Split-out post from the Petition/FFP topic.

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Kit Bartlett
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Re: Is 26% Full-Fee Paying Pupils Too High?

Post by Kit Bartlett »

I don't remember public beatings in Big School in my time (1941-47) and wonder when this practice terminated. I suggest that it may well have been in the aftermath of the First World War when Hamilton Fyfe took over from Upcott in 1919. I believe that the latter was the last Head Master to administer corporal punishment personally. Perhaps one of our CH historians can supply this answer.
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Re: Is 26% Full-Fee Paying Pupils Too High?

Post by J.R. »

I do seem to remember that HM, CMES DID very rarely, administer corporal punishment in his study.
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Post by William »

I too have no recollection of public beatings in the 1950s. But when they ceased I don’t know. However I do have an account of such a beating in 1918 from someone who was present.

“On one memorable occasion in 1918 Dr Upcott gave a morning sermon on personal purity. Then, after lunch, aided by two school sergeants, he caned six boys publically. Immediately after the flogging they were formally expelled.”

Dr Upcott looked a typical Victorian, probably most of his opinions were those of a typical Victorian DD and he was much harsher than any teacher of the 21st century. Yet apparently he was a great improvement over his HM predecessor. In the words of one of his obituaries (reported in The Blue), “Upcott was not a master of Draconian discipline as Lee had been.”

Dr Fyfe, Upcott’s successor as HM in 1919, was a great humanitarian, never administered corporal punishment himself and clearly disapproved of its use. Yet he never forbade it. So it is likely he stopped public beatings. As one Blue from his early days recounted,

“On taking up his post Dr Fyfe found a package of birches left by Dr Upcott and immediately ordered them to be burned.”
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Re: Is 26% Full-Fee Paying Pupils Too High?

Post by Kit Bartlett »

There must be a date when corporal punishment was finally made illegal in schools. Did C.H. cease this practice prior to this?
Early histories of the school refer to public executions that were carried out frequently at Newgate Prison which adjoined the school buildings and were witnessed by pupils. I know the last such event took place in 1868 although I am not sure of the location.
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Re: Is 26% Full-Fee Paying Pupils Too High?

Post by Mid A 15 »

Kit Bartlett wrote:There must be a date when corporal punishment was finally made illegal in schools. Did C.H. cease this practice prior to this?
Early histories of the school refer to public executions that were carried out frequently at Newgate Prison which adjoined the school buildings and were witnessed by pupils. I know the last such event took place in 1868 although I am not sure of the location.
1998 according to this:

http://www.politics.co.uk/reference/corporal-punishment

Although it was gradually phased out prior to that in State schools.
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Re: Is 26% Full-Fee Paying Pupils Too High?

Post by William »

Kit Bartlett wrote: Early histories of the school refer to public executions that were carried out frequently at Newgate Prison which adjoined the school buildings and were witnessed by pupils. I know the last such event took place in 1868 although I am not sure of the location.
According to http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/endpublic.html

England’s last fully public hanging was to be that of Michael Barrett at Newgate. Twenty seven year old Barrett originated in Co. Fermanagh, Ireland, and was another member of the Fenians (Irish Republicans). He was convicted of causing an explosion at the Clerkenwell House of Detention in London on the 13th of December 1867, in an attempt to free Richard O'Sullivan Burke, a Fenian Brotherhood member. The bomb blew a huge hole in the prison wall, destroying and damaging several houses opposite the prison in Corporation Lane. The blast killed seven innocent people and injured many more. This was one of the first Irish bombings on English soil. Six people were arrested but Barrett was the only one to be convicted at the Old Bailey on 6 April 1868 on one specimen charge of murder in respect of the death of Sarah Ann Hodgkinson who lived at No. 3a Corporation Lane, the house most severely damaged by the blast. Poor Sarah had received a huge cut to her neck that extended from in front of her right ear to the cheek, her scalp was cut with glass and one of her major veins severed, causing death from haemorrhage and suffocation. Unusually for the time, a government commission was set up to review the case prior to the execution, hence the abnormally long period between the trial and the hanging. This concluded that Barrett had been correctly convicted and that his alibi defence of having been in Glasgow at the time was false.
Barrett was hanged by William Calcraft shortly after 8 am on Tuesday, the 26th of May 1868, dying without a struggle. It was reported in The Times newspaper that there were a great many members of the lower classes, including young women with children present at this execution and that the crowd stretched past St. Sepulchre’s Church and almost into Smithfield, such was the interest in it. The Times celebrated the fact that this hanging would be the last such vulgar public display (their editorial opinion).
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Re: Is 26% Full-Fee Paying Pupils Too High?

Post by Katharine »

David, this kind of diversion is very common in this forum, it happens there's nothing much you can do about it, im sorry to say!

When do you leave for London?
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PETITION: (Split out) Is 26% Full-Fee Paying Pupils Too High?

