if another little babe had to bend over!


Steve M

Hi Steve. Re my posts above, I always like to build my hopes up, and Jack's talk of skirts being lifted was getting me quite excited! However, one has to process the information as one finds it. I don't think though, that there is any indication that not many girls there were caned on the bottom. I'm sure lots were. I just don't think Sue Olds was, or that she suspected that she might be.

As regards the punishment books. These often don't survive, being quietly lost, or nicked by souvenier seekers. If they do survive they go into archives with a 'No public release for x years' tag, where x can, I think, range up to 50 years with some local authorities. I keep meaning to research this, but I never get time. I don't think there is a mandated UK standard for this, I think each authority makes its own rules. If anyone has any firm information on this I'd be very pleased if they'd post it.

In the case of Bacon's in the period we're considering it was a C of E school and it's possible that even if the punishment books survived they finished up in diocesan archives. Equally, it's possible they may only have had a 30 year or less embargo, and some of the interesting ones from the 70s may be sitting in a publicly accessible archive, open to anyone who wants to see them. The thought intrigues, but I seldom get to London!

I think you may be mistaken about the roll at Bacon's being 2,500. The Sue Olds newspaper extract above refers to it as 'the 1,000 pupil Church of England school' and I think that's about right for the caning era. The multiplicity of sites on FR arises, I think, because the current Bacon's, an academy school, is on a new site, and I suspect the old school had two addresses (quite common with big schools with multiple entrances, my own was in that category).

In Suffolk the period is 50 years and a number of punishment books do survive and these include church schools.

Interestingly the index often gives details of ones that they hold but on seeing the last date you see its last date is under 50 years ago. There is one girls high school for which such a book exists

I'm not so sure that punishment books are archived for long periods in Australia and some may still reside with the schools.

There are sites, one being a high school in Canberra where events in the register are referred to by current staff as an interesting illustration of school life in a bygone era.

I have come across comparative records over the period from the 50's to abolition that show the number of strokes for the same offence, eg truancy, roughly halved over that period if not more.

No wonder educationists were labelling caning ineffective...whilst at the same time also labelling it barbaric. Seems to me they can't have it both ways.

To the best of my knowledge, state school punishment books in Australia are restricted for twenty five years from closure. Interesting number that - as it's now just over 25 years since state school corporal punishment ended in Victoria.

You can find out if they exist, quite easily.

As I want to avoid doing real work at the moment, let's see what I can track down. You said you were in WA?

Punishment books are archived for:

PITHARA SCHOOL
BOULDER INTERMEDIATE SCHOOL
OAKFORD SCHOOL [- rather interesting this one. There are two punishment books for Oakford - 1945-1969, and the 11th October 1982 which apparently contains only one entry. Complete speculation but I have an image of my head of some naughty child whose crime was so heinous they had to reintroduce corporal punishment on one and only one occasion... that book is restricted though 25 years have passed]
PERTH JUNIOR TECHNICAL SCHOOL
GOLDSWORTHY PRIMARY SCHOOL
RAWLINNA PRIMARY SCHOOL
BEACON PRIMARY SCHOOL
SUNDAY ISLAND SCHOOL
BIRRALEE PRIMARY SCHOOL
ATTADALE PRIMARY SCHOOL
TUART HILL JUNIOR PRIMARY SCHOOL
DRAKESBROOK SCHOOL
WAROONA SCHOOL
WAROONA JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL
WAROONA DISTRICT HIGH SCHOOL
MINNIVALE SCHOOL
GUILDFORD PRIMARY SCHOOL
MOUNT MANYPEAKS SCHOOL

OK, I am now bored enough to get back to work. Bear in mind, these are gathered from less than three pages of listings - there are dozens of such pages. Hundreds of archived punishment books. And most are over 25 years old. A lot are already on open access, others (generally ones that closed in the early 1980s) are restricted but would probably be opened by an inquiry, if anybody wanted to check them out.

>>>>OAKFORD SCHOOL [- rather interesting this one. There are two punishment books for Oakford - 1945-1969, and the 11th October 1982 which apparently contains only one entry.

Talk about a one-teacher school (common in the Aussie bush) that must have been a one-student school..lol. Oakford is only being seriously settled now and has only recently been included in the fringe of the ever expanding metro area of Perth.

