Punishment

[Angela Woodford]

(sport! wrote:

Vonny wrote:
Had to stand facing the wall with your back to the whole school! :lol

and did you get to eat any lunch, or did you miss out as part of the Yes we did get lunch - we were allowed to leave the dais straight after grace and sit with the rest of the house. You then had to return and stay facing the wall until everyone had filed out of the dining room!

.....and did anyone dare act up while facing the wall.......standing on one leg or such like?

Not me)

Whenever did this sort of thing happen? Facing the wall at the end of lunch?

Could it be that the Miss Tucker régime was not as improved/benign as I had (happily) believed?

[gsjones]

That sounds very familiar,I'm sure it happened whilst I was there.I could be mistaken but it does stir faint memories

[Angela Woodford]

Geraint - from your name, I'm finding it hard to believe you're a Hertford Girl 1972 onward?

[fra828]

(sport! wrote:

Vonny wrote:
Had to stand facing the wall with your back to the whole school! :lol

and did you get to eat any lunch, or did you miss out as part of the Yes we did get lunch - we were allowed to leave the dais straight after grace and sit with the rest of the house. You then had to return and stay facing the wall until everyone had filed out of the dining room!

.....and did anyone dare act up while facing the wall.......standing on one leg or such like?

Not me)

Whenever did this sort of thing happen? Facing the wall at the end of lunch?

Could it be that the Miss Tucker régime was not as improved/benign as I had (happily) believed?

Can't remember this punishment either, sounds very Jane Eyre-ish ! Punishments DR doled out to a friend and myself were: to collect stones from the front garden of our house, and recite a passage from the bible: 'Do not store your treasures upon earth....' SWNBN once sent me out to the corridor during needlework lesson -with the same friend.. oh how naughty we were..lol..the dreaded Miss R had caught us exchanging smiles when she said....'when I was at school, and that was many years ago!'

[Mid A 15]

(sport! wrote:

Vonny wrote:
Had to stand facing the wall with your back to the whole school! :lol

and did you get to eat any lunch, or did you miss out as part of the Yes we did get lunch - we were allowed to leave the dais straight after grace and sit with the rest of the house. You then had to return and stay facing the wall until everyone had filed out of the dining room!

.....and did anyone dare act up while facing the wall.......standing on one leg or such like?

Not me)

Whenever did this sort of thing happen? Facing the wall at the end of lunch?

Could it be that the Miss Tucker régime was not as improved/benign as I had (happily) believed?

I could be wrong here (it has been known ) but I think the punishments referred to are Horsham rather than Hertford and Vonny is responding to Sport!'s description of said punishments.

[Angela Woodford]

I think you are right, Andy! I think of Vonny as a Hertford Girl, but much younger than I... Perhaps I was confused by the thought of a "dais" - there was one in the Hertford Dining Hall, where six hapless girls got to dine with DR on a Tuesday. It only happened to me once. I had lined up three emergency DR-pleasing subjects in case the conversation ceased to sparkle. However, yes! At that inevitable moment, my mind went completely blank and I sat with the others, dumbstruck.

Punishments happened in House 6 1965-6, doled out by the Study. Shoe-cleaning, bath and basin cleaning, being backed up against the Study door to be shouted at, writing out of lines and of essays ("Why I must not be untidy") were the favourites. I was in even more trouble for choosing six untidy despots from history for my essay. It was worth it.

Although - I was never actually at the receiving end of an actual punishment by DR or any mistress. They could award you an Order, Disorder or (DR only) Conduct report, but I think the worst and most humiliating thing was to be "blown up". This was being angrily/chillingly reprimanded in detail in front of one's peers. The done thing was to show no emotion - I found that, since the blowing up was usually conducted when made to stand up in class, if I concentrated on beating out a little rhythm under the desk, the surreptitious displacement activity would enable me to remain insouciante.

Oh! Occasionally a junior was kept back in Dining Hall for refusing to eat some hated item of food. The keeping-back was futile. The keeper-backer couldn't actually perform force feeding, so after a protracted battle of wills, the refusenik always won!

[gma]

The odd thing is AW, reading your post, I thought to myself.." I was always in trouble so what on earth were the punishments?" then I read this

Although - I was never actually at the receiving end of an actual punishment by DR or any mistress. They could award you an Order, Disorder or (DR only) Conduct report,

and there they were How odd that I'd forgotten or perhaps had simply erased them from my mind!! I do remember spending a number of hours on numerous occasions standing outside DRs office (but oddly not many inside it except for the confirmation meetings with that plump vicar!!) and there always seemed to be dust motes floating in weak rays of sun that occasionally squeezed their way in through the windows!

[Vonny]

there was one in the Hertford Dining Hall, where six hapless girls got to dine with DR on a Tuesday.

That's the dais I was talking about - I remember this punishment happening fairly regularly at Hertford. I don't remember it at Horsham though, but as BaB were seated at the other end of the dining hall to the dais it wasn't always possible to see what was going on at the other end of the hall.

[Angela Woodford]

Vonny! Vonny?

Then it was a Hertford punishment? What did any girl do to get stood up on the dais? Who superintended the punishment? Was it a punishment devised by a Housemistress? Just say it wasn't dear old Pot? No... couldn't have been!



It's so Jane Eyre-ish, I can hardly believe it.

C'mon, Vonny, tell!

[Kim2s70-77]

I think you are right, Andy! I think of Vonny as a Hertford Girl, but much younger than I... Perhaps I was confused by the thought of a "dais" - there was one in the Hertford Dining Hall, where six hapless girls got to dine with DR on a Tuesday. It only happened to me once. I had lined up three emergency DR-pleasing subjects in case the conversation ceased to sparkle. However, yes! At that inevitable moment, my mind went completely blank and I sat with the others, dumbstruck.

