The school was Kostka Hall, Brighton, Victoria, which is a preparatory school to Xavier College, Kew. The quotes are taken from ‘Kostka: Xavier by the Sea’ by Helen Penrose and Catherine Waterhouse, published in 1997.
‘Father McCurtin was already seventy-two years old when he began at Kostka. He was gentle and cheerful, with a keen sense of humour. “He didn’t teach the younger boys in class. He was very fatherly and chatty. I remember he used to come and talk to the boys, but mainly the big boys.” Some Kostka boys remember him as particularly strict – he strapped boys at assembly in front of the whole school for serious offences.’
‘Mr Carroll, master and prefect of discipline at Kostka from 1937 to 1940, slept in St John’s with the boarders. “Once we were ready for bed, we would sit on our beds in a circle around him. He would read us something like ‘The Lives of the Saints’ and then something humorous, usually Wodehouse.” He was also in charge of maintaining law and order at night and would walk around the house for about half an hour after ‘lights out’ until he was sure all the boys were asleep. Brian McCarthy remembers that “he could lose his temper and he could hand out the strap indiscriminately, so if you though of mucking about in the boarding house after lights were out with Carroll, you knew that if you were caught you were going to get slammed.’
‘To younger boys Father Craig “had wrinkles and silvery-coloured hair, and was a very stern looking man. We knew that he had a big strap; he didn’t use it much, but when he did, it hurt.”‘
‘Father Michael Fitzgibbon taught at Kostka throughout this exciting period of rebuilding and regeneration. He began at Kostka in 1954, teaching French, History, Latin and Religion. He was a genial, witty soul, with a sterner side, but he also offered wise counsel to those in need. Affectionately known as ‘Fitzy’, he went to class armed with a strap in his pocket. The strap ‘mysteriously’ disappeared one day after a class of boys had experienced its sting. Until recently its whereabouts had never been revealed, until another teacher confessed to having confiscated it.’
‘Mrs Mitchell was a small woman, gaining from some cheeky boys the name of ‘Pipsqueak’. Michael Corrigan remembers Miss Mitchell as delightful but reasonably strict. By 1964 she was teaching Grade 3; a dear lady, caring, and a person whom Michael Rush remembers with real affection. “Miss Mitchell was a very small person in stature. I recall one day as a class (which numbered around forty-three) walking to the old chapel situated in Maritima.
Walking behind Miss Mitchell I passed a comment to a fellow student that I was taller than her. She paused, turned around, and pointing to her temple said that what mattered most was who was the bigger in there. Her discipline was that of a ruler on the knuckles. The only way of lessening the punishment was by way of raising your hand as high as you could, making it difficult for her to strike.”‘
‘Classrooms were also the site of much of the disciplining of boys that seemed necessary. The ethos of discipline was not simply one of punishment, but one that pervaded all aspects of schooling, finding expression, for example, in imposed periods of silence or marching in lines. Most students and staff recall that punishment at Kostka in the first thirty years or so varied, but was rarely sadistic. In comparison with contemporary schools, including Burke Hall, Kostka’s use of corporal punishment was always relatively lenient.
Until recent years many Jesuits and some lay staff used the strap to punish certain kinds of misbehaviour – never more than six cuts per boy per day was the rule. Penals, a form of detention in which students were usually set lines to write, was another form of discipline. But for most student it is use of the strap that has made the deepest impression. On Bryan Lefebvre’s first day of school, for example, Father Craig came over to the classrooms to talk to the school.
“He said he would start to tell us about the Jesuit traditions, about how discipline was most important for boys, and that while you were under the Jesuits at Kostka, and later at Xavier, discipline was the most important thing in the school program. He said, “There are a few rules around here. One rule for you younger boys is that you are not allowed to climb trees”, and he pointed to the two big Cyprus trees that used to be between Maritima and the classrooms.”” Inevitably, of course, one of the new boys decided to put this to the test, and when caught several branches up was sent home for the day after receiving four cuts for his trouble.
In the 1970s there was no written policy in relation to discipline, which was approached much as it had been in earlier years and was mainly based on responding to boys’ unacceptable behaviour such as homework not done, disobedience or misbehaviour in the yard. Penals were held twice a week after school, and the strap – only ever used by male staff – was gradually being used less. Peter Hawkins, who was appointed to attend to disciplinary matters, began at Kostka in 1971.
He had taught previously at St Patrick’s College where he was Prefect of Discipline. He also taught Geography, History, and later Latin to Years 7 and 8, and introduced the study of Civics into the school curriculum. Students and parents remember him as a reliable and highly organised teacher and as an excellent sports coach. By his presence in the school as a long-serving teacher he has sought to find creative solutions to discipline and behavioural policy.
The 1980s saw the beginning of a completely new approach to discipline. Peter Hawkins and Malcolm Joseph drew up the Kostka Hall School Rules in 1986, with the aim of setting specific goals for boys’ behaviour and focusing on acceptable boundaries. The rules covered behaviour in such areas as travelling to school, classrooms, lunch breaks, the library, sport and examinations. In the same period, the school introduced the ‘strap book,’ through which staff became more accountable for their disciplinary techniques by having to record each use of the strap. The culture of discipline was changing in the wider community, and well before the final entry in the strap book (in 1990), use of the strap had rapidly diminished.’
‘Once outside for play and lunch breaks, boys saw more of those who had special responsibilities in the play area. Brother McDonald, for example, “was the disciplinarian with the strap in the school yard. You really weren’t a Kostka boy, it used to be said, unless you’d been strapped by Brother McDonald. But he didn’t really hurt or hit hard. Everybody was aware of his voice and his strap. His favourite expression was “Hey, you boy! Here, you boy!”, and you jumped if you were a boy.”‘
COMMENTS: I left this school in 1988 at age 13 – so towards the end of the time they still used the strap. I have to say if its use had rapidly declined at that time, it must have been used an awful lot in the past. There were sixty boys in my year level – and I’d say three were strapped in any given week. I was strapped by three of the teachers mentioned above – by Brother McDonald, by Peter Hawkins (who was my form master when I was 12) and by Malcolm Joseph (form master in my final year).
I guess it’s true that Brother McD didn’t hit that hard – but it was still easily hard enough to make an impression on a ten year old. Back when I was ten, he used to carry a strap in his pocket in the playground as he had for many years. But he stopped doing that fairly soon after – maybe the changes meant he wasn’t allowed to. It did not however stop him disciplining boys. When I was 13, I dared to backchat him after he had mildly reprimanded me at recess. His hand just swung out and – well, he smacked my bottom.
I don’t think it hurt at all. But I was 13 – I was one of the oldest boys in the school, I had a really high opinion of myself and thought I was very grown up. And this happened in public – dozens of people saw it. I disintegrated into tears. I was totally mortified, utterly embarassed. Looking back on it, it was probably a very good thing considering my attitude. In a second, that man completely reminded me that no matter what I thought of myself, I was still a child, and he was the one in charge, and I could not get away with defying him in any shape or form.
I see a lot of tough kids in schools today, getting into deep, deep trouble – and I wonder if they’d have learned the same lesson
Xavier College, Kew, Victoria, Australia. I attended this school from 1989-1992 (having attended one of its two junior schools, Kostka Hall, from 1985-1988 – the other junior school is Burke Hall, mentioned in the quotes). I never experienced corporal punishment at the senior school – was threatened with it a couple of times.
The books I will quote later relate to schools I did not attend – just to make that clear. Kostka and Xavier are the only ones I will be quoting about that I have direct personal experience of. The others – well, I’m reading their histories because I find them interesting for a number of reasons.
These quotes come from ‘Xavier Portraits’ by Greg Dening and Doug Kennedy, published in 1993. Much of that book is a copy of ‘Xavier: A Centenary Portrait’ published in 1978.
“Rumours of what was put into straps to make them heavy were rife. Some were tan, some were black. Some were carried everywhere, some were locked away let they be taken as trophies.”