Thanks Doctor, but most of those names were country based. I may try to track down my own records for a bit of nostagia. Where are they being held?

As I said, these are just the first ones that came up in the list when I was searching.

The State Records Office.

http://www.sro.wa.gov.au/

To find out what records exist, use AEON

http://aeon.sro.wa.gov.au/Investigator/investigator.htm

If you put the name of your school in, it will tell you if any records are held on the school in the archives.

Make sure you look for the details for the specific record you are interested in - the series of 'Punishment Books' are listed as restricted, which can be misleading - you need to check if a particular book is open access or not.

Thanks Doctor, I'll follow those matters up.

I notice that one school you listed is Perth Junior Technical School. Perth Tech School was the forerunner of TAFEWA (a system of polytechnics, for the English members) so you would not expect students to be subject to school discipline there.

However, a Canberra High School reported having had older students doing technical subjects within its precincts. They were of driving age because one student recieved six "cuts" for taking two girls into Civic (town centre) in his car.

I assume, therefore, that students up to a certain age in the technical education system were subject to the cane? Is this correct and can you add any detail to my humble assumptions?

I assume, therefore, that students up to a certain age in the technical education system were subject to the cane? Is this correct and can you add any detail to my humble assumptions?

I don't know Western Australia's state education system well at all, so all I can say is based on my knowledge of Victoria's system and there or may not be relevant similarities.

In Victoria until the late 1980s or early 1990s, we had a system of 'Technical Schools' that operated alongside our 'High Schools'. They catered for roughly the same age group of students - 12-17 or so - but were intended to provided a more vocational form of education in comparison to the High Schools academic focus. And they were subject to the same rules on discipline as other state schools so until 1983, corporal punishment could be used on boys attending a Tech school.

The same Labor government that 'reformed' education by banning the strap, also 'reformed' education by shutting down nearly all of the tech schools. Quite a few of them were forced into mergers with local high schools, which were rebadged as 'Secondary Colleges'. A few techs managed to successfully fight for their survival on the basis of their excellent results, while a few high schools managed to retain the name 'High School' in their names as a recognition of their history, but most became secondary colleges.

Unlike the abolition of corporal punishment, the government has accepted it made a mistake in shutting down the techs and they are beginning the process of opening new ones.

Techs often had a reputation for being rough schools, that required very hard discipline to maintain order and some of them seem to have deserved that reputation. During my days as a student teacher, I was sent to do teaching practice at a tech, and all day long you heard the sounds of the strap echoing around the corridors. I also witnessed girls being strapped there, in contravention of government regulations, and I was given a strap and told to use it if I needed to, which again, was against regulations. I didn't use it. I didn't use it, partly because I didn't believe in breaking rules, partly because I was only a little older than some of the boys there and while I think I could have taken them down in a fight, if a toffee nosed ex-Geelong Grammar uni student had tried to belt them, I reckon he'd have had to take them down in a fight.

And when the local tech near the school I teach at was forced to stop using the strap at the end of 1982, their boys went feral very quickly. It became hell for our juniors for a while as they were constantly being bullied and picked on in the street, and then our seniors started retaliating to protect the juniors - they seemed to get it under control again after a few months, but for a while there, it was Lord of the Flies time. That's one that didn't survive the reforms at all.

On the other hand, many people have also said that the techs had less discipline problems in many ways because the hands on lessons they offered appealed to boys who would have just been bored out of the skulls in a more academic school. They knew good results at tech, gave them a good chance at an apprenticeship and they wanted that. And some tech schools achieved excellent results and not just in the technical subjects. By the time they were shut down, some were in the 90th percentile of academic performance as well.

We also have and had TAFEs and Institutes and a whole swag of different vocational colleges aimed at adults.

The very efficient but seldom functioning Network54 search engine is actually working tonight. Since a recurrance of this situation is impossible to predict I have selflessly laboured on long past bedtime to see what gems the archives of this estimable Forum yield concerning Bacon's School. There is the odd absolute corker, but delicacy compels me to omit them. In any case, credulous as I am, even I can see that they are untrue!

Some of what survives is below. If any of the Friends Reunited items are still there, please forgive me. The ludicrous and clunky design of the FR site appals me, and I rapidly become suicidal when I attempt to use it. Why, for instance, does it insist on adding me to every school I visit unless I remember to subtract myself, and why, when looking at school photographs, does it return you to the base school page instead of the photo summary page after every photograph. And as for the hassle you've got to go to should you wish to download any of the photographs, even if you're on them ............