Punishments happened in House 6 1965-6, doled out by the Study. Shoe-cleaning, bath and basin cleaning, being backed up against the Study door to be shouted at, writing out of lines and of essays ("Why I must not be untidy") were the favourites. I was in even more trouble for choosing six untidy despots from history for my essay. It was worth it.

Although - I was never actually at the receiving end of an actual punishment by DR or any mistress. They could award you an Order, Disorder or (DR only) Conduct report, but I think the worst and most humiliating thing was to be "blown up". This was being angrily/chillingly reprimanded in detail in front of one's peers. The done thing was to show no emotion - I found that, since the blowing up was usually conducted when made to stand up in class, if I concentrated on beating out a little rhythm under the desk, the surreptitious displacement activity would enable me to remain insouciante.

Oh! Occasionally a junior was kept back in Dining Hall for refusing to eat some hated item of food. The keeping-back was futile. The keeper-backer couldn't actually perform force feeding, so after a protracted battle of wills, the refusenik always won!

I had forgotten about the Headmistress's Lunch!! I remember coming up with assorted topical news items and rehearsing them! I swear that that ordeal taught me the art of social bullshit; sounding like you knew something beyond a very minimal veneer of knowledge and 'steering the conversation' towards pet topics of the host!! Stood me in good stead at University interviews!! I remember a Professor scratching the surface of my meager scientific knowledge at Imperial College and me reading an upside down article on his desk about interspersing rogue crops to reduce pests in farming. I actually had the balls to respond "that's a really good question, but - before I answer it, I wondered if you knew anything about rogue crops????? It's an interest of mine! " He was off and running.......... I didn't have to say another word and I got a great offer of a place!!!

[icomefromalanddownunder]

Oh! Occasionally a junior was kept back in Dining Hall for refusing to eat some hated item of food. The keeping-back was futile. The keeper-backer couldn't actually perform force feeding, so after a protracted battle of wills, the refusenik always won!

It didn't feel like winning while pondering what the punishment would be if I did swallow any Friday lunch offerings and immediately projectile vomited them back out, or while surruptitiously (surely not the correct spelling) spitting the foul mess into my hankie (one advantage of the men sized hankies we were issued with: Kleenex would never had stood the strain) and waddling back to 6's in the hope that I made it to the ala before 'mornay' or 'parsley' sauce (generously laced with finger nail clipping-like bones) leaked through my pocket and ran down my beige-clad legs.

I don't remember DR lunches, but we had something similar in my first year at Leeds - spent living in at Weetwood Hall. One dinner a month(?) a chosen few would invite their Prof and Partner to share the meal at high table in the dining room. On one occasion I had a couple of visitors in our room and failed to interpret the sighs and couhgs of my room-mate as being anything other than suppressed laughter at our wit and charm. Honestly, why didn't she just yell at me to get changed for dinner because the bell was about to go? So, I went down to dinner wearing a black midi skirt and my purple Leeds University tee shirt. Both were clean and ironed, and I had tucked the tee shirt in, so thought that I looked perfectly smart. Apparently not. There was no official dress code, but apparently I should have known that a tee shirt (even a regally purple one) was entirely unacceptable. Maybe SWSNBN was right, and I was a guttersnipe

[englishangel]

An ironed t-shirt, when a student, Caroline I am impressed. (as I sit here in middle age in my un-ironed purple hoodie.)

DRs lunch on Tuesday. I think the social chit-chat thing was the idea. Perhaps that was why I was never one of the chosen ones. In seven years a never once had lunch with Dr. The difficulty was getting me to shut up.

[Katharine]

I never had one either, Mary!

[Angela Woodford]

DRs lunch on Tuesday. I think the social chit-chat thing was the idea. Perhaps that was why I was never one of the chosen ones. In seven years a never once had lunch with Dr. The difficulty was getting me to shut up.

I think you're right here, Mary. I'm being visited here by the fabulous image of you, holding the table-on-the-dais in a gale of stimulating laughter, with a bit of current events thrown in; perhaps even with a few passing references to your passion for the Sex Lives of the Ancient Gods. DR desperately trying to chip in with a few incisive comments, but failing dismally...

You did win, Caroline! I remember Meg Gunter standing over you and a plate of churned up Cheese Fish. Rumour had it that eventually she had to pretend to turn away whilst you transferred the Cheese Fish into your hanky. Otherwise she would have lost out on Free Time 14.00hrs to 14.30 hrs. Yup, no contest.

The standing-on-the-dais punishment thing has got to be post-DR. In seven years I remember DR humiliating a girl in public only three times. It just wasn't her style. Her method was strictly when she'd got you standing in front of her in her Study or in the Housemistresses Sitting Room - DR sitting, you standing - and then, wham! Something really hurtful delivered in that brusque all-for-your-own-good diction.

However, I'm baffled by the picking-up-stones thing. Different?

[fra828]

I never remember anyone else being given that picking-up-stones punishment, maybe one of DR's mad one-offs! I think we were even made to count the stones - ridiculous and humiliating! On the subject of DR's Tuesday table, I think I sat up there twice and on the 2nd occasion there was also a man with DR, he was kindly, could it have been her brother? There were 4 of us girls and politics was the subject being discussed. Rosie from 7's very bravely, I thought at the time, disagreed with the views of DR and her companion! Dick Taverne ( ?) was the MP in question. Does anyone remember him?