Mr. Cornelius Hartnett, S.J (First Division Prefect).: “When one of the boys left the bicycle sports at the Friendly Society Gardens and got drunk, he recorded the appropriate punishment: an apology from the boy on his knees in the Study Hall and dismissal from the Sodality. He next had to stripe two boys for ‘excessive animal sports in the dormitory.’”
“When the boys remember the Prefects, they remember their flogging ways and the guerilla war that gets created between the high regulators and the highly regulated.”
“Rectors and Prefects of Studies were more distant figures, their respective rooms more awe-filled places. A Rector on the whole, however was seen as kindlier and more fatherly than the Prefect of Studies. The latter’s office was at the entrance to the Study Hall, a sort of customs house on the edge of a silent land.
Its heavy door never quite masked the sound of summary justice being administered within. Merely opening it whipped up waves of suspense in boys’ minds as they prepared to proffer an excuse or present the note from their class-master which gave the reason for their execution. It was not a room for sitting or quiet counsel.”
“The dormitories were also places of high discipline. Until the 1920’s they provided some small privacy: each bed was curtained off. But even that small privacy was lost with a change to long, open lines of beds and lockers which the division Prefects could see at a glance. Breaches of silence which in the study could earn ‘penals’ or detention, here would earn a strapping.”
“There were, of course, other scandals and other problems. There was the case of the boy expelled from school for display of ‘French letters not of the epistolary kind’ on the Kew tram. There were mothers who fretted about draughts in dormitories and holes in shoes. There was detective work in the unraveling of schoolboy plots to run away. There were thefts, occasional drunkenness, truancies, late returns from vacation. If one parent saw lack of discipline as a symbol of a general decadence in the school, another promised court action for excessive zeal in strapping.”
Father Christopher Nulty S.J. (Rector): “He was remembered as an earnest, if dour, man. He had few qualms about associating pain with learning, and he preferred to urge his students along learning’s path with a stick rather than a carrot.”
Father Philip Gleeson, S.J. (Prefect of Studies and Rector): “For all the thirteen years he was at Xavier, before being made Rector, he was Prefect of Studies. He filled that office with dignity and used only moderate violence to legitimatise its authority and sanction its rules.”
“The discipline at Xavier was not so much violent as all-pervasive. Corporal punishment, however, remained a part of that discipline. The ‘strap’ was a two foot long, sewn leather piece two inches wide and about an inch thick. It was the usual instrument of pain. It was surrounded by mythology and macabre stories. This one was the ‘Brown Bomber’, that one had a key imbedded in it, that other one had been soaked in brine or had come to the right pitch of flexibility and pain-inflicting capability on the sweaty back of some old nag. The instrument of violence created many joking relationships between masters and boys.
Indeed, if there was a rule about it at all, it was that those masters who used it most often needed to joke about it most constantly. Some would carry it under their gowns, some would carry it with their exercise books. Some would perform high jinks with it in the yard. The Jesuit rules designated which officials were responsible for the administration of corporal punishment. At Xavier, in practice, it seemed to have been a question of personal choice among the Jesuits as to who would use the strap. Laymasters were always excluded from its use. Perhaps, as the only non-possessors of deterrent weaponry, they were subject to some humiliation by boys in their classes.
Indiscipline was certainly more overt. Yet the laymasters usually commanded some alternative force. Mr. Ludwig Van Baer, who must had known more about the structural weaknesses of Xavier’s shaking floors and must have learned to hate venetian blinds more than most, had a fire in his eyes and an edge to his words that turned humiliation around. Mr. Joe O’Dwyer’s bon mots penetrated even the thickest and most uncultured hide. Designation of the Minister or the Prefect of Studies as executioner of the punishment was usually a sign of the greater heinousness of the crime.
In none of the records nor in any of the answer to the questionnaire was there are any indication that at Xavier the use of corporal punishment was extravagant. Burke Hall was an exception. The Jesuits did not cope easily with the disciplining of small boys and some resorted to violence inordinately often. From time to time the superior of the Australian Mission would promulgate and re-promulgate the general rules for the punishment of boys. These rules remained constant from 1898 to 1935:
REGULATIONS CONCERNING PUNISHMENT
1. A master or Prefect may for sufficient reason order a boy as many as six ferules. In exceptional cases the Prefect of Studies may order nine.
2. No boy shall receive more than six or, from the Prefect of Studies, more than nine on the same day.
3. ‘Flogging’, i.e. striking a boy with a cane or strap otherwise than on the hands is strictly forbidden except with the knowledge and express consent of the Rector. This regulation is to be understood even of a single blow of a strap or cane.
4. ‘Cuffing’ a boy i.e. striking him with the hand is absolutely forbidden.
5. The Rector is to decide whether a master may administer the punishment himself, or whether the boys should be sent for punishment to someone appointed by the Rector.
6. No master or Prefect should inflict more than one penalty at a time and, in the case of studies, should not order more than one hour without the consent of the Prefect of Studies.
7. Boys should not be sent up to the Prefect of Studies for merely trivial offenses.
All punishment was public. Even if a boy was strapped behind closed doors, in an institution with private corners he was forced to parade his bravado or his tears to the public scrutiny of his peers. In the classroom he was on stage. He had to stand, hand outstretched and watched by half sympathetic, half merciless, never revolutionary peers. His only weapon against the ‘cuts’ was a stoical unflinching acceptance of the pain and cold unspeaking gaze at his tormentor.
The less stoic might bury their stinging fingers under their arms and bend silently over them. Those who clenched their fists, or pulled away, or showed obvious fear, could expect to be laughed at. There were few protests at the injustice done to others, although an inaccurate ‘cut’ which raised a welt on a wrist would cause comment. That ‘this will hurt me more than you’ was said often enough, and it was probably true that the violence marked the flogger more permanently than the flogged.”
“Father Montague’s operas were only brief seasons of culture. Indeed, boys’ souls were more likely to be striped with discipline than their spirits inflamed by the love of music in preparation for those days and nights on the boards at Manresa Hall.”
Boy Prefects: “They were exempt from corporal punishment. They entered the Study Hall last (after ‘interviewing offenders in line’). They could communicate ‘sparingly in study, and leave free periods and Chapel without the permission of the master in charge, and go to the head of lines for leaves and confessions.
The charter was ‘natural’, no doubt even proper and inoffensive. It was also highly preparatory. It showed the ways we construct the world we live in, the small rituals that act out status and privilege and the given nature of the world. Authority needed dignity. Being strapped was undignified. Prefects were exempt from corporal punishment.”
Scotch College, Melbourne. I should say straight away that this particular school has had a number of histories written about it. These quotes come from the most recent one published in 2001. “A Deepening Roar: Scotch College, Melbourne, 1851-2001” by James Mitchell.
I have several reasons for going with Scotch next. Firstly because it’s a school I was always moderately fascinated with. It’s located quite close to Xavier where I attended (one of a number of schools on or near Glenferrie Road in Melbourne) and the two schools have historically been fierce rivals (I believe Scotch also views Melbourne Grammar with particular enmity – and that one came up in the Victorian State Parliament a few years ago), and I used to see its boys around a lot.
I saw boys from a lot of schools – but of those in my daily experience, only those of Scotch seemed to have the same strength of feeling, the same types of attitudes I saw at my old school.
I’m also a bit of a snob – I was very proud of going to Xavier because it was one of the six ‘great schools’ of Victoria (the youngest of the six). I’m interested in the history of the other five (Scotch College, Geelong Grammar, Geelong College, Melbourne Grammar, and Wesley College), so I want to read their histories anyway – and as Scotch was the first established, it seems a good place to start. The others all have histories available to me as well, and I will look at those in time. No idea if they will contain information of interest to this group, though.
Thirdly, I know there’s at least one Scotchie on the list – so I thought he might be interested in seeing this.
A couple of definitions – The Hill refers to the area of the school traditionally occupied by boarders. Satura is a student newspaper/magazine.
