I was quite taken aback at breakfast the other day, whilst glancing through my copy of The Times, to see the headline ‘Corporal Punishment to be Abolished’. To be honest, I’d forgotten that it was still actually legal for fee-paying schools in England to beat their pupils.
I can remember the discussion we had when the cane was banned in state schools years ago; although I was teaching in a fee-paying school at the time, we had to stop too, as the law covered girls who were at our college but on government grants under the Assisted Places scheme. It just didn’t seem right that we could cane pupils with rich parents, but not those from poorer backgrounds for the same offence!
I was never a fan of using corporal punishment in any case. But the newspaper story got me thinking of the one time I did use the cane – on a girl who’s since become one of my closest friends and confidantes.
I guess I ought to give you a bit of background on myself. I’m thirty-nine, the headmaster of a boarding school in South-West England. The events I’m going to relate began eleven years ago – not, as it happens, at this school, but at the one at which I started my teaching career.
I need to go back a bit before that, though, so you understand the reason why the caning, well, mattered so much to me. I’d graduated in Economics & Modern Languages from Cambridge in 1980 – with a first-class degree – and then went on to earn my doctorate. During the time I was doing my research, I found myself becoming more and more attracted by the idea of teaching as a career. Needless to say, the money’s not brilliant, but education to me is just about the most important thing in life, and I’d got so much out of it that I thought I should try and share some of my learning with others.
So in August 1983, I started work at Winthrop College, a prestigious girls’ boarding school. It was a lovely place: an old country house set in open fields in Shropshire, near to the border between England and Wales – so gorgeous that I’d quite fallen in love with it when I went for the interview!
Each girl was allocated to a house when she joined the school – one of six buildings around the estate, with dormitories, study-bedrooms, TV rooms and so on, and each with its own housemaster and tutor – and this element of pastoral care for the girls’ wellbeing also impressed me. I settled down very quickly – the teaching was great fun, with classes in Economics for O and A Level, mixed with teaching French to some of the younger girls.
I had been quite concerned about one thing before I started – 400 teenage girls, all boarders, aged from 13-18, stuck in a country house with a group of mainly male teachers. Wasn’t there a risk that some of my colleagues might be – well, just a bit, odd? By and large, it didn’t turn out to be an issue. Most of the men were happily married, with their wives living with them in the staff accommodation at the school.
There was one thing that did slightly worry me, though, and that was the disciplinary regime at Winthrop. To say it was strict was an understatement: the girls seemed to live in almost constant fear of punishment, and some of the staff seemed to take an almost unhealthy delight in meting out correction. “Arrived two minutes late for a lesson, young girl? Come and bend over my desk at the front of the class and take three swats with the slipper.” “Caught misbehaving during the lunch break? Report to your housemaster this evening for six of the best with the tawse.”
And worst of all, for those girls committing some particularly heinous crime – the knock on the door in the middle of the lesson, the folded note handed to the teacher to read aloud: “Miss Fisher, would you please go with the headmaster’s secretary to his office, as he wants to see you.” And fifteen, maybe twenty minutes later, the young lass would knock on the door and come back in, by now dishevelled and with tears in her eyes, and would wince as she lowered herself gingerly into her desk and onto her newly-caned buttocks.
Punishments were a frequent topic of discussion in the staff room as well. The housemasters – who had the main responsibility for the discipline of the girls – would quite often regale the room with accounts of the thrashings they had just doled out: whether they’d used the tawse or the cane, how many strokes they had given, whether the girl cried, and so on. I remember the excitement one morning when a large package marked ‘Lochgelly’ arrived containing a batch of new ‘extra heavy grade’ leather tawses, and the vicious two-tailed straps were handed round and much admired. (And I also remember how the housemasters agreed that they would each find an opportunity that day to use the new implements, and then reporting back that evening on the agonies that they had inflicted).
Now, I found it somewhat difficult to relate to all of this. Sure, when I’d been a schoolboy myself, the cane had been used – but not on good boys like me! Here, I guess a girl was lucky if she got through her time at the school without at least one whacking in front of the class. So I passed on using the slipper – and I don’t think it had any adverse effects on the discipline that I could maintain with my classes. Far better, to my mind, to trust your students, so that they learn to trust and respect you.