Anyway, from the archives here:

FR items for Bacons Mixed, London

Karen Baterip - 1974
Miss Paige/Mr Paddock - Miss Paige used to terrify me, she was the English teacher at Delaford Road, she was so strict I`m Sure she practiced caning lessons on the quiet, and did she hurt when that stick touched flesh. Mr Paddock was the drama teacher who used to clap his hands and say freeze.

Zoe Marshall - 1975
The Cane - Hi, I dont suppose anybody remembers me but I have a question, I was caned by the Headmaster in 1973, can you tell me his name? I have forgotten it, and also I was caned on my bottom, I have often wondered if I am the only girl who was caned on the bum, it really hurt.

Perspicacious contributor to this forum, C Nikel, said of that one:

"Seriously, could there be a girl in the UK who was caned on the bum at school - on only one occasion and very painfully - and who can't remember the name of the person who did it?"

and another contributor, going by the name of 'Anonymous' said on January 29 2004:

"When I was training as a teacher, I was sent to Bacon's on teaching practice. The school was on a split site near the Elephant and Castle in South London. The question of discipline was raised as there were frequent complaints of "fings ain't what they used to be" since caning was abolished the previous year. I can confirm that girls WERE caned by a male deputy head (I cannot tremember his name but he taught CDT and had to wear orthopedic footwear - clearly far too much time spent licking his boots to ensure a good report of my placement!). He told me himself that it was given pretty freely for things like spitting and chewing gum but only ever on the hand. Also, as far as I recall, the head teacher was a woman at the time.

As a footnote, I took a look at the FR site and the claim by a girl that she was caned on the bottom by a headmaster whose name she forgets is a Lotta Nonsense."


Janice Newland - 1977
Miss Milson - Domestic Science Teacher. Got caned by her on several occasions and she was always nice to you afterwards, talking to you about everything and all you wanted to do was run off and cry!!
The Cane - Everyone remembers the cane but do you remember the black bag it was in? Mr Ing kept his up his sleeve in that black gown he wore and during assembly when the teachers sat on the stage you could see it just poking out enough to give you a fright!

Doesn't sound like any of the canes we discussed in earlier posts here then, unless Mr Ing had very long arms!

Tracey Burgess - 1978
Miss Paige - I remember Miss Paige quite well, got the cane by her many a time, and she hurt! my fingers would sting so bad, she would really put her heart and soul in it!

Linda O`Loughnane - 1978
(Message Board) The Cane - I had the cane in the 2nd or 3rd year by the needlework teacher - can't remember her name. It was on the hand 3 times. I believe it was for fighting.

Not from FR, and sadly unverified, a contributor here called Colin submitted this on March 20 2003. Note the reference to 'across the back of her skirt', however, this is a little earlier than the period we've been discussing!

"The Headmaster at Bacons school certainly did cane girls on their bottoms. I worked with a lady who was a pupil there when they first started taking girls back in the 1960's. She said the standard punishment was 6 strokes, 2 on each hand and 2 on the bum, (across the back of her skirt). However she also told me that if a girl cried hard enough after the 2 on each hand he would sometimes let her off the 2 on her bum."

Lotus Blossom said here on March 4 2003:

"I understand that at Bacons School the canes were kept in the school secretarys office in a large cupboard labelled CANES."

On February 16 2003 Paul Jackson wrote here:

"With reference To Janice Newland on 'Friends Reunited,'
I emailed her regading the canings she received at Bacons. I hardly went overboard. As yet, she has failed to respond. If there are people here who have written to Janice, who seem to be suggesting that she is willing to talk, then what did she say?

Looking at the Bacons posts on FR, and other research I have conducted over the years, it does seem that girls were caned on the hand only. But it is my belief that Mr Ings, the infamous headmaster at that time, was responsible for many of those canings."

And needless to say, later that same day 'Janice Newland' duly replied:

"Why are people from here so keen to fill my Inbox?

I've had so many emails asking about canings at Bacon's School that I'm seriously thinking of charging £10 per reply.

What I want to know is what's so interesting about it?"

At least none of us did that to Steve, but then he wasn't daft enough to say who, if anybody, he'd emailed.