And now for the quotes:
“Various models were available to 19th-century teachers. The Enlightenment influenced Scotch’s insistence that its teaching was systematic. The Bible’s first example of teaching is that Adam and Eve were told a rule, failed to learn it, and were expelled. Pedagogically this has two aspects, the use of punishment and the use of explanation.”
“Punishment for failing to learn a lesson has several intensities and purposes. It can be done as an example. Adam and Eve received no chance to learn from their mistake. The learning opportunity was for others. It is not by chance that such strong, pre-emptive discipline occurs near the start of the Bible, and many masters have adopted the same strategy of beginning as fearsomely as possible. Men with military training had already used this technique in the armed forces. As late as the 1970s, Bond began the year with a thunderous entry to the classroom.
A long ruler whacked down hard on a desk, and a manner that brooked no weakness, set the tone from the start. With a solid frame established, some mellowing would be possible, and learning could proceed. The military model of learning is said to be that ‘when you fear the instructor more than the task, learning will take place’. By century’s end, however, Rob McLaren (1973, staff 1987-) writes that ‘it is only when a student feels comfortable and safe in his immediate environment that any real learning can take place’.
In the 1920s Edmunds taught writing to the Junior School with ‘a bunch of keys with which he chastized children’. In the 1930s Charles ‘Chassa’ Pawsey (1908, staff 1922-43) – fearsome in appearance and attitude, unsmiling and overbearing – used a ‘rubber hose to chastise for smallest infringement i.e. not knowing the answer to questions one did not understand’. In the 1960s ‘there was one master who would extract information from students by pinching tightly a small patch of their hair and slowly screwing it around until the correct answer was provided’. Another master is described by Old Boys decades apart as ‘sadistic’ and one who ‘enjoyed beating boys’ (1951, 1972).
A more flexible model of punishment allowed for the possibility that he who is punished might learn. Thus Pharaoh underwent increasingly severe punishments until he achieved the desired behaviour which had been explicitly stipulated from the outset – for learning is greatly helped when pupils are given clear targets. The educational model employed is that a mistake is best followed quickly by a rebuke or punishment. This was how Morrison taught Latin.
He put ‘the boys through conjugating verbs and declining nouns and those who failed too ignominiously received a few strokes with the taws on their open hands. There was no newfangled nonsense about old Dr Morrison.’ The taws was a Scottish leather strap slit at the ends. Gordon ‘Gunner’ Owen (staff 1946-74) ended a boy’s spelling mistakes by threatening to cane him.”
“Much of the physical punishment seems to have been considered unexceptional. Lyne later became friends with Adams, and together they ran Scotch’s branch of the Australian Student Christian Movement (ASCM). Another Old Boy recently extolled the virtues of Littlejohn, several times expressing his admiration of the man, and concluding with a final emphasis that, after all, ‘I knew him quite well for he often caned me’.
‘They say corporal punishment scars a boy – which is a lot of cock! We treated it as a great joke – those bloody detentions really hurt!’ Morrison concurred: a public rebuke ‘was more stinging than a flogging’.’
For boarders, caning was common. One in 1929 was caned 24 times in one term; once the cane broke. Otherwise, officially only the Principal could administer corporal punishment, so conceptually caning seems to have been regarded as different from the routine physical intimidation that occurred in the classroom.
It was an era that accepted a level of physical violence between teacher and pupil. A good deal of whacking and pummeling had no reason other than the doing of it. When the school later moved to Hawthorn, the buildings were not ready and two grades were in marquees. Littlejohn would walk outside the tents thwacking at any boy whose shape made a bump in the side of a tent, and he roared with laughter as he did so
Unabashed by post-Freudian anxieties about physical contact, the old propensity to hit boys was part of a broader enthusiasm for touching which let many masters throw a comradely arm round boys’ shoulders. In primary school boys learnt the ABC from Miss Hay (staff 1862-70) literally sitting on her knew. As late as the 1940s. Gilray could hug a boy. David Grounds (1946), although aiming for Medicine still wanted to study English Literature, evoking a spontaneous embrace from Gilray in the middle of the quadrangle.
As early as the 1870s, corporal punishment had its critics. The Government wanted to limit its use in the state system, but Scotch said this would weaken teachers’ authority. As for alternative punishments, like detention after school hours, to deprive boys of outdoor exercise ‘is far more injurious to health, and, consequently, more truly cruel than a few strokes of a strap or cane’. ‘The fact is that the old Scottish tawse was most humane means ever used in school government.’”
William Littlejohn, Principal “‘He caned seldom and with reluctance, and was notably clement to maladjusted boys threatened with expulsion.’”
“Prefects’ privileges were their room, their badge and their exemption from detentions and punishments. They also had the privilege of power. At its most formal, in a Prefects’ Meeting, they judged and punished fellow students. The Captain chaired the meeting and administered the strokes (cuts) of the cane. The meeting also imposed lesser penalties like detentions or warnings. Boys could appeal to the Principal, but rarely did so, and Principals usually ratified the sentence.
Prefects’ Meetings lasted until around 1970. Throughout that time they penalised smoking, swearing, leaving school in school hours, and wearing uniform incorrectly. In the 1930s, at least, they intruded into the academic areas, punishing boys who copied others’ work or allowed work to be copied. Even boys smoking in their own homes, or in mufti, or on a country railway station, were caned. A Scotch boy was a Scotch boy anywhere, and there was no such thing as a private life. A prefect recalls:
Given our inexperience (and possibly blood lust), I think that the Prefects’ meetings were conducted in a fair and reasonably balanced way, allowing the usual assumption that ‘if you weren’t guilty, you wouldn’t have been here in the first place!!’ If found ‘guilty’ (and most were), the penalty was discussed and agreed by all the prefects before the guilty party was advised [1956].
In 1956, as the strokes were administered, prefects sometimes gave a score out of 10 for what the stroke earned. They signalled it by holding up fingers out of sight of the victim. A recipient writes of ‘the whistle of the cane and the biting pain after the first stroke. You felt the second one also, but after that the pain numbed the remainder.’ When Brian Taylor (Captain 1928) caned a boy for smoking, ‘the offender’s trousers burst into flames. Some wax matches had ignited in his pockets.’
“Leadership at Scotch has meant many things. It has always meant enforcing rules. It meant asserting authority, including the prefects’ own authority (in cases where boys were caned solely for challenging a prefect).”
“For all their free use of corporal punishment, those nineteenth-century teachers were in a way more gentle, more affectionate towards the boys, than the teachers whom the twentieth century assaulted so barbarously.”
David Pennington: “Caning by students was the norm. (I avoided this by sheer cunning.)”
“Scotch became self-sufficient, and in the 1930s it caned boys for leaving the grounds during school hours, whereas at Eastern Hill boys lunched in the city and frequented its busy arcades.”
“In the 1950s ‘The rules were rigid, the discipline harsh. I was present when a 15-year-old boy… was caned on the bare buttocks by an 18-year-old… a nice bloke who I met years later… 6 strokes – so hard the skin split and bled. He had bruising for 6 weeks – His sin? – he rang home from the public phone. He remained bitter for decades.’
“Without enough adult supervision, the boarding-house prefects might develop ‘pet hates, always picking on the same kids’. This set up a pattern whereby boys became resentful and this subject to further caning for insubordination. An ordinary boy might be caned six or ten times, and some boys were caned dozens of times. For boys whose punishment at home up till then had been the odd slap, caning came as a shock. So did the physical sequelae. David Brand (1972) drew colour illustrations of his bruises as they bloomed and faded over several weeks.”
“A welcome was also generously extended to the new Housemaster, Mr Thompson (‘Thommo’) who had his bed ‘short-sheeted plus a liberal application of tooth-paste here and there’. ‘Bunny’ Lappin, the Housemaster ‘nearly wore his cane out whacking both innocent and guilty.’”
