British influence travelled overseas too.
Australian schools used punishment registers which were sometimes imported from Britain and sometimes specially printed by state education departments.
There were interesting local variations.
In Victoria, for example, some schools apparently entered corporal punishment in the Accident Book — the register normally intended to record injuries and mishaps.
Why this happened isn’t entirely clear.
Perhaps it was simply convenient.
Perhaps administrators considered any resulting injury something which ought to be recorded.
Or perhaps it was simply one of those wonderfully mysterious pieces of educational bureaucracy which made perfect sense to somebody at the time.