And here's one for Steve, on January 26 2003 contributor 'Proud Member' wrote:

"This is only very slightly off-topic. I have just discovered that an ex-pupil of Bacons Boys School is Tommy I wanna be a all-round hentertainer Steele. Listen to his 1957 recording of A Handful of Songs and wonder why corporal punishment was abolished."

As I don't have any Tommy Steele recordings, or indeed any recordings at all, I can't comment, but I'm sure Steve will have the disk in question!

Oh dear, the search engine seems to have run out of hits, however, enough there to add to the general state of confusion on the subject!

And just a very relatively brief one this, honest! Back on 7 January in this thread I said with regard to canes on eBay:

Before anyone asks, no, I'm not buying 'genuine' school canes as a hedge against the ongoing financial armageddon, although I have to say that given the price this one fetched, it might be a good idea. I just search 'other interests' sometimes when eBay fails to yield anything in the areas for which I buy on there."

As far as I recall the cane I was referring to there fetched about £45. However, despite the UK government and the Bank of England colluding to produce zero returns on conventional financial investments here, the trend in cane prices is ever upwards. Have a look at this auction! Yes, that is £117, and still over a day to go as of posting this. No provenance, no nothing, just a cane!

Think what the pensioned off canes from your school must be worth, Doctor Dominum, with a guarantee that they've actually been used to beat errant schoolboys! And if one had a cane used by Mr Ing, certified to have beaten schoolgirls on the bottom, skirted or otherwise, the sky must be the limit! Wait though, another possibility occurs to me to account for the high price. If it's you pushing up the bidding Steve, I'm sorry but there's no way you're going to get it delivered in time for Friday!

>>>>>>As far as I recall the cane I was referring to there fetched about £45. However, despite the UK government and the Bank of England colluding to produce zero returns on conventional financial investments here, the trend in cane prices is ever upwards. Have a look at this auction! Yes, that is £117, and still over a day to go as of posting this. No provenance, no nothing, just a cane! >>>>>>>

I should imagine the maker would be impressed to see his cane resold at several times the original price. Senior canes can be purchased from Coventry Canes for much less than that! Oh well..good luck to the seller.

On a related note I visited a museum complex today that included a tradional schoolroom and the cane was of the type used on my tender person back in the sixties, a standardised piece of straight lacquered golden brown rattan, about 34 inches long, with two blunt ends, and a little thicker than canes usually used in the scene - certainly capable of making one mend one's ways.

Usually these display canes are little more than bits of sorry bamboo that may have seen past service as garden stakes, but this one was a genuine item and had a catalogue number.

A chat with staff, later, about the museum in general(another interest of mine) revealed the name of a Board member known to me - a woman with a background preretirement as a school principal.

Whether this cane has actually beaten any bottoms or hands I can't tell, but I'd place a bet on the strict old dragon having insisted on getting the genuine article for HER museum and having had the affrontery to request one from a school.

I didn't think about lifting it for later sale on ebay, A_L, I was trained all too well back in the sixties..ouch!

Hi A_L

A bit of research shows that most of the Bacons archive post has been butchered whilst "off-air".

I also found though that the Smithills Grammar skirt-removing head in 1962 post is still there.

And my ex-colleague's place, Bootle High, is bereft of any sort of entries from pupils who were there from 1981-1986, which is when she was there. If her stories were correct, there should have been nothing but! There's one entry about girls being spared being sent for caning & that from someone there in the early 70's.

It looks as if anything on the front page or multiple posts together regarding caning by a named Head or teacher has been blitzed. Doesn't mean that what you saved as Bacons' archive was authentic, as we both know, but it is possible someone pushed the panic, or rather the delete, button!

All my posts re my teachers at MGS remain, just shortened, which in the case of the Bernard Moody person/thing is a shame, as it had a really super sting in the tail. I never mentioned the caning in it, by the way.

Wonder, as Smithills GS as our lady attended it is now either Smithills Moor GS or just plain Smithills School, whether schools that still retain their identity currently exerted any pressure?


Steve M

Hi Steve. I really don't know how you get anywhere at all with FR. I must get you to give me some lessons some time. As I've said elsewhere, I find it just about the most frustrating site on the web, and I'm certainly no web novice! None of the links do what I expect them to do, it's ludicrously slow and as for its design .......

