Perhaps that is what makes these battered old registers so fascinating.
Behind every carefully ruled column was a real school.
There were polished corridors and draughty classrooms, blackboards covered in chalk, squeaking gym shoes, assembly halls, playground arguments and teachers trying — with varying degrees of success — to maintain order.
And behind every entry was a child.
Sometimes the offence was serious.
Sometimes it was mischievous.
Sometimes, viewed from half a century away, it seems astonishingly trivial.
The punishment book cannot tell us whether the child thought the punishment fair.
It cannot tell us what happened when he or she went home.
Nor can it tell us about the hundreds of incidents which were never written down.
What it can do is open a small window onto a vanished world.