Anyway, my dislike of the disciplinary regime didn’t really get too much in the way of my enjoyment of my job. By the end of my second year at the school – in summer 1985 – things were going well for me at Winthrop. The kids I taught seemed to like me – and to get good exam results; I managed to get quite actively involved in various extra-curricular activities (sports, adventure trips, that kind of thing). And even the headmaster, the dreaded Mr Evans (dreaded, that is, by many of the staff, as well as the pupils!) seemed to have taken quite a shine to me.
I went to spend that summer vacation in France. My girlfriend at the time, Marie, was French, and lived in the Loire valley. We’d met whilst I was a student – I’d spent some time in France as part of my course – and I guess it was fair to say she was something of a catch: wonderfully intelligent, stunningly attractive (so much that she turned heads in the street!), and now beginning to establish herself as a successful artist. I look back on that summer very fondly: lazy days, good food and wine and – particularly memorable – making passionate, erotic love to one another whenever (and wherever) the opportunity arose!
It was towards the middle of August that Marie came into the bedroom one morning with the pile of post, and passed me a letter from the school. I was surprised to hear from them – they didn’t normally contact staff during the holidays – but its contents were rather interesting. The letter was from Mr Evans, the headmaster, congratulating me on the exam results that had just been published for the classes that I taught, and asking me to “return to Winthrop a day early this autumn and join me for dinner on the night before term starts, as I have a project that I’d like to discuss with you.” Intriguing…
So, at the start of September, I drove back over to Shropshire, and found myself eating a splendid meal in the head’s private dining room. As dessert arrived, Evans turned the conversation to the project which he had mentioned in his letter. The governors had decided that six houses weren’t sufficient to cope with the number of girls in the school, and were starting work to develop a brand-new, purpose-built building to be the seventh house. And then – to my amazement – he offered me the job of housemaster, starting when the new building was completed in twelve months’ time.
Frankly, I was astonished. There was I, still in my late twenties – a good ten years younger than any of the other housemasters. He sensed my surprise: “Richard, I wouldn’t ask you to do it if I didn’t think you could succeed.” By the end of dinner, I had agreed – subject to a couple of considerations. Primarily, I wanted his assurance that I would have full flexibility to run the house exactly as I wanted to, and that he would back any decisions that I made. And secondly, I wanted to select a small team of girls straight away, to work with me on deciding how the house should be run. Much to my satisfaction, Evans agreed to both.
“Which girls do you want in your team?” Evans asked. I thought about if for a moment, then listed half-a-dozen names – girls I’d taught, girls with whom I thought I could get on, girls who could make an invaluable contribution to my planning. He nodded; “You want the best, don’t you?!” We laughed.
There was only one of the girls on my list that he didn’t know: Imogen Jones. I filled him in on her background: aged 15, taking O Levels that summer, quite quiet, a bit shy – but bright, and with that certain something about her that made me think she’d be good on the team. He suddenly remembered her: “She’s the lass on the scholarship, isn’t she? Parents live in Bristol, he does something for the council?” He was right – although rather typical of Evans to remember her social background; in a school with several aristocrats’ daughters, it was actually quite daunting for a girl like Imogen, from a relatively poor background, to fit in.
So, I left dinner that night a happy man, with Evans having agreed to all I had requested. I called ‘my girls’ together on the second day of term, and asked whether they wanted to be involved – and a more enthusiastic response I couldn’t have hoped for.
The next few months were great: the building was taking shape, and the girls and I met regularly to make our plans. Our aim was to make the house the one to which the girls in the school most wanted to belong – not just because of its modern facilities, but more because of its atmosphere and approach. As the year went on, we bonded fairly tightly into a group – helped to an extent by a weekend away in November on a ‘team building’ event (pretty clichéd, I know, but it worked!). Ideas were exchanged freely and openly, and we began to trust each other pretty much completely; the girls were forever popping into my office to discuss this idea or that.
One of my worries had been that working on the plans might distract the girls from their academic work, but on this count I needn’t have worried – they seemed to positively flourish. One of the interesting topics that came up was – not surprisingly – the one of discipline. Rather amazingly, only one of the six had ever been beaten during their time at Winthrop – a girl called Sue, who’d tasted the tawse in her first year. The team desperately wanted me to agree not to use corporal punishment in the new house, and I was minded to accept, given my own thoughts on the matter. So I sent a note to Evans:-
January 27th, 1986
Dear Headmaster,
CORPORAL PUNISHMENT
My team has requested that I agree not to use corporal punishment in the new house. I am sympathetic to this request.