Your comments are very interesting. I had assumed the mass excision of CP references shortly after ITV? brought it would have been a one-off computer program. But then maybe not, I can't recall how long they were down, but seem to remember it was some weeks, which would have allowed time for it to be done manually. Very expensive though. Your observations certainly seem to support the latter. I think it would have been difficult to write a program to produce the type of cull you observed.

The survival of the Smithills Grammar skirt-removing head post is interesting Despite the apparently fairly light hearted wording possibly the victim of that caning actually felt so strongly about the incident that she went back in and replaced the post after the purge - although of course it would have a recent date in that case.

2008 appears to have been the 50th anniversary of schools on the Smithills site, and a special page on the current school's website indicates several name changes, Smithills Grammar School, Smithills High School, Smithills Moor Grammar School and Smithills School. These appear to be listed alphabetically, and I don't think many high Schools switched back to grammar schools, so they may nor be in order, although Smithills School is the current school. Possibly, as you suggest, when FR came along and the skirt removal post was made the then school wasn't too worried about protecting the reputation of the grammar school.

There's also an interesting page of reminiscences of the various schools. No mention of Mr Clements though. However it does include an old chemistry lesson joke I remember well: I don't care what you do as long as it's on an asbestos mat. Those were the days!

The alterations to your own posts are interesting. Did they just have the last bit chopped off to make them all the same length, which would suggest a computer program, or were they carefully edited to remove any critical bits while preserving at least some meaning, which would indicate a human hand had been at work?

Hi, All,

You are dead right. YEP! Another ex-Bacons pupil has posted on Friends Reunited. I never spotted that one, so well done to the poster who saw it. Alison Cousins. She owns up to five canings Unreal.

To the poster who asked, yes, I do know the other girl, Leah Ashcroft, did respond to an email sent to her, but I have no idea what her response was. A guy on another forum said he had got a reply from her.

Could be worth a punt in writing to both ladies. Not sure I have the nerve, to be frank.

I have to say that the post added by Alison Cousins is hilarious! Stink bombs 'n' all!!!!

Love it

Jack

At the risk of being a miserable old git.
I hope that Bacons memories do not get hijacked by unfunny fun posters.
Whatever happens we at least all know it was a CP school par excellence.
Worthy of Australia....

Hi Mimi, I'm afraid that there's only one miserable old git at a time allowed on this estimable Forum, and I'm not having you trying to nick the title off me!

Talking of which I nearly became even more miserable when I noted that we'd each lost a post from my canes thread. All your fault for using words with asterisks in. I knew I shouldn't have let you lead me into bad ways!

On a more serious note, I hope you touched wood when mentioning fun posters! Much as I'd like Ryan1 to get an understanding of what constitutes a REAL disaster for the forum I'll happily forego that pleasure in exchange for never seeing a plague of fun posters again! Hopefully, if my theory of fun poster origin is correct the forecast graduate umemployment rate for the next few years is making them all work so hard to get a good degree that they haven't even got time to look here, let alone post!

And on topic. I reckon on a per capita basis Bacon's canings were well ahead anything we've heard of from elsewhere. And that's without any mathematical adjustment to take account of the fact that approximately half the students at Bacons were girls! If we adjust the rate of girl canings at Bacon's to match that of boy canings there would have been around 970 canings in a year there in the mid 1970s. One caning per enrolled pupil per year, give or take! That's nearly three times the best we've heard of from the Antipodes, a true triumph for the Old Country!

Fed up with wrestling with a Chinese version of WinCE (don't ask ) I had a final trawl round for Bacon's info last night and one more item came to light.

It looks as though Bacon's reputation as a caning school continued for at least a short time after Mr Ing departed in December 1984. Further, this reputation may have actually attracted parents to try to get their children enrolled there. Google Cache revealed the following, posted by 'Redfazer' in response to a post by 'Big Al' on the now defunct PlanetRock Message Board on 10 September 2007 in a thread entitled 'Smacking Children':

Just a pointer Al,

In 1985 my daughter was transferring to secondary school, we put her name down for Bacon's School, an 'indepedent' school at that time. It was the only school of 100+ in the borough that still had the cane. It was over-subscribed by 20-1. We were obviously delighted that my daughter was accepted for a place. The fact that it was the first choice of parents from all over the borough, not just locals tells you all you need to know on that score. Parents want a school with an ethos of discipline and hard work.

