strapping young men (updated)

I see my old educational mentors are in the news:

Victims of child abuse at Catholic institutions in the Irish Republic have expressed anger that a damning report will not bring about prosecutions.

The report, nine years in the making and covering a period of six decades, found thousands of boys and girls were terrorised by priests and nuns. Government inspectors failed to stop beatings, rapes and humiliation.

John Walsh, of Irish Survivors of Child Abuse, said he felt "cheated and deceived" by the lack of prosecutions.

The findings will not be used for criminal prosecutions - in part because the Christian Brothers successfully sued the commission in 2004 to keep the identities of all of its members, dead or alive, unnamed in the report.

Well the Christian Brothers who taught me weren’t that bad: but then I went to a day school in England, where they didn’t have the same opportunities. Also, much though Catholic families in England respected the church, this didn’t extend as far as allowing their children to come home bleeding. One thing the coverage missed that I do remember is described here:

The 'strap' – made of stitched leather, something over a foot long, a couple of inches or so wide and half an inch thick – was standard issue and went with the cassock. I don't know why Creamer 'presumes' that flogging must be delivered to the back or the bum. You got it on the hands, usually four strokes at a time, at my Christian Brothers school in Liverpool in the 1950s.

You got it six times on the hand in Stoke in the 1970s. And the lay teachers were issued with them as well. Also:

All our Christian Brothers carried specially made leather straps with whalebone inside. These were about 18 inches long and were used to inflict a great deal of pain on one's hands (not bottom).

That’s the point. They were specially made. They had no other conceivable purpose. Do an Adam Smith and the pencil number on that and think about all the things brought together to make these implements. We were told that they were hand stitched by nuns, which may well have been true. What else do they have to do all day?

At this point in the tale it’s customary either to confess to being a gibbering wreck or to say that ‘it didn’t do me any harm.’ It would be more accurate to say that it failed to do me any harm. Of course, there was more to life at school than specialized instruments of punishment and it would be fair to say that on a day to day level the place wasn’t especially oppressive. In my last year I managed to nag the Brothers out of making me attend prayers and the weekly Thursday mass on the grounds that I was an atheist. But I think my ability to do this rested on the fact that I knew and they knew that I had another world out there behind me. As such, concession on this issue is entirely consistent with gross abuse of children completely in their power.

I should add that part of this world behind me was the local education authority, which was always there in the background – it really seemed to bug the Brothers, given the number of assemblies devoted to the subject – even though the school was run on Catholic lines. This is why I don’t subscribe to the current fashionable nonsense about taking schools out of local authority control. If you want to see what happens sooner or later when schools are out of control, check out the record in Ireland.

So farewell then St Josephs. I don’t bear any grudges, but I won’t be going back. Thanks for the O levels.

UPDATE: Ajay brings our attention to the Lochgelly Tawse, still on sale here (for “collectors” apparently). It’s not quite the article I remember. For one thing, the end wasn’t bifurcated in the same way – it couldn’t have been, since it had to contain a whalebone insert. But it’s very much along the same lines.

Comments

[dsquared]

You have something in common with John Birt, you'll presumably be pleased to know.

[ajay]

They were specially made. They had no other conceivable purpose. Do an Adam Smith and the pencil number on that and think about all the things brought together to make these implements

Look up "Lochgelly tawse". They were indeed specially made, by various companies, the best-known being John J Dick of Lochgelly...

Wikipedia writes: "Lochgelly tawses were produced in four different weights; Light, Medium, Heavy & Extra Heavy. Each tawse would be stamped either L, M, H or XH to indicate its thickness."

Getting the belt was a regular part of a Scottish education, right up to the 1980s.

[Richard J]

Ah, I started school only a couple of years before it was banned, but the favoured tool in Oxfordshire primary schools was the wooden ruler across the knuckles.

[Phil]

Late 60s, Welsh primary school, we got caned. I once got another boy caned by calling him a liar when he tried to get me caned, by grassing me up for something I had in fact done. (We didn't get on very well before...) That was excessive - the inspectors came round a while later, and the teacher in question retired on health grounds immediately afterwards - but caning itself was normal.

Early 70s, Welsh grammar school, no caning. A certain amount of old-school hair-tweaking and board-rubber-chucking, mainly from the more sadistic teachers; some mutterings about how bad it used to be ("he held this one kid up against the wall...")

Mid-70s, English fee-paying secondary school, a few teachers had their own disciplinary impedimenta - and were known to use them, demonstratively and theatrically - but nothing official. No tweaking to speak of.

Odd. It's as if the British teaching body just collectively stopped believing in its right to batter children, somewhere round about 1969. All except the Christian Brothers, obviously.

[Richard J]

About the time the WW2 generation started to retire, I'd guess. The one teacher I ever had who favoured the use of the ruler was a ferocious old crone forced to retire under allegations of fiscal impropriety.

[Richard J]

Two-post mentiness, but it does surprise me that a Stephen Levitt-equivalent has not researched whether the abolition of corporal punishment in schools is now causing a decline in the number of dominatrices...

[Fellow Traveller]

As the Church teaches:

Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

Judge not, lest ye be judged.

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

Resist not evil.

Love thy enemy.

[alle]

Hm, they were ahead of their time. One of the most popular modern torture techniques is to whip prisoners on fingers and feet with a thick electric cable. Bends, but doesn't break; hurts, but doesn't injure; whip-effect, but no breaking of the skin. Were there also mock crucifixions and waterboarding in the baptismal font?

[Shuggy]

"the Lochgelly Tawse"

Yeah, I got that at school. As you point out, it is customary to say, "It never did me any harm" - to which I respond, "It never did me any good either". I think, in my own case anyway, the evidence is in my favour.

[Chris Williams]

Oddly enough, at the about the same time, the British middle class stopped picking their sons out for abuse by the youth of the working class by making them wear distinctive school uniforms. Soft, they got.