Would you please confirm whether you would be in agreement with such a policy?
Yours sincerely,
Richard Thompson
The reply came back the following day, and I read it to the girls. “I note the comments in your letter to me of yesterday. As you know, I believe corporal punishment serves two vital roles in a school such as ours: as a deterrent, and as a strong punishment for those who do misbehave. If, however, you do not wish to use it in your house, I am prepared to accept that policy, as I have given you the authority to take decisions on how the house should be run. This is, however, subject to your agreement that you would indeed administer such punishment if I were ever to require you to do so in a specific instance.”
The girls could hardly believe their luck: the head never interfered in house matters, so the chances of him using his power to override me seemed remote – and a condition worth accepting!
—
By September 1986, the new building was complete, and we moved in, with a full complement of 60 girls. Of the six who had formed my team the year before, two had left to go to university. One of those remaining, Sally, was in the sixth form, and I made her head of house; she immediately asked the other three girls to join her on a ‘management team’, and the five of us kept to our habit of eating a meal together once a week.
At the first house assembly in September, I explained the philosophy of the new house to the girls. In particular, the discipline issue had to be addressed: “I do not intend to use corporal punishment in this house, ever. I will, however, reserve the right to administer the cane if you put me in a position where I have no choice. If this ever happens, I will be extremely disappointed in you.”
Things went well – very well. We started winning just about every inter-house competition that took place; the girls’ grades in their academic work all, almost without exception, started to show marked improvements on previous years. And we were having fun!
I took some flack from my colleagues in the staff room about the discipline issue, though. They couldn’t understand why I didn’t join them in tanning the backsides of my girls at regular intervals – and eventually started to get rather irritable about it. “You give them an easy life.” “They’ll run rings round you.” “They’ll take advantage.” “Why should my girls get caned for something when yours don’t?” (I told them the last of these questions was something they needed to answer themselves, which didn’t impress them!).
The only downside for me was the ending of my relationship with Marie. I had less and less time to travel to France, and her work stopped her from getting to Shropshire. In January, she called me, and told me that she had found someone else and was planning to marry him. I was miserable for about a week – so much so that Sally and Imogen, who was in the Lower Sixth by now, bought me a box of chocolates to cheer me up!
—
At the start of the summer term, the headmaster was on the warpath. Just before Easter, there had been a number of incidents of girls getting drunk (none in my house, I’m pleased to say, but the problem was becoming something of a nuisance), and he’d picked up a fair number of complaints from local people.
At our staff meeting on the eve of term, he let it be know that this was something that had to stop, and at the first school assembly of term, he thundered at the girls: “Let me make it very clear that if any of you is caught drinking, you must expect the most severe consequences.”
—
As I walked into the staff room the following morning, I was greeted with sarcastic cheers. I wondered why. “What’s going on?”
“Haven’t you heard?”
“Heard what…?”
“About yesterday’s drinking party?”
“No.” What was this about, I wondered?
“Well…” Simon Cawthorne, one of the other housemasters, was enjoying this. “You remember Evans’ tirade in assembly on the evils of drink?”
“Yes.”
“Well seems like a group of our little girlies weren’t listening as carefully as they should have been. And our Mr Evans goes for a quiet drink in the pub in the village last night, and who should he find in there knocking the booze back like there’s no tomorrow but five of the Lower Sixth.” He paused, as if for effect. “Your little Miss Management Team Member Imogen Jones amongst them.”
I could hardly believe it. “Imogen?”
“Yes. Imogen. And apparently it’s to be sore bottoms all round for them – Evans is writing to each of us this morning with our instructions!”
This was terrible. Im (as she tended to be called) wouldn’t do a thing like that…. surely? She was too…. too sensible, too straight. But it sounded very worrying. I didn’t know if I could bring myself to punish her, after all the time we’d spent together in the past two years, all the confidences we’d shared, all the trust we’d placed in one another.