Redfazer

Someone very reasonably responded:

REDFAZER. I agree with you. They also want 'good' teachers. There are those who say a good teacher has total control of the classroom

The above exchange, and few other messages in the thread, none of which mention Bacon's, can be seen part way down the link here. Look for the bright green text, the colours on that messageboard appear to have reflected the nature of the music! This is a Google Cache link, and hence won't be around for ever.

It is possible for an earnest seeker after truth to resurrect some other fragments from this thread, but I shouldn't bother, there's nothing else very interesting still extant. However the 'Smacking Children' thread seems to have been a large thread on a pretty big message board. Over 6000 members, and 130+ people online at times. Anyone here remember it?

Hi A_L

My recent barrage of e-mails touched on this unintentionally.

Bacons' founders/governors indeed wished to keep it, but the staff refused to use it.

The impasse was swiftly broken, because the LA ensured any school that benefitted from local government functions, like rubbish collection, or LEA provision of such as dinner ladies, would suddenly not be receiving any of them at all if they defied LA policy.

So I'm afraid that correspondent was a fantasist. Equally, he might have meant early 1984, which is when the forces of common sense prevailed.



Steve M

HI, AL,
Thanks again, for another splendid post and some great research.
The reaction of parents in wanting a school that installed respect and discipline by use of cane, if warranted, does not surprise me. I wonder how the vote would go today?
However, it does surprise me that Bacons continued with the cane that long after Mr Ing retired.

From reports I have, it is abundantly clear that many of the teachers that once supported Mr Ing swishing the cane had retired, and the new young wave of 'Trendy-Wendy's who replaced them, did not and hence, Mr Ing lost the support of his staff by the time the incident with the Indian lad and the row with the ILEA board of governors member commenced

I feel sorry for Mr Ing, to be fair. For 32 years his headship guided that school to success. Then, when he needed the support of his staff and the board most, when he became unpredictable through illness, and maybe over swished the cane a little, he was cast aside.

For all his whacking and the complaints that ensued, if you look at the Bacons memory posts on Friends Reunited, most of the ex-pupils speak highly of Mr Ing


Also, AL, I think it was you who asked me if I had information resulting from somebody contacting Leah Ashcroft. No, I do not have any actual information or feedback at all, but what I do know is that Leah Ashcroft did reply to a guy who contacted her on Friends Reunited with ref to her being caned

So if any body does fancy writing to Leah Ashcroft it seems that she does respond.

I have to say the post added by Alison Cousins looks very intersting. FIVE CANINGS and a slippering.

Thanks to all the respondents to this thread.

Jack

Hi, Steve M
Great to hear from you again
SNAP! You have just confirmed exactly what I said in my last post

Thanks
Jack

"As regards the punishment books. These often don't survive, being quietly lost, or nicked by souvenier seekers. If they do survive they go into archives with a 'No public release for x years' tag, where x can, I think, range up to 50 years with some local authorities. I keep meaning to research this, but I never get time. I don't think there is a mandated UK standard for this, I think each authority makes its own rules. If anyone has any firm information on this I'd be very pleased if they'd post it."

-- You're right, it varies from area to area. In some archives I have already been allowed to look at 1980s ones. In other places it is indeed embargoed for 50 years. It depends on the whim of the local archivist. However, in my experience the only punishment books that end up in local archives are those from schools that no longer exist. Schools that still exist seem to keep (or, more often, I suspect, lose) their documents indefinitely.

"In the case of Bacon's in the period we're considering it was a C of E school and it's possible that even if the punishment books survived they finished up in diocesan archives. Equally, it's possible they may only have had a 30 year or less embargo, and some of the interesting ones from the 70s may be sitting in a publicly accessible archive, open to anyone who wants to see them. The thought intrigues, but I seldom get to London!"

-- There are various places they might have been kept, but you need to be aware that punishment book entries are often illegible, very sloppily kept, not filled in properly, etc. and in particular they often give no detail as to implement used, part of body punished, and so on, so they are not always as informative as you might hope.

"and I suspect the old school had two addresses (quite common with big schools with multiple entrances, my own was in that category)."