“What is startling about smoking is that when Scotch caught boy smokers it punished them savagely. Between at least 1936 and 1971, School Captains routinely gave smokers four to six strokes of the cane. At some stages it made no difference if the offence was committed in Geelong, or out of uniform, or in a private house, or that a boy’s parents allowed him to smoke, or even whether he was actually smoking – in 1964 a boy received three strokes ‘for carrying cigarettes’. Six strokes was a heavier penalty than given to boys who stole, lied, cheated, bullied, or brought explosives to school.”
Card-playing and gambling in general reached the same point as smoking: we can see that they happened because they were the subject of jokes, and yet officially boys were punished for indulging. In 1961 a boy was caned for crimes including gambling.”
“Healey’s impetus at first was to asset control rather than to tackle revolt, for the revolt was still small. The disciplinary views of Scotch’s leading boys were conservative. In 1960 Satura told boys there were subject to discipline not just at school but everywhere except in their own homes, whether or not they were in uniform. The Public School Head Prefects claimed control over their boys’ smoking or drinking even when at private parties.
In 1963 Scotch caned a fifth former (Year 11) for smoking away from the school and not in school clothes. Most caning in the early 1960s was for smoking for which four strokes was the usual penalty. This was heavier than Nicholson’s caning back in 1936. The aim was both to punish and to change behaviour. A recidivist smoker was condemned to six strokes and “Told by School Capt. Some pertinent factors about School life & we hope was brought around to our way of thinking.’
The prefects’ claim to rule boys’ lives outside school, and their savage punishment of ordinary social behaviour like smoking, began in the 1960s to be questioned. Doug Eager (Captain 1963) increasingly caned boys for disrespect to school officers. A letter in Satura, entitled ‘Pres and Queues’, mocked school officers’ privilege in the tuckshop to go to the head of the line. Charles Ream (1964), an American, told a Prefects’ Meeting ‘he disagreed with the prefect system anyway’.
A thoughtful Captain like David Mason (1966) believed that the Prefects’ Meeting would be accepted if ‘it functions with the right intentions and in the right spirit’/ The prefects must be dignified, and refrain from sarcasm or jokes in the presence of the offender. Nor should they take ‘any delight in the actual infliction of the corporal punishment [which] itself is not the most important thing; it is the interrogation and reprimanding before the punishment that often has the most effect; and in some case, it is not necessary to use the cane at all’.
Among the prefects, doubts grew. John McCaughey (1964) refused to be party to a caning, and Hamish Ewing (1967), present at one, was horrified. Finlay Macrae (Captain 1967) feels he caned ‘rather gingerly’. Andy Mackay’s boarding house captain ‘was trying to hit my backside but I bet he couldn’t hit a par 3 to save himself. I have cuts at the back of my knees and along my back by the time he finished. Captains, John Field and Graeme Blanch, caned no-one but, but caning resumed in 1970 and 1971.
Caning by staff ended in 1988 with the departure of Campbell Stewart (Year 8 Group Master 1984-88). On the Hill, caning ceased around 1990. Long before, the Prefects’ Meeting had expired. There was non in 1973 or 1974, for ‘All smokers and the like were dealt with by the School Captain and the prefect(s) concerned’. The last meetin, in 1975, dealt with a culprit who had disobeyed a prefect and thrown a dead pigeon in his face. He ‘pleaded guilty… but said he did not aim at the prefect’s face. This was thought to be not very important.’ He received a Saturday detention.
During the 1960s new ideas crept into the thinking even of the prefects. They punished boys for crimes not previously recorded, like setting a poor example to younger boys. They caned boys for having too many detentions. They punished boys for insolence to masters (one boy shouted ‘Bill’ through a ventilator into a classroom). Previously masters had looked after themselves. In 1967 a boy was caned for ‘Using foul and obscene language to St. Kevin’s boys over Gardiner’s Creek’. He denied his swearing was obscene, and in any case it happened ‘under provocation from St. Kevin’s boys. Stated that he was trying to stand up for Scotch. Attitude throughout meeting was somewhat impertinent.’: 4 strokes.
From 1961 the prefects discerned a new crime: General Attitude, or GA. In Australian law, a state of mind is not usually in itself an offence, and though Prefects’ Meetings punished boys for GA, they usually spelt out its manifestations in the culprit’s dress (about which rules did exist) or apathy in activities like sport or choir, or lack of respect. In this way the prefects addressed both the behaviour and its meaning. In this way the prefects walked alongside Healey, whose obsession about apparently petty details can be understood as defending not those details but what they stood for.
Scotch saw itself as training leaders. The disappearance of prefects’ power to impose caning was part of a wider shift in perceptions of leadership, away from leadership imposed by fear and punishment, and towards a leadership of persuasion and example, leadership modes that Scotch boys might eventually exercise out in industry or commerce or the professions, where caning is often not employed.”
“So the prefects in 1966 caned a boy for ‘wearing school uniform improperly in a public place, and thereby lowering the name of the school.’”
“Alan Hartman (1970) tried to organise an anti-Vietnam War protest group at the school in 1968, and ‘was caned for some other minor disciplinary infraction at the same time… the first and only time I was caned in my entire 6 years at Scotch’.
“Railway enthusiasts formed a club in the 1950s, averaging about 50 members a year. Under Dr Mendel, it held weekly meetings, films and excursions. They built a model railway layout in a hut near the rowing pool, and rebuilt it in 1965. In 1966 a boy was caned for damaging it.”
“The prefects’ response to bullying was mild. In 1966 a bully’s punishment was only a one-hour detention, whilst smoking and uniform infractions brought the cane.”
“Other things neither rise nor oscillate, but become a sequence of items that are connected but separate, like a symphony’s movements. For example, Scotch has had successive perceptions of leadership, starting with no formal leaders at all, to having only a small number of god-like prefects (natural leaders), to having a general leadership spread widely within Year 12 (and trained).
In a different, parallel sequence of changes, leadership by example has been a constant but it has moved from being bolstered by the power to punish through to largely relying on persuasion, whilst the power to punish has shrunk as caning ceased.”
“‘Here was a centuries-old state of mind, starting with prayers and then through the cane to other corporal punishments.’”
“Challenging traditions : a history of Melbourne Grammar” by Weston Bate and Helen Penrose.
Dr John Edward Bromby, Headmaster: “While Bromby did not express the same views as Morris about the problem with teaching and disciplining Australian boys, he meted out swift and severe punishments – so severe, in fact, as to draw complaints from parents. Bromby was challenged by the Council about the use of the ‘Black Hole’. They had received complaints by parents ‘of the confinement of boys in closets from which all light is excluded to which many parents strongly object and the Council are unanimous in desiring that punishments of this character be not inflicted’
Bromby’s response was firm but perhaps open to compromise: ‘Lockups are made sufficiently dark to prevent reading, but light is not wholly excluded. Any modification can be made in these which the Council might think proper. Corporal punishment cannot be administered without my sanction. I will see that this regulation is rightly enforced.’
Bromby administered corporal punishment on average once a year, ‘but always pretty sharply’ according to the Annual Report of 1863. For example, he ‘had to flog a peppery boy today for having stabbed another with a pen knife. The offender pleaded in justification 1. that he had not done it, 2. that he did it in play, 3. that the other chap was throttling him with three handkerchiefs.’”
Reverend Andrew Wilson, Headmaster: “In spite of the apparent prosperity of the school in the late 1880s, the Council was not wholly satisfied with Wilson’s performance. It questioned his authority on disciplinary matters, as it had done with Bromby. There was no doubt that Wilson was a strong disciplinarian. He reported entire groups of boys for misdemeanours such as being late for breakfast, and being reported meant a Saturday detention of up to two hours. But in 1889 Council insisted, after a written complaint from other prefects, that Wilson explain to them why he thrashed a prefect for allegedly not kneeling during prayers:
‘When school was reached Church, Dr Wilson [ordered three prefects to go to his study and] asked him why he did not kneel [and he] said he did not know; and immediately Dr Wilson said he would cane him, if he did not find out. Not receiving an immediate reply, Dr Wilson losing all control over himself seized a large cane and commenced belabouring [him] over the head and shoulders. [The prefect] in self-defence, opened the door and tried to escape. Dr Wilson pursued him till [he] fell, and struck him while on the ground. He then brought him back to the study [and] administered a severe thrashing.’
