There are some childhood memories that gradually fade with time. Others remain as vivid as if they happened yesterday.
For me, one memory has stayed crystal clear for more than half a century.
I was eleven years old in 1969, attending a perfectly ordinary Church of England primary school in Cockermouth, Cumbria. Life at school was very different then. Children were expected to sit quietly, obey instantly and never answer back. Corporal punishment was simply part of school life. Most parents accepted it without question, believing teachers knew best.
Like most girls of my age, I occasionally whispered to friends during lessons. On this particular afternoon my class teacher, a woman, decided that I had talked once too often.
When the bell rang at the end of the day, I was told to remain behind.
I remember assuming I was going to receive a stern lecture. Perhaps I would be made to write lines or kept in detention. Instead, something happened that I could never have imagined.
Without any lengthy discussion, my teacher sat down on her chair and called me over. Before I fully realised what was happening, she took hold of my arm, drew me across her lap and positioned me face down over her knees.
I was completely helpless.
My feet dangled towards the floor while my upper body hung over one side of her lap. One of her arms held me firmly in place across my back and waist so that wriggling away was impossible.
Then the smacking began.
Her open hand landed hard across the seat of my skirt, each slap striking the same area of my bottom. The first few took my breath away with the shock, but they did not stop. One followed another in a relentless rhythm.
The blows became increasingly painful.
By the time she had reached twenty, my bottom was burning fiercely beneath my skirt. Every fresh smack seemed to land on skin that was already sore and tender. I remember instinctively trying to tense my muscles, hoping somehow it might lessen the pain, but it made little difference.
There were about thirty smacks altogether.
Each one was delivered with considerable force. They were not playful taps or token slaps. They were intended to hurt, and they certainly did. By the end I was fighting back tears, humiliated as much as I was hurting.
What affected me even more than the pain was the position itself.
Being held face down across an adult’s lap, completely powerless while my teacher repeatedly smacked my bottom, felt intensely degrading. Although I never believed there was anything improper in her motives—it was carried out briskly, severely and with obvious determination to punish—it nevertheless left me with a profound sense of embarrassment.
Even as an eleven-year-old, it seemed a very undignified way to discipline a child.
Looking back now, I still do not believe that talking in class justified such a lengthy and painful punishment. Children chatter; it is hardly the crime of the century. Even by the standards of the late 1960s, thirty hard smacks across the bottom seems an extraordinary response to such a minor offence.
For years afterwards I often wondered whether what had happened to me would have been recorded in the school’s punishment book. Surely something so severe would have been officially written down?
The answer, I later discovered, is far from simple.
Many people assume that punishment books contained details of every child who received corporal punishment. In reality, they often tell only part of the story. School log books can sometimes provide a far more revealing picture of everyday discipline, and because they are not always subject to the same closure periods, they are sometimes available to historians much sooner.
Reading through old school log books can be both fascinating and astonishing.
You may work your way through months of dull entries recording attendance figures, school outings and visits from inspectors before suddenly coming across a brief note describing punishments that would leave today’s readers speechless.
One entry simply recorded:
“In spite of warnings, the boys arrived at school wet as a result of snowball fights. The whole of Class Two received two strokes on their buttocks and Class Three three strokes. We managed by mid-afternoon to get all the clothing dry for them to go home.”
Just a few lines—but they raise countless questions.
Were the boys caned over their trousers? Were their trousers removed? Did they spend much of the day waiting in borrowed clothing while everything dried? The log book offers no explanation, leaving modern readers to imagine what really happened.
Another school recorded:
“Following a complaint by two parents, five boys were given three unprotected strokes on the buttocks. The parents were satisfied.”
Curiously, that punishment never appeared in the punishment book at all.
Even the final sentence leaves us wondering. Were the satisfied parents the ones who had complained and believed the punishment appropriate? Or were they the parents of the boys, reassured that the matter had been dealt with fairly? The records never explain.
Examples like these remind us just how deeply corporal punishment was woven into everyday school life. It was regarded as perfectly ordinary discipline. Few people questioned it, and even fewer challenged the authority of teachers.
So would my own teacher have been considered to have acted properly?
The answer depends very much upon the standards of the day.
The first question is whether my parents knew.
Mine never did.
Had they been told, I suspect they would have been rather shocked, although I cannot be certain. Many parents in the 1960s believed teachers stood in loco parentis—literally “in the place of the parent”—and trusted them to decide how children should be disciplined. Complaints against schools were relatively uncommon.
The second question is whether this was a normal punishment in that particular school.
If girls were regularly smacked by female teachers for talking or other minor misdemeanours, and parents generally accepted the practice, then it would almost certainly have been regarded as ordinary discipline rather than misconduct.
The third question is whether the punishment matched the offence.
Here, I have always had doubts.
A brief smack was one thing. Thirty hard slaps delivered over the knee for talking during a lesson feels excessive, even judged by the attitudes of the late 1960s. The punishment lasted far longer than seemed necessary and caused far more pain than the offence deserved.
Finally, there is the question people sometimes ask today.
Was there any improper motive?
Personally, I have never believed there was.
My teacher appeared to be doing what she genuinely believed was her duty. There was nothing suggestive in her manner. The punishment was severe, business-like and intended purely as discipline. Yet that does not alter the fact that it was profoundly humiliating for the child receiving it.
The legal position in England at the time was also rather complicated.
Most local education authorities had written rules governing who was allowed to administer corporal punishment. However, those rules often concentrated on formal punishments such as caning. Smacking with the hand—or using a slipper—was not always covered quite so clearly.
If a teacher acted without proper authority, it was usually treated as an internal disciplinary matter rather than a criminal offence. Schools might simply remind the teacher of the correct procedures or formally authorise her to administer punishment in future.
Only where punishment was clearly excessive or involved some improper motive would the police have been likely to become involved.
The courts, too, were generally reluctant to interfere.
One well-known case involved the schoolboy Barry Tavenor, whose bottom was left badly bruised after being caned by his headmaster because of poor examination results. The judge dismissed the complaint, observing that corporal punishment was intended to hurt and that bruising was an expected consequence.
How different the world is today.
Corporal punishment has long disappeared from state schools, and the idea of a teacher pulling a child over her knee and administering thirty hard smacks would now horrify most people.
Looking back across all these years, I still believe my punishment was unnecessarily severe.
The physical pain disappeared after a day or two.
The humiliation has never quite gone away.
Perhaps that is why, even now, I can remember every detail of that afternoon in 1969 as clearly as if it had happened only yesterday.
