Whacked in the dormitory
A memoir of boarding school in the 1950s
At the age of 13 I was consigned by my parents to a boarding school on the Sussex coast. I had attended my prep school as a day boy so I was a first time boarder and the contrast between my comfortable home and the spartan environs of the school came as quite a shock. However, the worst aspect of life at my new school was the constant fear of corporal punishment. The housemasters (supported by the authoritarian headmaster) viewed the cane as the answer to all disciplinary problems as far as junior boys were concerned, and the first or second year pupil who got through a term without suffering several whackings was a rare creature indeed.
My most memorable caning occurred in my second year. I was sharing a dormitory with nine other boys and one evening we got involved in a pillow fight - just like in one of those popular school stories! We all got quite carried away and failed at first to hear the housemaster's stentorian voice calling out 'Stop this at once!' We dropped our pillows as if they were red hot coals and turned to see the tall begowned figure of Mr Richardson standing at the open door of the dormitory looking very angry indeed.
'Stand at the foot of your beds with your hands on your heads!' he commanded and then swept out the room. We stood shivering in our pyjamas listening to the housemaster's footsteps retreating down the corridor and guessed that he was going to fetch his cane. Although there was no one supervising us, not a single boy dared to take his hands off his head, nor did any of us utter a word.
After several miserable minutes we heard an ominous footfall in the corridor and Mr Richardson marched in, cane in hand. We were commanded to bend across the ends of our brass bedsteds with our pyjama-clad bottoms pushed out, and before proceeding with the punishment the housemaster lectured us about the necessity of proper behaviour in the dormitory. He then announced that we were to receive three strokes of the cane apiece.
Like everyone in my dorm I had been whacked by the housemaster a number of times before, but had always received the cane across my trousers. Back in the mid-1950s, when this incident took place, we public school boys wore thick flannel 'bags', together with prickly woollen trunks and long-tailed grey shirts. In other words, you could rely on no less than three layers of sturdy material to ameliorate the pain of the cane (although it still stung like fury!) As I waited, bent across the end of my bed, I was thinking to myself how much more the cane was bound to sting with only my thin cotton pyjama trousers for protection - and I felt sure that all the other boys in the dormitory were thinking the same.
The ten beds in the dormitory were arranged in two rows and my bed was in the middle of one of these rows. To my relief I saw that the housemaster had decided to begin with the opposite row of beds. I say 'to my relief' because I hoped that Mr Richardson's caning arm might begin to tire by the time he reached my bed. 'Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!' A boy named Simpson had the privilege of suffering the first three strokes and I listened with trepidation to the sound of the cane as it lashed across his bottom. The boy let out a yelp of pain with each sharp cut. 'Alright Simpson, stand at the foot of your bed with your hands on your head!' barked the housemaster.
Mr Richardson moved on down the line of pyjama-clad bottoms, inflicting three vigorous cuts of the cane on each and then commanding the anguished boy to stand by his bed. All of this I heard, rather than saw, since I had my back to the action and also kept my eyes closed a lot of the time, trying to imagine it was all some terrible nightmare. But when the housemaster strode across to my own row of beds I could not help watching fascinated out of the corner of my eye as he proceeded down the line. First Clive Hallet was dealt with and then the head stepped along to the boy right next to me, my best friend Peter James. I saw Peter's face contort with agony as the swishy cane bit into his buttocks; then he eased himself up and stood with his hands on his head as I awaited my own turn.
'Thwack!' I guessed the cane would sting horribly but I had never imagined it would sting this much. 'Thwack!' My striped pyjama trousers seemed to offer no protection at all against that wicked cane and after just two strokes my backside was burning fiercely. 'Thwack!' By now I was on the verge of tears, unable to believe just how much the cane could hurt. I stood meekly with my hands on my head, wishing that I could use my hands to rub my tingling behind The two remaining rulebreakers were dealt with and then the Mr Richardson stood before us, flexing his shiny curved-handled cane, and warned us that if there was any more trouble in the dormitory that term we could all expect six of the best.
The housemaster departed and, not daring to mutter even a whisper, we crawled into our beds. I gingerly ran my fingertips along the three well-spaced ridges which now emblazoned my backside. Gradually the painful smarting turned into a warm glow and I fell asleep.
Needless to say there were no further incidents of horseplay in our dormitory that term.