The prefect’s father also complained, highlighting the inappropriate nature of the punishment, especially for a prefect, and criticized the entire prefect system. Wilson, however, made the prefect apologise, and indicated to the Council his disapproval of their intervention in a matter of school discipline that undermined his authority.”
Mr Bill “Mousey” McKean, Boardinghouse master: “Tony Trumble’s (OM 1950) hatred of school life – of sadistic hoodlum prefects, of compulsory sport and the tyrannical matron who ruled with the cane at the Healesville Evacuation School in 1942 – is leveled at McKean, who withdrew Trumble’s right to go home one weekend for being late to a meal: ‘
Weekends were heaven as I could escape back home for two whole days, and its loss was a disaster of monumental proportions to me. A far worse punishment than the cane could ever be… During that lost weekend I arrived late for afternoon tea and “Mousey” gated me again for the following weekend. If ever I was close to suicide it was then.’”
“A cornerstone of Melbourne Grammar’s identity was its discipline, but Old Melburnians are divided in their opinion of the benefits of corporal punishment as the disciplinary core of the school. Its use to enforce school rules and discourage general misbehaviour was, for the most part, accepted as part of growing up, but its use in the classroom as a substitute for good teaching did little to explain mistakes and misunderstandings:
‘I never understood how six strokes across the backside from a long cane of a sadistic master was helping me to understand geometry – a subject of which I had no prior comprehension.’ Some pupils far preferred the cane to the anticipation of a Saturday detention. Overall regimentation associated with Public School education before World War II provided benefits to some pupils who, from various backgrounds and for various reasons, felt that this was an appropriate way to provide discipline during their teenage years. For others this could not have been further from the truth: ‘Melbourne Grammar taught me a lifelong distaste of all-male institutionalised official regimentation and entrenched squareness.’”
Mr Joseph Richard Sutcliffe, Headmaster: “Perhaps not surprisingly, given this bad feeling, it was perhaps only a matter of time before the Council found an excuse to dismiss him. The headmaster was stripped of his control in one of the most dramatic incidents in the school’s history when the Council refused to support his decision to expel and punish pupils for their part in what became known as ‘The Dancing Class Incident’ at Merton Hall. Normally unremarkable events, dancing classes were run by Alan ‘Pansy’ Finlayson and his sister Janet at Merton Hall on Friday nights for separate senior and junior classes of boys and girls from both school.
“Gradually, though, Wilson had to become less demanding and even to use the tawse to support a weak master. He also abandoned his opposition to impositions and made detentions the most common punishment. Perhaps the school had grown too large for the enlightened methods he had been able to operate at the high school. For all that, he was known for his justice and humanity and for a gentleness which contrasted strongly with the ‘beat first and ask questions afterwards’ approach of many schools in that period.”
“Although, as he told them, he was happy to trust them and risk being let down, and although his ideal when he ser out in 1863 was to rule by kindness, Wilson did beat boys. Those who lied or cheated were invariably caned. Among snippets of evidence about his practice there is T. Aylesbury Brown’s recollection of only once seeing the tawse in the five years he was at school between 1889 and 1893. Even so, it was used with vigour a horrifying twelve times to each hand of a boy who had been impertinent to a master. Wilson, who had limped to the classroom to give the strap, sent the boy to his dormitory, from where, apparently, he packed himself off home.”
“Gradually, though, Wilson had to become less demanding and even to use the tawse to support a weak master. He also abandoned his opposition to impositions and made detentions the most common punishment. Perhaps the school had grown too large for the enlightened methods he had been able to operate at the high school. For all that, he was known for his justice and humanity and for a gentleness which contrasted strongly with the ‘beat first and ask questions afterwards’ approach of many schools in that period.”
“Although, as he told them, he was happy to trust them and risk being let down, and although his ideal when he ser out in 1863 was to rule by kindness, Wilson did beat boys. Those who lied or cheated were invariably caned. Among snippets of evidence about his practice there is T. Aylesbury Brown’s recollection of only once seeing the tawse in the five years he was at school between 1889 and 1893. Even so, it was used with vigour a horrifying twelve times to each hand of a boy who had been impertinent to a master. Wilson, who had limped to the classroom to give the strap, sent the boy to his dormitory, from where, apparently, he packed himself off home.”
“A delay like that would have saved Wilson some embarrassment at one swimming sports in the 1870s, when he noticed fearful bruises on the back (sic) and legs of young Ernest Jackson, and learnt to his horror that they were the marks of his own tawse. ‘I always bruised very easily’, Jackson wrote later.”
1920s: “Masculinity was at a high pitch in the boarding-houses, where prefects ruled supreme and often inflicted corporal punishment. Its results were visible in summer at the school baths where boys, by tradition naked, often wore ugly stripes.”
Reverend Doctor Francis Brown, Headmaster: “Students felt he was almost as omnipotent as God, and nearly as distant except on Monday mornings, when a large contingent of backsliders knew his wrath at close quarters through the cane.”
Mr E.T. Williams, Housemaster: “Ian Nicholson remembered ‘Billy Lop’ Williams quoting his favourite poem, ‘Drake’s Drum’, in one of the dormitories. When he came to ‘Captain, are thou sleeping there below?’, a voice from under a bed responded, ‘Aye, Aye, sir!’ The offender soon felt six of the best, but then, as always happened when he caned one of his favourites, Billy made it up to him with coffee and Banbury tarts.”
Sir James Darling, Headmaster: “After receiving gifts from the school and thanking them with his usual wit and power, the headmaster, with a touch of humour, to everyone’s delight, broke his cane and threw down his mortar board.”
“Brian Jones thought that, because it was small, well-ordered and happy, the school of the 1920s was in certain ways ‘outstandingly civilised’. The house and the isolation welded it together. The boys were a nice lot who treated each other well; there was no brutal caning or dreadful bullying. He believed that nobody questioned the numerous rules, automatic punishments, beating and detentions.”
“House captains could cane. Hugh Luiggi (a founding member of Francis Brown 1937-40) remembered a boy caned for insulting the King by sticking his image upside down on a letter. Luiggi thought that caning, the preferred method of enforcing discipline at Corio, was weakened by its frequency and the lack of distinction in degree of punishment. Had he been in Manifold, he would have found life much tougher.”
‘Wesley College: The First Hundred Years’ by Geoffrey Blainey, James Morrisey and S.E.K. Hulme.
It contains far less corporal punishment material than others , but there’s still some (not much though from a school whose old boys have often referred to their schoolmasters as ‘the men who tanned the hide of us’).
Again, a particular term needs to be explained with regard to Wesley – that of ‘President’. In the early days of Wesley College administrative power in the school was split between two people – President and Headmaster – the Headmaster was pretty much as you’d expect, the President was functionally a boarding house master and chaplain – however he had a position on the School Council (which the headmaster did not) and therefore could exert considerable pressure on the Headmaster.
Wesley College. This history is older than the others I’ve used so far (from 1967), because I do not have access to a more recent history of Wesley, if one has been written.
Professor Henry Martyn Andrew, Headmaster; Reverend James Swanston Waugh, President: “Andrew’s term as headmaster opened ominously. It seems that in February 1876 some young boys dawdling on their way home from school threw stones and broke windows of a woman’s house. Though boys did not wear an identifying uniform in those days, the woman knew which school the stone-throwers went to, and she called on President Waugh and protested.
Waugh and Andrew made investigations and poked through lies or evasion until they found the culprits. They made them bring money to school to pay for the windows and, as punishment for telling lies, gave them the option of voluntarily leaving the school – it was not the same as expulsion, Andrew explained – or of accepting a flogging. Several chose the flogging. Waugh approved of this punishment and Andrew had to give it. One of the boys, a twelve-year-old named Albert Pilley, was hit severely.