The bell rang for the start of lessons. I daydreamed my way through the first three lessons, and wandered up to my office at break. I didn’t think I could face the taunts of my colleagues. I felt betrayed, angry.
As I opened the office door, I noticed a stiff, white envelope on the carpet. I picked it up and opened it.
FROM THE HEADMASTER
22nd April 1987
Dear Richard
You will recall my speech in assembly yesterday morning in which I outlined the serious steps that would be taken against any girls found drinking alcohol.
Yesterday evening, I found a group of girls in The Swan public house in Ilfley, all drinking alcohol. I find this clear breach of my instructions extremely annoying, and I am sure that you will also share my concerns at the damage that underage drinking could do to the school’s reputation.
One of these girls, Imogen Jones, is a member of your house. I am writing to the housemasters of all of the girls involved, to instruct them to give each offender eight strokes of the cane before the end of today; four for the drinking, and four for their gross disobedience.
I know that I can trust you to deliver this punishment, and look forward to receiving the signed punishment form (attached) by midday tomorrow.
Yours ever,
J. Evans
Eight strokes!!! This was disastrous. I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to do this to her. But I had no choice…. I went over to my desk, and scribbled a note. “Imogen. I would like to see you in my study this lunchtime at 1.30pm. Thank you. Richard.” As I walked back down into the main school building, I saw one of her classmates, Helen, and passed her the envelope to give to Im as soon as possible. Helen looked at me and smirked – it was obvious she knew what the note was about, and didn’t look as if she had much sympathy.
I found it quite hard to concentrate for the rest of the morning, and only nibbled at my lunch. But I did decide on my plan of action – I wouldn’t deliver the punishment at lunchtime, but would talk through the situation with the girl, and arrange for her to come back that evening before lights out. It would be better that way: I might not feel so angry with her by then, and at least she would be able to lie on her front for the night rather than having to sit in a classroom all afternoon on her whipped backside.
—
At 1.30pm on the dot, there was a knock at the door. “Come in,” I called out.
The door opened slowly, and Imogen entered, white as a sheet.
“Sit down.” I pointed to the chair opposite me, across the desk.
She sat, her bottom lip trembling.
“I suppose you know why you’re here?”
“Yes.” Quiet, almost inaudible. She bit her lip.
“Why did you do it?”
She paused. “I don’t know.” Her voice was shaky, emotional. “I’ve been so stupid.”
“You can say that again. Read this!”
I passed her Evans’ letter. She glanced through it, her hands shaking as she held it. She let out a gasp: “Eight?”. She folded the letter over, and passed it back to me. “Are you really going to…?”
“To what?”
“To… to cane me?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” I got up, and started to walk around the room, her eyes following me.
“But… but you weren’t going to use corporal punishment.”
“Not strictly accurate. I wasn’t going to use it unless I was given no choice. And now I’ve been given no choice.”
“But…”
“No buts.”
Tears started to roll down her cheeks. I’m afraid that at that moment, I rather snapped.
“Pull yourself together, girl,” I shouted. “How do you think I feel about this? I placed my trust in the girls in this house, and most of all in you, Sally and the others. I care for you – I care for you a great deal. And now this. You’ve taken advantage of me, Im, and I won’t have it.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Well what is it like, then?”
“I made a mistake.”
“Yes, you did that all right.”
There was silence, for what seemed like an age, but which must only have been seconds. Then I leant over the table towards her, and pronounced my sentence. “Now you listen to me, and you listen to me carefully. I’m going to flog you, Imogen Jones, and I’m going to do it as hard as I can so you learn a lesson you won’t forget. You saw the letter: you’ll get four strokes of the cane for drinking, and four for disobeying the headmaster. And on top of that, I’m going to give you four more, for betraying my trust in you. So that’s twelve in all.”
She stared at me, sobbing.
“I’m not going to thrash you now. I want you to go back to your lessons as usual. I want to see you here, tonight, at 10pm, before lights out. Wear your nightie and your dressing gown. Do you understand me?”
“Yes….”
“Any questions?”
“No… I’m sorry!”
“It may be clichéd, Im, but you will be. Now get out of my study.”
I turned and looked out of the window. I heard her get up, still sniffing, and heard the door open and shut. And then I went and poured myself a large scotch.
—
I can hardly bring myself to describe the events that followed that evening.