-- Yes, Bacon's had a site in Bermondsey and another one somewhere down the Old Kent Road, a mile or more away. I think it may not have been quite as exceptional, for Inner London (which was full of heavy-caning schools), as has been suggested. STOPP tended to call it the worst (from their point of view) school in London but STOPP wasn't as all-knowing as it liked to appear - they got 'leaks' occasionally from (a very small number of) sympathetic teachers and local councillors, but most of the time they were dependent on the LEA happening to (a) collect and then (b) release statistics, which most rarely did in reality, not least, I dare say, because they didn't want STOPP hounding them in yet another press release. Gullible/idle newspaper hacks often took STOPP's fanciful press releases at face value. The truth is we don't know, and almost certainly never will, the real figures for most schools in most areas, even more so when you consider that a lot of CP never got put in the book. If Bacon's came out top in one particular survey, it might just be because they were more diligent about keeping the records than some other schools. However, I do agree that their girl/boy caning ratio seems to have been unusually high.

"Mr Brown's canes presumably superceded the ILEA 30inch (for all girls and primary school children) and 36inch (for senior boys) canes referenced in The Guardian article on 27/11/71. I have not been able to check the Guardian reference. If anyone is in a position to do so (large central library possibly) it would be most interesting to know if the article exists and what it said. It may well be buried on the Corpun site somewhere, but if so I haven't found it yet."

-- No, I haven't got round to putting it on the site yet, but here it is (click thumbnail for full size):

Thank you Mr Farrell. Two very comprehensive and helpful postings.

I am very interested in your opinion that Bacon's may not have been the worst of the Inner London schools, or indeed particularly exceptional as regards its caning record. Some time ago a contributor to this forum suggested that large numbers of girls were being caned at school during the period in question. I derided his (or her) postings, as did various other contributors here. However, it now looks as though I was wrong, at least insofar as Inner London was concerned.

It is most useful to have the benefit of your experience of the punishment book situation, and in particular your opinion that the only ones that end up in local archives are those for schools that no longer exist. A contributor here recently noted that a particular Friends Reunited posting mentioning an incident where a girl was required to remove her skirt to be caned had surprisingly survived the great FR purge of posts mentioning school CP. He said that the school involved no longer existed and that this might account for the survival of the item. Perhaps a similar phenomenon to the punishment books.

This particular FR item had been mentioned here in the past as someone quoted it in support of a largely unsubstantiated second hand account I'd posted involving a not dissimilar practice at a school local to me. That punishment was said by my informant to have been recorded in a punishment book, though as you say, without anything that might betray the actual nature of the caning. The school in question has an unbroken existence through to today, so in view of your observation I suspect I shan't be able to check!

Thank you for posting the Guardian article. It is hardly surprising that you have not had chance to incorporate it into your site. The amount of material you are able to include is truly prodigious and is certainly very much appreciated by me and I am sure by other people here.

A very interesting contribution to the thread, particularly with the scan of the original Guardian article. I echo A-L's thanks, Mr Farrell. I'm going to be out of the country on business for the next three months, so I probably won't be able to check into this site very often, but I trust that this valuable work of historical reconstruction will continue to flourish while I'm away.

Hi, to our respondents on this Bacons Thread

Just to let you know that the other caned Bacons girl, Alison Cousins, has added another photograph to her profile! WOW!!!! Taken before a non-uniform day for chrity in 1981. Apparently, she got sent home for arriving attired like this!!!! Hang on! But it was a non-uniform day!!!! So why send her home?

Anyway, do take a look. Did anybody venture to contact this ex-pupil? I know one guy on another forum contacted Leah Ashcroft and she did respond.

Thanks,
Jack

JACK

Presumably the purpose of that non-uniform day was for charity?

And not, by the look of that photo,for over-stimulating the entire male portion of the teaching staff!!!!

I won't say any more-don't want Big Ray's Old Mum upset!


Steve M

Hi, Steve

Yes, I believe that Alision Cousins did say it was for charity. They all had to pay a £1. Teachers £3-£5. Alison paid her quid and some teacher STILL had the audacity to send her home!!! What a scam! LOL

Great pic! Have you dared write to her? LOL
Jack

It seems that Alison Cousins is almost proud of her possible record as being the most caned girl at Bacons
Has to be one of the prettiest
BOTTOMS UP!

Anyone following the exploits of Bacons should take a fresh gander at Alison Cousins(as was) photos. The dear girl has updated them, including a couple of contemporary ones.