It seems that Andrew lost his temper and hit the boy’s back and shoulder about 21 tunes with, a cane. The boy’s father got medical advice about his son’s bruises, and legal advice about his rights. A few days later Andrew had to appear in the Prahran Court on a charge of unlawful assault, a charge which could lead to imprisonment.
The contentious issue was not whether Andrew had flogged the boy but whether he had done so with undue severity. Andrew took the case seriously enough to engage the brilliant advocate, J.L. Purves.
Evidence in his defence was given by Howell Thomas, the school’s second master who had witnessed the flogging; by the Reverend Mr. Waugh and by E. E. Morris who was the new headmaster of Melbourne Grammar School; by Professor Irving who was now at Hawthorn Grammar School, and a medical practitioner. Irving told the court that during his reign he had a rule always to flog a boy for persistent lying, and that he had usually flogged one boy each week; by the standards of the day he was probably lenient. Andrew told the court that he had had to punish the boys in order to save them from the police court.
He justified the severity of the punishment by recalling the parting advice Irving gave him before resigning as headmaster: ‘Andrew, don’t flog rashly, but when you do flog, flog well, that you may not be required to do it again.’ The court did not agree with this parting advice, nor with the energetic way in which Andrew had interpreted it, and fined him £5.
Andrew emerged from the court house not as a villain but as a hero. The Argus condemned the court’s verdict in an editorial on 25 February 1876. Corporal punishment, it argued, ‘is even more necessary here than it is in the mother country, because domestic restraints are so much weaker in Victoria, and the physical and mental development of the young proceeds so much more rapidly.’ Letters appeared in The Argus, mostly praising Andrew.
Fathers of large families saluted him as the protector of morality in the young and the unjust victim of ‘the sneers of the evil-doers’. Many envelopes containing money arrived at the newspaper office to defray Andrew’s legal expenses, one man announcing that he bad collected a shilling from each of seventy men after a few minutes canvassing ‘Under the Verandah’ – the place in Collins Street frequented by speculators and merchants. And the final halo was placed over Andrew’s head by a signed address from some sixty school teachers and educationalists, offering him their sincere sympathy and approval.
Professor H. M. Andrew certainly enhanced his reputation in the eyes of the stern parents who thought he was perhaps too young and inexperienced.”
Lawrence Arthur Adamson, Headmaster (generally regarded as having a claim to be Australia’s greatest headmaster): “Adamson extolled good form, and popular opinion soon swung behind his attitude. The story went the rounds that a first offender declined to avoid a beating by pleading it was his first offence. Adamson highly approved this unnecessary acceptance of the cane and commended his individual victim. ‘Could anyone fail a man like that?’ asked a contemporary scholar.
Another story was told of a senior boy who defiantly walked through a door reserved for prefects. Although he was a senior boy, Adamson beat him. Later the boy said Adamson was right. Again there was vast contemporary approval that bad form had been punished.”
“Junior boarders were pleased to find the discipline in the senior house less strict than that to which they had been accustomed – though still strict enough by any other standard. Official discipline was enforced with lines and the cane. ‘The man who tanned the hide of us’ was the housemaster alone.”
Geelong College. This is a different school from Geelong Grammar, though the two have often been confused. Indeed, Geelong College has sometimes been accused of deliberately using the confusion to attract pupils – Geelong Grammar was a much more prestigious school in the late 19th Century (even though the College achieved better results academically) and again in the 1960s and 1970s (after Prince Charles spent two terms at the Grammar).
Historically, Geelong College has been the smallest of the great schools, and was the last of the six greats to be admitted to that grouping (in 1908).
Again, this history is older than I would have liked (1961), and contains very little information on corporal punishment. But what there is may be of interest still. I’ll be moving onto other schools now, hopefully ones where I can find more information – but I wanted to do the six great schools of Victoria first. The book is “The Geelong College: 1861-1961” by G.C. Notman, and B.R. Keith.
Dr George Morrison, Headmaster: “He was President of the Debating Society at the University, and there acquired the power of expression which later made his little homilies to erring Collegians such terrifying ordeals. Most of his pupils preferred his gentle canings to his impressive lecturings.”
Mr Charles Norman Morrison (son of the above), Headmaster: “At the same time he was a strict disciplinarian. That was a day when corporal punishment was accepted as normal by both the parties concerned.”
Mr A.H. MacRoberts, Vice-Principal: “It was fortunate that Mr. A.H. MacRoberts, another “Morrison man”, had returned from military service and was available to take the position of Vice-Principal. He was a history teacher and before the war had also been cricket master and first editor of “The Pegasus”. He changed from the quiet, almost jocular man, to be the stern ruler whom the new situation demanded. In matters of discipline his attitude was complimentary to that of Mr. Rolland. He was to some extent, the iron hand in the velvet glove.
While the Principal worries over finance or architecture or public relations, Mr. MacRoberts grappled with the problems of internal order. His weekly inspection of the boys’ records caused even bravest hearts to quail. As flagellator-in-chief he had a remarkable eye for multiple underwear. The fact that he found it hard to relax as the position improved is some measure of his sacrifice for the College when a show of strength was needed. To the last he loved cricket, and the boys who made a good score in a Public School match would possibly be called to “the bookroom”, not for the usual dread purpose, but to receive a ten-shilling note. Mr. MacRoberts remained Vice-Principal until 1938.”
Having dealt with the ‘Six Great Schools’, I’m now moving onto their more recent companions. In 1958, the Associated Public Schools of Victoria was enlarged with five more schools invited to join the six. These five schools were therefore (in the eyes of many) raised to a preeminence of position, and tradition, to be considered among the best boys schools in the state.
The first one I have looked at is St Kevin’s College, the second Catholic school admitted to the APS. It’s a Christian Brother’s School, and its history does contain some mention of corporal punishment. In particular, there’s a corporal punishment themed cartoon that appeared in a major Melbourne newspaper during the 1960s when Scotch College and St Kevin’s College were fighting to prevent the Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works from requisitioning sections of their sports grounds to build a freeway. I will scan this and upload it somewhere if I can find a suitable place for it.
The history is ‘St Kevin’s College: 1918-1993’ by Chris McConville.
“Brother Paul Sebastian Mulkerns, for example, an Irishman and an asthmatic, seemed unsettled in both Australia and Ireland and moved several times between the two places. Mulkerns was an enthusiastic and an occasionally violent disciplinarian (North Melbourne students recollected that he taught often with a wooden rod in his hands).”
“They were to discover an even more aloof figure in Brother Saul, Principal from 1947 to 1949. J.A. Saul arrived at St Kevin’s with a commitment to improving study habits in the school. It was apparently Saul’s rule to make all senior boys sit with a book in hand at lunchtime, preparing for exams as they ate. Eric Stevenson, years later, remembered his first encounter with Saul.
Eric was intrigued by a schoolground game apparently invented by the boys to fill in time on the cramped Orrong Rd yard. This game ‘throwball’, as Eric remembered it, took place each lunchtime at the back of the college. Trying to get a grip on the intricacies of the game, Eric was found around the sheds when he ought not to have been there, and received six cuts from Saul. Such was his introduction to St Kevin’s and to ‘Socker’ Saul.”
“Another brother who ruled with a firm hand stuck in the memories of several students. Brother English was remembered by some boys as sitting at the front of their classes, his sleeves rolled up and his strap positioned prominently on the desk.”
“On the staff for fewer years than Peter Hall but recalled vividly by former students was Paddy Wright. Paddy had come to St Kevin’s after teaching at Trinity Grammar School. He immediately struck his colleagues as a dedicated teacher and managed to communicate his enthusiasm to students through, or perhaps in spite of, his often eccentric techniques. Students faced the return of essays from Paddy with some trepidation. His method of communicating displeasure at a piece of work was to draw a tombstone at the top of the essay. A returned essay with the dreaded tombstone symbol meant that the author was headed for punishment through the strap.