At ten o’clock, there was a gentle knock on the door, and Im walked in, clad in a rather stylish blue and white striped dressing gown, her straight fair hair tied back. Her 18-year old face looked absolutely terrified.
I gestured her to sit down in the chair opposite me. “I won’t beat about the bush, Imogen; we both know why we’re here, and we might as well get on with it. I’m going to give you 12 strokes of the cane, and then we’ll forget all about this. Are you ready?”
“Yes. Yes, sir,” she mumbled.
I stood up, and walked over to the cupboard in the corner of the room, and unlocked it. Hanging in there, unused, was the cane that Evans had given me a year before (“just in case”). I picked it out, holding the crooked handle. “Stand up.”
“Now, I want you to move the chair out of the way, then bend over and touch your toes, facing the desk.” She complied, taking up the position I wanted her in.
But there was something odd. As she bent forward, I could see a bulge under her dressing gown. I tapped her backside with the end of the cane, and found myself tracing round the edges of a rectangular shape. Surely she wouldn’t have….?
“Stand up. Turn round and look at me.”
She was shaking now.
“What have you got under your dressing gown?”
“My nightie, as you asked for.”
“And…?”
“And what?”
“That’s what I’m wondering. Take your dressing gown off.”
She looked at me, dumb struck, then obeyed.
“Put it over the chair you were sitting on. And then take your nightie off.”
“But that’s all I’ve got on.”
“Do it.”
She reached down, and pulled the nightie up over her head. She held it in front of her, covering herself.
“Put it on the chair.” Im did as she was told, then covered her breasts with her hands.
“I see you’ve got knickers on.”
“Yes. But… I always wear knickers in bed.”
“Take them off. And give them to me.”
“You can’t do this.”
“I can, and I’m doing so. Get them off.”
She bent forward, and pulled the pants down. As she did, my suspicions were confirmed: an exercise book, with cardboard covers, fell out onto the carpet.
“And I suppose you always keep a book down your pyjamas when you go to bed as well, do you?”
“No.” She started crying, as she stood up, trying to cover herself from my gaze.
“Put your hands on your head.”
She was naked before me, now, totally exposed; her breasts small, firm, the small triangular patch of straight dark pubes contrasting with her fair hair. She was sobbing.
“It’s not terribly pleasant, this, is it?”
She shook her head.
I placed the tip of the cane under her chin, and lifted her eyes up to look into mine. “So first you betray my trust by getting yourself into this situation. And now you do it again by trying to cheat me. You are shameful.” I was livid. How could she do this to me? She’d pay the consequences, now, for sure.
“I’m sorry.”
“Mmm. Well, you give me no option but to give you another six strokes.”
“No!” She cried out. “That’s eighteen – you can’t do that.”
“Just you wait and see. Get over and touch your toes. NOW!”
She moved in front of the desk, and bent forward.
“Tighter. Legs straight, touching your toes.”
She leaned forward, her pure, fair buttocks rearing up into the air. I measured the cane across its target.
“I’m now going to give you 18 strokes of the cane. You will count the strokes aloud one by one. If you flinch or stand up at any point, the stroke will not count and you’ll get an extra one. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“OK.”
And with that, I pulled the cane back above my head, and whipped it down across her arse with an almighty crack.
“Aaaaaaargh.” She cried out, panting as the pain built up. The red line stretched straight across the centre of her backside, marking her, the brand of the disobedient schoolgirl.
“Count them.”
“One, sir.”
I waited about ten seconds. I might not have done this before, but the conversations in the staff room had at least given me some idea of how to maximise the effectiveness of a caning, and rushing it wasn’t on the agenda. I wanted her to have time for the pain of each stroke to fully reach its peak.
I smacked the stick down again, just below the first stroke. She caught her breath. “Two, sir.”
Then again – this time lower still. “Three, sir.”
And the fourth – back between the first two. “Four, sir.” By this time the weals on her backside were rising up angrily, four parallel lines of sheer pain.
I brought the fifth down directly on top of the previous stroke, whereupon she jumped up, screeching, clutching her backside. “Doesn’t count, Im.”
She hopped around, then bent forward again. The next stroke was lower, right along the crease between her buttocks and thighs. Again, she jumped up. She turned to me – “How can you do this to me?”. “I could ask the same of you, young lady. Now get down. We’re still on four strokes.”
