Another striking feature of these records is the difference between the treatment of boys and girls.
There was no single national pattern.
One school might cane boys regularly but rarely punish girls physically. Another might use the cane on both sexes. Elsewhere a senior mistress or female deputy dealt specifically with girls.
Local customs mattered enormously.
So did the attitudes of individual headteachers.
An intriguing punishment book from an unidentified Birmingham mixed school, covering 1932 to 1951, contains exactly 50 recorded incidents.
All involved the cane and all were administered to the hand.
Yet the difference between the sexes was enormous.
Some 92 per cent of the recorded pupils were boys and only 8 per cent girls.
Does this prove boys were ten times naughtier?
Hardly.
It may tell us considerably more about contemporary attitudes towards boys and girls than about their actual behaviour.
Girls were often expected to be quieter, tidier and more obedient, while boys were frequently regarded as naturally troublesome.
Such assumptions inevitably affected discipline.