Paddy would then proceed through the class carrying a chocolate box. Those listed for corporal punishment would be invited to take a chocolate and on opening the box would find Paddy’s strap, neatly coiled and ready for action. Funnily enough, recalled several former students, boys somehow accepted his use of the strap when they were angered if other teachers resorted to physical punishment.”
St Bede’s College, Mentone, Victoria, Australia. Well, most of them are.
The book is ‘St. Bede’s College and its McCristal origins 1896-1982’ by Leo Gamble, published by St Bede’s in 1982.
St Bede’s is considered to be the successor school to an earlier one called Mentone College, often referred to as McCristal College after its founder and headmaster. St Bede’s started off using the same buildings as Mentone College, and a lot of Mentone College boys sent their sons to St Bede’s.
The first eight chapters of the school history are devoted to Mentone College, and some of the quotes come from there. There’s also discussion of the history of education in the area around Mentone – it’s considered interesting because there are so many schools in that small area (5 large secondary schools today). One quote, referring to Meeres school relates to that (it was the first school in the area.
Mentone College had a close link to Xavier whose history’s I have already quoted from – Thomas McCristal, founder of Mentone College, had been a student at Xavier in its second year of operation, and was one of Xavier’s first laymasters. He deliberately modeled his school on Xavier.
Meeres’ School: “It appears that after the kindly and cultured Meeres couple went back to England, the school was run by a Mr Chambers whose delight seemed to be in thrashing the pupils savagely with canes chosen from his extra large collection.”
Mentone College:
“The story of one new pupil illustrates this. One February, a boy of twelve from a grazing property in the Riverina stepped out of the cab for his first day at Mentone College. Turning around, he saw the blue of Port Phillip Bay a couple of hundred yards away through the trees. His curiosity ran riot as he sprinted over the road to the cliffs to gaze on the wonder of the sea for the first time. When he eventually got back to school McCristal gave him “the cuts” for being out of bounds without permission!”
“Another ex-student recalled an incident where he and a friend dropped behind the main body of walkers near Mordialloc one Sunday. He and his friend went into a shop on Beach Road and bought a small packet of Capstan cigarettes which they smoked in the scrub along the beachfront. Then they raced along the beach to catch up with the rest of the hikers, only to discover that McCristal had put the whole party on the train at Edithvale and gone back to Mentone. The pair had no money for the train fare and had to trudge back to school along the beach. When they arrived back, hours later, McCristal was waiting to administer a severe punishment with the strap and send them to bed without any evening meal.
It was a serious offence for a boarder to be out of bounds, even on a hike! One of the offenders, as well as another member of the hike, recalled the incident sixty years later. There was a happier end to the story, however. Later that night Mrs McCristal came into the dormitory and put down a tray of hot cocoa and buns for the pair who had been sent to bed in disgrace.”
“There had to be a fairly strict set of rules because the advertisements promised that boys would be treated like members of the principal’s family; and the McCristal discipline was consistent and strict. Any boy found out of bounds was strapped and had privileges including meals, withdrawn. Bird-nesting, a delight of adventurous lads, was strictly forbidden and offenders were strapped.
One ex-boarder remembers a friend trying to pass a note to a day student requesting the latter to buy him a packet of cigarettes after school. McCristal intercepted the note and the lad received a strapping and certainly no cigarettes. None of the Old Collegians remembered McCristal’s discipline as being unfair in any way. All recall that he was consistent and strict.”
“In school he was strict and his discipline included the use of the strap. Ex-students say that he used it for serious matters only, and that his discipline was fair.”
“It is difficult to find criticisms of McCristal. All reports of him, and those who remember him, say the same things about him – cultured, kind, scholarly and tolerant. Only one ex-student said he used the strap too much.”
St Bede’s:
Brother Julian, Headmaster: “In each class there was always a bright student who somehow translated Julian’s incomprehensible instructions and was able to keep him at bay by answering the hard questions. But the day would come (frequently) when the bright boy would be away, or would make a mistake, and the Julian would hand the keys of his office to the messenger boy, usually his favourite boarder, and the class would know the fear of expectation. “Go and get Sammy”, he would say, and the boy would return with a four-foot cane which Julian used on the group of quaking Latin students who had been ordered to the front of the room for missing some finer point in the language.
Boys returned to their desk with fingers on fire with pain and faced whit with the effort of holding back the tears. Some tears did flow and even the tough boys sometimes writhed noticeably as the cane did its work. A favourite remedy was to put the offended fingers on the cold bolts which held the seat on the desk; another was to play handball incessantly to toughen the fingers; and yet another group placed their faith in assorted applications, such as resin, which were supposed to deaden the pain. Julian’s lessons may have been hard to understand but they were never dull.
On one occasion, he and a Mordialloc boy called “Gabby” Gray had a fist fight up and down the aisle between the desks while the class cowered in their seats not knowing whom to barrack for. When Gray finally retreated, Julian informed him that he was expelled, so the boy packed his bag and left with a parting shot at Julian as he went out the door, “I was leaving next week, anyway.” Even at the time members of the class thought it was a crude incident, especially when the principal of the school was seen to be acting as a bully, no matter what Gray had done.
Corporal punishment had been used sparingly in the first few years of St Bede’s. The seniors in their tiny classes were treated as responsible “near adults” and a friendly relationship between teacher and pupil developed. George Laube, who had attended De La Salle Malvern in 1937, recalled that the atmosphere at St Bede’s was much more relaxed than at Malvern where the strap was frequently used. As St Bede’s moved into the 1940’s corporal punishment increased significantly.
Even the Brothers who taught well, and were liked by their students, used the strap or the ruler turned on its edge. The reasons for this were that classes grew larger and more difficult to handle, staff changes brought Brothers who were less attuned to the friendly spirit of the pioneering years, and people in most schools then saw corporal punishment as an indispensable part of education, especially that of boys. The fact that it was frequently used on members of the class who could not understand their work, or who had limited ability, is hard to explain or to excuse.
The classroom of the 1940’s was often a dreary place for the student. Time passed on tortoise legs as endless periods of algebra or “Mort d’Arthur” filled the day. In those war-time classroom the distractions had to be manufactured from the few possibilities available. Before ball-points, the school-boy used a pen with a steel nib attached to a wooden stem which was usually chewed to a pulp by the ruminating scholar.
The nib, when its prongs had separated too much for writing purposes, could be attached to a paper dart and, with perseverance, this could be made to stick upside down in the ceiling by vigorous throwing when the teacher was distracted or out of the room. When Brothers changed classrooms at the end of periods, opportunities would arise for the pea-shooter expert with his pocketful of wheat, or the “lacker band” brigade who could sting the back of a boy’s neck with a paper pellet from three rows away. The Brothers’ surprise entry often produced plenty of fodder for the wielded strap.”
“There were mean-spirited boys who would insert wads of blotting paper into their classmates’ inkwells so that the dipped pen would emerge with an inky blot that flopped out onto a page of neat work, ruining it, and earning the owner a bad mark, or the cuts, or both.”
“Occasionally a “smart aleck” would produce a steel ball-bearing and endeavour to split up the “glassies” and “agates” in the ring. If he was a small kid, the players would demand immediate relief under the “no ball bearings” rule, and expel him from the game. If he was one of the big kids there was no relief, except that of risking an uneven fist fight, and possible doses of the strap if the Brothers intervened.”
“Brother Camillus, a likeable man, had experienced problems in controlling the sizeable junior secondary classes. His mistake was in trying to have jokes and fun in classes full of rather insensitive adolescents who took the opportunity to release pent-up energy with noise and unruly behaviour. Brother Camillus would respond with the strap, become very unpopular, and then try to reassure the class with more good humour. The cycle would then begin again.”
