I think my first introduction to this subject was as a child when reading Roald Dahl’s autobiography ‘Boy’. It blew my young mind to think that essentially a child could legally punish another child, but I also understood that children can be cruel.
Personal Experience
As stated in my original post, it was in the mid-90s at a friend’s house party when watching a *CP documentary that the discussion came up. After lots of wild unlikely true boastings of ‘six of the best bare-bottom canings from a buxom young matron from some of the lads a couple of ladies stated that they had had to cane one and other. My ears pricked up at this point. Unfortunately, I don’t recall the exact details, but the general gist was that the male teacher at the time didn’t cane girls so instructed them to cane each other. In all fairness at the time I didn’t really believe it (though it has always stuck in my mind).
*The documentary in question featured the alleged Rodney School canings.
Anyway, a few years later with the internet becoming more widely available. I did a bit research and discovered that this was a thing not only in boys’ schools but also in girls’ schools. Mostly in public schools up to and including the 1960s. I’m guessing at the time of the party the two ladies in question will have been in their mid to late 20s, so probably born around 1970. So they will have been at school during the SCP era.
A Case Study
Recently, I was trawling through the now defunct SFR site and came across this:
Upton by Chester High, Chesire
Sue Ross – 1976
Fights!!! – Bob Jones (the Environmental Studies teacher) otherwise known as Grizzly due to the beard he had. I remember him being totally shocked to find out I was smoking (that’s what you get when you go out with a tearaway by the name of Taffy apparently!) He once made me give the cane to Janet Oldfield because we had forgotten to do our homework.
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Good to see another try at the peer punishment thing. Perhaps you will unearth something I have long sought and never found. A believable account of official and non-jocular cross-gender SCP administered by a prefect!
My knees knocked in my short trousers the first and fortunately the only time I saw the cane prominently displayed on the Prefects’ Court table. The thought of bending over for up to three strokes with that thing administered by one of the 3rd year sixth form Oxbridge bound lordly academic aces and muscular first team sportsmen glowering at me on the other side of the table was not a pleasant one! But if it had been a mixed school and there’d been the chance of being whacked by a female prefect.
You mention that at the time when the conversation which eventually led you to Sue Ross and Janet Oldfield took place you and your friends were watching a documentary which featured canings at the Rodney School at Kirklington, Nottinghamshire. Was it perchance Michael Mooore’s ‘TV Nation’ on UK caning (1994),
You mention at the start of your foundation post above that when reading Roald Dahl’s autobiography when you were a boy you were greatly surprIsed at the idea of prefects and that a child could legally punish a child. As regards the prefects at my own school, the vast majority were, as noted above, third year sixth formers aged 18 and over. In those days at the public schools most pupils aiming for Oxbridge did a third year in the sixth form in preparation. They had few formal lesson periods and thus plenty of time to undertake a wide range of official duties on behalf of the school administration.
In my time at the school the prefects were indeed technically children since the age of majority was then 21. However in 1969 the age of majority was lowered to 18. The old school has now gone co-ed. If it still had prefects who caned and people still did an extra sixth form year for Oxbridge a juvenile