She bent forward, slowly, gingerly. She took another five, each separated by a fifteen second gap, and this time managed to stay down between each lash, almost as if we were finding a rhythm, her and me, flogger and flogged. Then on the tenth – actually the twelfth she’d taken, she was up again, dancing around.
“Please stop.” She looked me in the eye, pleading with me. I stayed silent, gesturing with the rod to show that she should bend back down. I wasn’t going to cave in at this stage, vulnerable as she looked.
Again, she flinched on the next one. “We’re still on nine, Im. Half way through. Perhaps you should hold your ankles.”
So down she went again. The evenly timed strokes, cracking down on her buttocks like a metronome, the red welts striping her buttocks. “Ten… eleven… twelve… thirteen,” and on the next, an anguished cry.
Again, she was standing up, clutching her buttocks in agony. And again she bent down, offering her bruised backside to my lash.
I guess it was a bit cruel of me to put the next stroke directly on top of the previous one, but again it brought her shooting upright. At this rate, we were gong to be there all night.
“Right, my girl. This is getting silly. You’ve taken thirteen strokes. You’ve got five to go. Let’s get these out of the way. I want you to bend over my desk, and hold onto the other side, tight. And you’re not going to let go; you’re not going to say anything – don’t even worry about counting. You’re just going to stay down, and we’re going to get this finished. Now: over the desk.”
She leant out across the polished surface, her breasts flat against the wood, and grasped the edge. I lined up the stick, lifted it high and whipped it down. And this time I didn’t pause: the next stroke followed immediately, directly on top of the previous one. And the next. And the next. And the final one, bringing Imogen screaming to the end of her torment.
“Now get up, and stand in front of the desk.”
She staggered upright, as I walked round to my chair, and sat down, opposite her. She clutched her backside.
“We now need to fill in a form, and then you can go. Right, let’s work through this…”
—
WINTHROP COLLEGE PUNISHMENT RECORD
Master’s name: Richard Thompson
Girl’s name: Imogen Jones
Date: 22nd April 1987
Implement used: Senior cane
Strokes allocated: Eighteen
Reason: Drinking (four). Disobeying headmaster (four). Disobeying housemaster (four). Using padding to minimise impact of caning (six)
Additional strokes with reason: Six (flinching)
Clothing worn: None
“And all it needs now is our signatures.” I signed it, then offered the pen to the shaking girl, who took it and scrawled her name almost illegibly at the bottom of the page.
“Now get dressed, and get going.”
The tears were dripping down her face, as she fumbled for her clothes. She pulled the nightie on, and the dressing gown, and picked up her knickers and the infamous exercise book. She turned and looked at me, blinking away the tears, and then left the room, shutting the door behind her.
It was time for another whisky…
—
The following afternoon – a Saturday, as it happens – I was in my study marking some papers when I heard a knock, and the door swung gently open. It was Imogen. “Can I come in?”
“Sure.” We looked at one another as she walked in, slowly – clearly in some discomfort.
“I just wanted to come and say how sorry I am for what happened.” And she burst into tears and flung herself into my arms, sobbing.
I held her. “How are you?”
“Sore. It’s like – I can’t describe it. When you were… flogging me… I mean, I’ve never felt pain like it.”
“You poor lass. I’m sorry – but I did have to do it.”
“I know.” I gave her a hug. “Thanks for coming to see me.”
“I had to. I just had to know whether you hated me now.”
“Does it look like I do?”
“No. Thanks.”
“OK. Listen, Im, what’s happened is over. I meant it yesterday when I said I care for you – this doesn’t change anything.”
“Thanks. Well, look, I’d better be going.” She dried her eyes, and pulled away. “Are we still on for dinner with Sally on Monday?”
“Sure.”
“Good – see you later.” And then she was gone…
—
POSTSCRIPT
My wife Christine and I are still in touch with Im. She’s 27 now, married to Tom, a guy she met at Oxford. She’s working as a management consultant in London, and doing really well for herself. We meet up once every two months or so, and she’s godmother to our four-year-old son.
But as for that evening back in ’87: well, I think that it’s best if just the two of us to know about that, don’t you?
So well written absolutely loved it thankyou xxx