Father Christopher Nulty S.J. (Rector): “He was remembered as an earnest, if dour, man. He had few qualms about associating pain with learning, and he preferred to urge his students along learning’s path with a stick rather than a carrot.”
Father Philip Gleeson, S.J. (Prefect of Studies and Rector): “For all the thirteen years he was at Xavier, before being made Rector, he was Prefect of Studies. He filled that office with dignity and used only moderate violence to legitimatise its authority and sanction its rules.”
“The discipline at Xavier was not so much violent as all-pervasive. Corporal punishment, however, remained a part of that discipline. The ‘strap’ was a two foot long, sewn leather piece two inches wide and about an inch thick. It was the usual instrument of pain. It was surrounded by mythology and macabre stories. This one was the ‘Brown Bomber’, that one had a key imbedded in it, that other one had been soaked in brine or had come to the right pitch of flexibility and pain-inflicting capability on the sweaty back of some old nag. The instrument of violence created many joking relationships between masters and boys.
Indeed, if there was a rule about it at all, it was that those masters who used it most often needed to joke about it most constantly. Some would carry it under their gowns, some would carry it with their exercise books. Some would perform high jinks with it in the yard. The Jesuit rules designated which officials were responsible for the administration of corporal punishment. At Xavier, in practice, it seemed to have been a question of personal choice among the Jesuits as to who would use the strap. Laymasters were always excluded from its use. Perhaps, as the only non-possessors of deterrent weaponry, they were subject to some humiliation by boys in their classes.
Indiscipline was certainly more overt. Yet the laymasters usually commanded some alternative force. Mr. Ludwig Van Baer, who must had known more about the structural weaknesses of Xavier’s shaking floors and must have learned to hate venetian blinds more than most, had a fire in his eyes and an edge to his words that turned humiliation around. Mr. Joe O’Dwyer’s bon mots penetrated even the thickest and most uncultured hide. Designation of the Minister or the Prefect of Studies as executioner of the punishment was usually a sign of the greater heinousness of the crime.
In none of the records nor in any of the answer to the questionnaire was there are any indication that at Xavier the use of corporal punishment was extravagant. Burke Hall was an exception. The Jesuits did not cope easily with the disciplining of small boys and some resorted to violence inordinately often. From time to time the superior of the Australian Mission would promulgate and re-promulgate the general rules for the punishment of boys. These rules remained constant from 1898 to 1935:
REGULATIONS CONCERNING PUNISHMENT
1. A master or Prefect may for sufficient reason order a boy as many as six ferules. In exceptional cases the Prefect of Studies may order nine.
2. No boy shall receive more than six or, from the Prefect of Studies, more than nine on the same day.
3. ‘Flogging’, i.e. striking a boy with a cane or strap otherwise than on the hands is strictly forbidden except with the knowledge and express consent of the Rector. This regulation is to be understood even of a single blow of a strap or cane.
4. ‘Cuffing’ a boy i.e. striking him with the hand is absolutely forbidden.
5. The Rector is to decide whether a master may administer the punishment himself, or whether the boys should be sent for punishment to someone appointed by the Rector.
6. No master or Prefect should inflict more than one penalty at a time and, in the case of studies, should not order more than one hour without the consent of the Prefect of Studies.
7. Boys should not be sent up to the Prefect of Studies for merely trivial offenses.
All punishment was public. Even if a boy was strapped behind closed doors, in an institution with private corners he was forced to parade his bravado or his tears to the public scrutiny of his peers. In the classroom he was on stage. He had to stand, hand outstretched and watched by half sympathetic, half merciless, never revolutionary peers. His only weapon against the ‘cuts’ was a stoical unflinching acceptance of the pain and cold unspeaking gaze at his tormentor.
The less stoic might bury their stinging fingers under their arms and bend silently over them. Those who clenched their fists, or pulled away, or showed obvious fear, could expect to be laughed at. There were few protests at the injustice done to others, although an inaccurate ‘cut’ which raised a welt on a wrist would cause comment. That ‘this will hurt me more than you’ was said often enough, and it was probably true that the violence marked the flogger more permanently than the flogged.”
“Father Montague’s operas were only brief seasons of culture. Indeed, boys’ souls were more likely to be striped with discipline than their spirits inflamed by the love of music in preparation for those days and nights on the boards at Manresa Hall.”
Boy Prefects: “They were exempt from corporal punishment. They entered the Study Hall last (after ‘interviewing offenders in line’). They could communicate ‘sparingly in study, and leave free periods and Chapel without the permission of the master in charge, and go to the head of lines for leaves and confessions.
The charter was ‘natural’, no doubt even proper and inoffensive. It was also highly preparatory. It showed the ways we construct the world we live in, the small rituals that act out status and privilege and the given nature of the world. Authority needed dignity. Being strapped was undignified. Prefects were exempt from corporal punishment.”
Scotch College, Melbourne. I should say straight away that this particular school has had a number of histories written about it. These quotes come from the most recent one published in 2001. “A Deepening Roar: Scotch College, Melbourne, 1851-2001” by James Mitchell.
I have several reasons for going with Scotch next. Firstly because it’s a school I was always moderately fascinated with. It’s located quite close to Xavier where I attended (one of a number of schools on or near Glenferrie Road in Melbourne) and the two schools have historically been fierce rivals (I believe Scotch also views Melbourne Grammar with particular enmity – and that one came up in the Victorian State Parliament a few years ago), and I used to see its boys around a lot.