“There was the intriguing “Major” Bill Jordan, reputedly an ex-secret service man who had worked behind enemy lines during the war. In his short time at St Bede’s he taught middle-school English with fastidious attention to detail and extreme annoyance at the excessive use of corporal punishment around the school. On one occasion he burst into the room next door and grabbed the strap from a teacher he believed was over-doing it. Relations between the “Major” and several staff members became strained over the strap issue.”
“In class a form of educational Darwinism emerged in junior and middle secondary areas. Bright boys survived and did well as they captured teacher attention, but, in those massive numbers, many boys floundered along, anxious to secure a minimal qualification at Form 3 level so they could leave. Teachers’ nerves frayed and cracked, so the strap was over-used causing resentment and consequent anti-social behaviour in some cases.”
Haileybury College (named after the school of the same name in Britain). This history is ‘Haileybury College: The First 100 Years’ by Don Chambers, published in 1992.
Mr Charles Rendall, Headmaster: “With recurring illness, good humour became less evident. Eric Marshall observed that ‘to differ from him was to sin against the Holy Ghost’. Several students remember Rendall most for the type of thorough canings for which ‘The Old Man’ of England’s Haileybury was noted.
An occasional Old Boy has described Rendall as sadistic, but that is unfair in the context of school norms in that era. Rendall appears usually to have kept the cane for serious offences, but to have done a thorough job. However, his ‘moodiness’ sometimes brought allegations of injustice, and R.G. Cumbrae Stewart could never forgive Rendall for a severe caning imposed, without heed to pleas of innocence, for another’s offence.
Others maintained that Rendall could pin a boy’s head between his big knees while he repeatedly caned the posterior. One teacher never forgot his revulsion at having to be present during canings, probably in case of parental complaint. Such behaviour today would be sadistic.
In the British Public Schools, training in the unflinching acceptance of pain was part of the education of men being immured to suffering and hardship in the empire’s service.
After Cumbrae Stewart’s unjust caning, Rendall patted his head and said how well he had taken his punishment – while the boy fought a strong desire to kick the Headmaster’s shins. The justice of the caning was probably less significant to Rendall than how it was taken. When tackled about the incident in later years, Rendall (typically) said his ex-student must have imagined it! Others remembered occasional canings as well deserved, and the warm handshake and piece of fruit which concluded the ritual.”
“There were English precedents for Rendall’s reputation as a disciplinarian. Dr. Bradby, aided by ‘The Old Man’ and housemasters like Ash had the onerous task of restoring discipline at England’s Haileybury College shortly before Rendall attended. The cane was used effectively to restore Haileybury’s reputation.”
“When young Dick Durance began school at seven years of age he quickly became devoted to Miss Moore, his form mistress, but:
‘When 1923 dawned, I was a rather dirty boy of 9, covered in ink and loathed by the mistress (a Miss Jackson) who used to make us put our hands on our heads and then hit them with a ruler.’”
“The ordered march to Brighton was replaced by a trip to North Brighton Drill Hall when R. Nicholl and K.K. Garnock were the school’s only Senior Cadets: ‘We used to buy a packet of “My Darling” cigarettes and smoke them going to and from the Drill Hall’. They would have been sore had Dickinson known.”
“An Old Boy reminisced that prefects could award Saturday morning detentions and canings, but he did not remember older boys lording it over younger ones. Punishments were approved by the prefects’ meeting, and also by the Headmaster whose cane was necessary.”
“In 1967 with I.M. MacGregor’s death Haileybury lost a prime mover in the Keysborough project, and an influential English teacher. His nickname of ‘Jock’ was hardly original, but fitted the broad Scottish accent, craggy appearance, and dry humour. An avaricious reader of English classics, he was especially fond of Chaucer and Shakespeare.
Inclined to eccentricity, he was known to declare in terrible tones that ‘I’ll tear you limb from limb and splatter your brains across the room’, before banging his 36 inch ruler on the desk so that it sometimes broke. For students not easily intimidated, MacGregor kept a heavy leather tawse, providing an alternative punishment to the Headmaster’s more traditional caning.”
Michael Aikman, Headmaster: “When an article in The Age treated Haileybury’s traditional educational programme under the provocative (but misleading) heading, ‘Cane Makes Them Able’, Haileyburians were delighted by an unexpected flood of parental enquiries about school entry. It is true that Haileybury has not abandoned recourse to the cane as a deterrent disciplinary tool, and that the school’s students seem to accept this situation as normal. However, rather than emphasizing the cane, Michael Aikman’s annual reports have stress ‘the progressive dilution of curricula’ and indifference towards traditional subject disciplines, which he believed were undermining State education and causing parents to turn to Haileybury.”
Carey Grammar School.
Mr Harold Steele, Headmaster: “School ended at 3.45 pm except for those boys undergoing detention, the normal form of punishment for misdemeanours, although H.G. Steele did not hesitate to cane for serious offences. Persistent laziness was an especially heinous schoolboy crime in his judgement and a severe caning the only cure.”
“I remember the building of the tuckshop and a concrete floor under a roof outside, where we used to play French cricket on wet days, and I was successful in putting the ball through the window, for which H.G. Steele duly chastised me in an appropriate manner with the cane he kept behind the bookshelves for such occasions.”
V.F.O. Francis, Headmaster: “In second term, Mark Stump told Francis that the staff had lost confidence in him as Headmaster and were becoming concerned for their own reputations. He accused Francis of missing classes and failing to correct examination papers in time for reports to be issued when they were due. He said the spirit of the school was deteriorating and demanded that Francis call a staff meeting to hear these complaints and others bearing on the matter of discipline. Francis had given the staff power to cane at the beginning of the year, believing that a master must have the right to enforce discipline himself, but his own attitude to punishment puzzled them.
Sometimes they thought him unduly harsh, sometimes incomprehensibly lenient. He could be decisive, as he demonstrated towards the end of October, when he expelled two boys for stealing and roundly denounced the ‘deplorable lack of a sense of responsibility towards private property in the school’. Yet the staff, and Stump especially, no longer felt certain that the Headmaster would support them in those disciplinary measures which were beginning to appear increasingly necessary because even normally responsible boys were misbehaving.”
“Although surprised by Stump’s account of staff discontent, Dr Moore was not unprepared to hear that something might be amiss. A short time before, he had received a deputation of parents dissatisfied with the Headmaster’s disciplinary method. They complained that while there was generally not enough discipline at Carey, Francis was too harsh when he did exert his authority.”
Caulfield Grammar School. Again, not a vast amount of material (I’m hoping the next lot of books I get will be more illuminating), but for the sake of completeness, here are the quotes. Again, I noticed many oblique references that could have been very interesting if they’d had a bit of detail. The books is ‘Years May Pass On… Caulfield Grammar School 1881-1981’ by Horace Webber, published in 1981.
Reverend Ernest Judd Barnett, Headmaster: “Mr Barnett was no great caner, and some of his disciplinary measures were quaint. Another boy and I had mutual black eyes. E.J.B. spotted them and inquired. After school he took us up to 4B room.
He carried three or four leather straps in his hand. Having stood us back to back, he strapped us together for half an hour. When releasing us, he remarked ‘You should get along better in future.’”
Mr Francis Henry Joseph Archer, Headmaster: “At the beginning of Archer’s career there were only two teachings aid, blackboard-and-chalk and the cane.”
“‘In a modern school, the boy is no longer a passive receptacle to be filled with a certain quantity of knowledge. Not is he a rebellious wayward puppy to be flogged into submission.’”
Mr Bruce Clyde Lumsden, Headmaster: “The school, like many others in both State and Independent systems at the time, was conducted under rigid discipline based upon corporal punishment. Every teacher carried a retributory weapon of some sort, usually a strap. The boys themselves were a match for this treatment. They expected it, and responded accordingly. The master who did not apply corporal punishment was a freak or a weakling, to be condemned on either count. Young Mr Lumsden, coming from his environment of gentleness and love, consideration for others and justice, was deeply troubled in being asked to treat boys in this way. He was faced with a dilemma: he could not bring himself to beat boys, but in self-preservation he had to.”
