The matter becomes more complicated when attention turns to the traditional boarding school.
Life in such an establishment was necessarily different from that of the ordinary day school. The school was not merely the place where lessons were conducted: it was the pupil’s home for much of the year.
Masters consequently exercised an authority extending far beyond the classroom.
In some establishments corporal punishment formed a conspicuous part of this authority.
Former pupils have described being summoned privately to studies and being subjected to punishments which, viewed from the standpoint of the present day, may appear extraordinarily severe.
There are also allegations, repeated in personal recollections, that individual masters sometimes exceeded what could reasonably have been regarded as legitimate discipline.
Such claims plainly require caution. Recollections recorded many years after an event cannot always be verified, and rumours repeated amongst generations of schoolboys do not become facts merely through repetition.
Yet the accounts raise a question which cannot altogether be avoided.
What supervision existed over the master who administered the punishment?