Post by yamaha »

I have split out the off-topic comments in this thread
No, you have censored them.

Strangely you have kept Taplin's reply to the first part of my comment which now stands out of context - and contains several starry eyed claims about Seaman that anyone who was there in the 60's will know to be untrue.

The second part of my comment simply stated that the old business model will likely need to change to one that works well at other schools. Certainly different from the petition, but not off topic.
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Re: PETITION: Is 26% Full-Fee Paying Pupils Too High?

Post by davidtaplin »

Maybe the forward focus could be on the content of the petition?
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Re: Split-out post from the Petition/FFP topic.

Post by jtaylor »

I have again split out comments which are off topic (which takes my time to do) - let's honour David's request, and try to keep the Petition conversation on topic, and feel free to use this topic for continued discussion (whilst sticking within the Ts and Cs of the Forum please.)

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Re: Split-out post from the Petition/FFP topic.

Post by sejintenej »

rockfreak wrote: You do seem rather obsessed with discipline John. Could this be a result of being beaten regularly by NT Fryer (the mad, bible-bashing Welshman)? I've often wondered if ex-public schoolboys provide the bulk of the custom of those strict ladies who leave their calling cards in Soho telephone boxes. In his latest book, Bill Bryson roams Southern England in company with an American and two Brits, both ex-boarders. He notes that the Brits almost immediately team up conversationally to discuss flagellation, cold baths and sponge pudding.
Where the hµµl do you get these ideas from? I suspect it is the company you keep. I got beaten BECAUSE I DESERVED IT though truthfully I did get away with quite a lot. It is the lack of discipline which is now destroying this country and it is about time Cameron brought back the birch.
What happens if a politician drowns in a river? That is pollution.
What happens if all of them drown? That is solution!!!
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Re: Split-out post from the Petition/FFP topic.

Post by J.R. »

I remember visiting Guernsey as a lad with my Mother to stay with relatives when Guernsey STILL had and still USED birching as a punishment for yobbish behaviour. Not a cane, but the old fashioned birch.

This would be in the late 50's, early '60's. They still retained capital punishment long after we in England abolished it.
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Re: Split-out post from the Petition/FFP topic.

Post by sejintenej »

J.R. wrote:I remember visiting Guernsey as a lad with my Mother to stay with relatives when Guernsey STILL had and still USED birching as a punishment for yobbish behaviour. Not a cane, but the old fashioned birch.

This would be in the late 50's, early '60's. They still retained capital punishment long after we in England abolished it.
I don't know about capital punishment but the Isle of Man retained birching for a long time - certainly into the 1950's, perhaps even the 60's
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Re: Split-out post from the Petition/FFP topic.

Post by William »

In fact there was not such a great difference in dates for the end of birching in England, Guernsey (and the Isle of Man), which were 1962, the mid 1960s and 1976, respectively, according to the following.

From http://www.corpun.com/9feat2.htm
In 1962 four adult men were birched in English prisons.(Note a) They were the last of hundreds of grown men birched on their bare buttocks over the previous hundred years. The four 1962 birchings were for offences against prison rules.
[a. Report of the Commissioners of Prisons, 1962, Cmnd.2030, p.827.]

From Wikipedia
The birch was also used on offending teenage boys until the mid-1960s on the Channel Islands of Guernsey and Jersey.

From http://www.corpun.com/manx.htm
And yet although the birching laws now looked to be a dead letter, it was to be a further 12 years before they were formally repealed. This was in 1993, 17 years after the last birching, in January 1976 [in the Isle of Man], when a youth from Northern Ireland received six strokes for assault.
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Re: Split-out post from the Petition/FFP topic.

Post by rockfreak »

sejintenej wrote:
rockfreak wrote: You do seem rather obsessed with discipline John. Could this be a result of being beaten regularly by NT Fryer (the mad, bible-bashing Welshman)? I've often wondered if ex-public schoolboys provide the bulk of the custom of those strict ladies who leave their calling cards in Soho telephone boxes. In his latest book, Bill Bryson roams Southern England in company with an American and two Brits, both ex-boarders. He notes that the Brits almost immediately team up conversationally to discuss flagellation, cold baths and sponge pudding.
Where the hµµl do you get these ideas from? I suspect it is the company you keep. I got beaten BECAUSE I DESERVED IT though truthfully I did get away with quite a lot. It is the lack of discipline which is now destroying this country and it is about time Cameron brought back the birch.
You're absolutely right about discipline (or lack of it). Let's bring back the birch for investment bankers, hedge fund managers, private equity sharks, rapacious Russian oligarchs, skyline-destroying property developers, politicians fiddling their expenses, greedy landlords, greedy hereditary landowners, greedy shareholders, overpaid CEOs, and indeed self-justifying, privileged, pompous, priggish public schoolboys. Give me the birch and I will happily do the job.
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