For the sake of this project I’ve simply used the current statistical Regions of England created in 1994 and last modified in 1998. Although, I agree with you that the actual locations of some counties/cities are debatable, for the purpose of this project I opted to use them for consistency. Most of the cases I post are from the 1950s up to 1987 and a lot of county borders changed during that time. Despite using the Regions of England as a guide, I might occasionally get a location a bit wrong, especially if its an area I’m not familiar with.
A bit of confusion over location makes little difference to your extensive data. My own knowledge of the North of England can be equally inaccurate. Generally speaking a north/south line from the centre of London is a reasonable indication of east/west. Where the English Midlands begin and start is questionable too. The academics of Oxford are reluctant to accept that the many spired city as being in the South Midlands although it is officially. Gloucester is another city that is interesting, top end of the West Country or bottom end of the Midlands? There has always been changes to regions/counties without them really moving! I have lived on various county borders for most of my life. I now live within less than a mile of a country border!
Thank you very much for drawing my attention to the punishment book analysis. I either missed it or have completely forgotten. Very interesting data.
Do you have any idea how many pupils at the school? Also how many different teachers were recorded as giving CP in the Punishment Book?
Superficially the CP regime does sound somewhat similar to Bacon’s.
On the question of counties, there always used to be a joke:
Why is the River Thames like a dog? Because it runs between Oxon, and Berks! (And then they moved the county boundary, so that it doesn’t!)
Seriously, though, saying that the South East has to be east of London is, I think, a bit much. Only a small part of England is east of a north-south line through London. I was brought up in what was then Middlesex, and nobody then would have thought it was outside the South East.
As far as Bletchley is concerned — well, it was within the Danelaw (!) so it’s fair to describe it as being in the Midlands, but the south of Buckinghamshire is very much in the South East of England. In fact the watershed running across Buckinghamshire is a good dividing line, separating the streams which run to the Thames from those which run to the Ouse.
And as for the people who think that the North starts at Watford …..
In England only one boundary matters: Born north of the River Trent = Northerner. Born south of the River Trent = Southerner. I therefore am a proud Northerner!
Unfortunately, I have no idea how many pupils were at the school. I do know that from at least 1976 to its closure in 1985 that pupils left at the end of year 3 (aged 14) and had to complete their final 2 years of education at alternative secondary schools.
Regarding the punishment book it original listed 25 teachers (11 female and 14 male) that were authorised to apply corporal punishment. Some of these names were later crossed out and replaced with different teachers, the final version being 21 teachers (10 female and 11 male). I have also seen 2 staff photos from this period. One from the mid to late 70s containing 23 teachers and one from the early 1980s containing 20 teachers. However, a couple teachers that were authorised to use CP were not listed/present on the photographs. Consequently, it appears that either the photographs don’t give an accurate representation of the amount of staff employed at that time or that nearly every teacher was authorised to apply CP and those missing were simply not available for the photos.
Thank you very much for your prompt and informative response. I was just hoping that we might get an idea how common recorded CP was at the school. Presumably a range of teachers appeared as inflicting punishment.
I do find it frustrating that I do not have a clear picture how punishment books were used, particularly in secondary schools. Amazingly I haven’t seen any clear definitive statements by anyone, even with respect to what the punishment book showed for a particular school. We can speculate.
With respect to this, in the course of your amazing research, have you seen any references to punishment books?
The Derwent Secondary School has the best example of a punishment book I have seen, not just because of the number pages, but also due to the discussion it generated within the facebook group when members of the group recognised their names. In addition to this I have also seen random pages extracted from punishment books from around a dozen or so schools with similar discussion, but to a lesser extent. I will post images of them at some point (miraculously my photobucket account hasn’t been taken down yet).
Alas, most of the discussion I have seen are more specific to individual cases and not the usage of the book itself. Furthermore, the majority of folk who post images of punishment books in school nostalgia facebook groups, tend to omit names, which is unfortunate as I think having names (at least first names) would lead to more discussion.
I’ve posted this before, but I do know that some punishment books are stored within local authority archives, though I’m unsure about their accessibility to the public. It is also possible that some are still kept at their respective schools, I have seen accounts of the being available to former pupils at reunions. There’s also no doubt that some of them have ended up in the hands of private collectors. Finally, a simple google/bing image search actually reveals a fair amount of examples.
Anything further you can do on punishment books will be most welcome, especially so as it will be to your immaculately high standards. There is at least one punishment book thread here, and I think possibly more. Please forgive my not looking them up on spec as to get in to the Forum search engine involves me in a certain amount of time consuming and annoying link manipulation and general deviousness due to Tapatalk’s gatekeeper Cloudflare objecting to my browser. However if you haven’t seen them and they are of interest to you I will happily find them.
Unless you are paying money to Photobucket my advice would be don’t use them to store pictures. A number of people here, including me, have had problems with abrupt cessation of their free storage and consequent difficulties for some people in accessing pictures linked in posts. There are some good free picture storage sites, I have used Imgur extensively in the past. But they are not as quick and simple to use as they once were so these days I use Tapatalk’s own picture storage which is quick and easy to use while actually composing a contribution.
Thank you very much I Researcher for your response and to Another Lurker for your comments.
I fully understand that different schools will have made very different use of punishments and punishment books, even where they were governed by the same regulations.
I would really like further comments and information from anyone else, particularly from those who have been punished or who know for some other reason. eg
- Did your school have a punishment book’, or maybe multiple books?
- Which punishments were recorded in it? eg Just those by the Head or Deputy?
- How and when was it filled in?
When I find a punishment book or extract, I download it. Just as an example, this is an extract from Neath in Wales in the 1980s. The first punishment amused me. I wonder if there were punishment logs maintained by each teacher.
The Forum search engine appears to be working for me and the most recent thread on Punishment Books initiated by the esteemed member Oliver_Sidney himself is here, and it makes very good reading. Regarding uploading photos, I only do it for the benefit of the good folk on here. All my images are stored on external hard drives. I opted to use Photobucket for here as it was easy and it just required an e-mail, and no phone number to sign up. I may at some point revert to tapatalk, especially should photobucket close my account.
I’ll get around to uploading the images I have acquired in your old thread in the not too distant future. Regarding obtaining how punishment books were used, I think the best bet would to be to scour school/nostalgia groups were former teachers are active members. This afternoon I found a contribution from a former teaching assisting at a Milton Keynes Middle School who on the 21st July 2013 in reference to a ‘Slippering’ post replied:
‘I rescued the old punishment book – from Bushfield in the 80s( something else I squirrelled away!) School closed now-I’ll have a look in September. I know Mr. Speaks hated doing it and the reasons given (which had to be recorded) seem pretty minor misdemeanors……..’
As of yet, I’ve not found any evidence that the good lady posted any information from it. However, based on her statement it seems that the book was still stored within the school premises 10 years ago.
In reference to the punishment book template you posted that is pretty much the standardized layout. Moreover, the school mentioned is not in my database so I’ll be sure to check it out when I research Wales.