YUM!!!!!!!!!!!

Steve M

Hi, Peeps

Just to say, I have written to both Alsion Cousins and Leah Ashcroft, the two caned girls from Bacons
Keep you posted

LW

Best of luck in writing to Leah and Alison. I assume not in your real name, but have you pretended to be a researcher, or made up some different identity.

There is a 30 something chap on another forum who pretends to be a 21 female doing postgraduate studies in childcare. And he gets results, such as the Nancy from Boonville case of which I am sure you are familiar.

LW

How about asking Alison if she'd post THAT photo here

ie her dress for charity that caused her to get sent home.

I suspect because half the staff room would have had heart seizures if they'd had a gander at the dear girl in said get-up!

How any one could cane those 2 lovelies is beyond me.


Steve M

Barbara wroteon January 28, 2009 at 8:32am
Started in 64 finished in 69. Remeber Mr Robinson (general science) Mr Owen (maths known as MO) Miss Irving - deputy head and of course Mr Ing (the old man - headmaster)Miss milsom - domestic science and Miss Newman - needlework. No equal ops in those days! Mr Ricks was boys PE teacher, hated by them as loved giving the slipper. We also got the cane from some teachers including head and djeputy head and senior ones, like Miss Paige - english.

Annette wroteon June 29, 2009 at 3:09pm
Can't believe no-one's mentioned inspecting the surface of Ingy's desk at close quarters!! Ouch!!!
... and as for Miss Davenport's involvement in the process...

Karen wrote at 11:24pm on July 12th, 2009
Went to Bacons 1974 - 79!! Blimey I feel sooo old.. lol Still keep in touch with loads of school friends. Got the cane by Miss Page twice & once by Mr Razor (was talking in asembly!!) ouchhh bloody painful, those were the days. Hi to anyone who remembers me!! x

Hi Pontifex. You probably aren't new here, but I don't recall the name so if this is your first post may I say a personal welcome. A double welcome in fact, because we've had rather a lot of paddling lately and with all due and sincerely intended respect to my esteemed fellow contributor American Way one disciplinary matrix paddling tends to be pretty much like another disciplinary matrix paddling, whereas canings come in almost infinite variety!

Your Friends Reunited finds are all interesting, and those from Barbara and Karen certainly seem to bear out the conclusions of this thread. The one from Annette however is in a class of its own. It may throw light on a query raised by Jack, the originator of this excellent thread, in the 4th paragraph of his post at 10:42 PM on January 5 2009 concerning the Bacon's kilt. Did they or didn't they? That is the question!

And if they didn't, what else might prompt Annette's rather cryptic remark:

... and as for Miss Davenport's involvement in the process...

I think we should be told!

A_L

Please see my post on this thread 8-1-2009;Barbara refers to a deputy HEAD not HeadMISTRESS.

You should know my informant then also mentioned a new deputy headMISTRESS in 1970.

This might also explain why things changed so radically.

I will reveal the fruits of my research shortly on a new thread.



Steve

Hi Steve. I has a look back to 08/01/2009. Boy, what a busy and productive lot we were in those far-off days!

I think I have the gist of your comment above, but I'm not absolutely sure. The Another_Lurker brain, such as it is now, which isn't much, is being fully extended by a particularly demanding client who has been looking at far too many fancy websites, produced at huge cost by teams of expert and highly paid young web programmers, and who expects me to knock up something similar in a week or so by myself. As a result trying to get up to speed on Bacons again came as light relief but was also quite difficult!

I have mixed feelings about a new thread, but perhaps it is the best idea. This one is certainly huge, and we've already got some pertinent information outstationed in Alan Turing's 'The Bacon girls' thread and Rodney Bacon's 'Was Mr Ing a leftie?' thread. If you don't object, to maintain the 'research value' I'll stick a link to those two, and to this thread, in my first post in your new thread. I'm sure there'll be a post from me!   I look forward to seeing the fruits of your research!

Never let it be said that I'm obsessed with indexing and ease of finding data!   However, threads can soon become widely seperated in the index pages of this estimable Forum and it seems prudent to put a link to StevefromSE5's new thread on Bacons, mentioned in his 25 September 2009 post above. The new thread is called 'Wilfred Ing-the truth' and is to be found here.