That is how things stood in the year 2016, when we the British people voted in a referendum to have done with their interfering and left the European Union to steer our own ship; so now some years later, in the year 2022, we are completely free of outside meddling in our affairs. Even as part of the EU, there had still been a strong lobby in the UK, mainly from the public schools, to allow corporal punishment still to be used. Not surprisingly, once more on our own, that lobby's voice became deafening. Crime had risen in the streets; there was little discipline in the schools anymore; the young generation had no respect either for people or property and even such keen disciplinarians as the army and navy training establishments were at a loss to know what to do to keep their delinquent cadets in line. And with no threat of physical pain hanging over their heads like a sword of Damocles, young tearaways, in all walks of life, simply did as they wished in the full knowledge that nothing much would happen to them.
And so now in the year 2022 the government of the UK, by more or less universal acclaim from the populace, reintroduced corporal punishment in an act of parliament entitled, most appropriately: The Reintroduction of Corporal Punishment Act 2022. The act was wordy and complicated, but essentially gave free rein to schools, magistrates, reform institutions, prisons, and the army and navy to employ corporal punishment to keep order and punish wrongdoers. It was hailed by all and sundry as a step in the right direction to put some order into what had become an increasingly lawless society. It should be noted that many of our erstwhile colonies, now independent, had never relinquished the use of the cane, introduced them by their British colonisers and wondered why on earth we had ever dropped its use.
Rigby School
Headmaster: Mr. C. D. Moulton-Danvers MA Cantab
As might well be imagined, there was a great deal of discussion in all establishments educating young lads from well-to-do families and Rigby School, an elite smallish public school located in Ditchfeild (pronounced DitchfEEld in spite of its peculiar spelling) was no exception. Rigby School had been noted for its rigour in dealing with its pupils and the cane and birch had been in regular use until the rot set in and they were finally abandoned. In fact, in the "good old days" Rigby was a much sought-after educational establishment, as parents were sure that their unruly offspring would literally be beaten into shape. Ask any old Rigbyan and he will tell you that in his day the cane and birch reigned supreme.
The present Headmaster, Mr. Cedric Montague Moulton-Danvers, was now aged some sixty years; he had first entered Rigby, as had his father and grandfather before him, from prep school as a boy aged thirteen in 1973. Apart from a four-year absence when he was at Cambridge University reading mathematics followed by a year at a teacher training college, he had spent his entire life at the school. Returning as a graduate (first class honours in both parts of the tripos, no less) in 1983 he was appointed junior mathematics master. He had not been a prefect when he was still a pupil at the school and as such he had always been on the receiving end of the cane, and on one or two occasions, the birch. However, in appointing him as junior master, the governors and the then Headmaster found in him an ardent beater of boys' bottoms and thoroughly approved of their choice. The fact that he was also an excellent and well-liked teacher did not seem to count as much in the eyes of the governors and the then Headmaster as the fact that he was a strict disciplinarian. And so over a period of years he progressed to become the Head of the Mathematics Department and ultimately to the post of Headmaster, to which he acceded to 1993 at the young age of only thirty-three, when the then headmaster died of a stroke.
Although corporal punishment had been forbidden in state schools in the early 1980s, a diminishing number of public schools, among which Rigby was one of the most prominent, clung on to the use of the cane and the birch until 1998, when the law finally forbade is further use in all schools. It is worth noting however, that Mr. Moulton-Danvers, faithful to the concept of corporal punishment until the very end, thrashed the naked backsides belonging to two sixth formers, whom he had caught smoking the very day before all corporal punishment was finally forbidden by law.
Moulton-Danvers remembered well that last occasion, when, having given each lad a very severe twelve cut thrashing with the birch, he had enlisted the help the then Head Boy, Jonathan Henshaw, to add a complement of punishment with the cane. So he, the Headmaster, with the two lads naked arsed across two chairs, had first given each of them twelve cuts with the birch which elicited howls of pain from the supplicants. This had then been followed by the Head Boy who had given each lad a further twelve cuts of the senior cane across what might be described as the "preconditioned" arses of the two miscreants. So it is true to say that corporal punishment went out with a bang at Rigby
Suffice it to say that when this monumental flogging was over, the two lads could barely walk back to their bedrooms, so great was their pain. And so after that, the cane and the birch were, perforce, retired from active service. The birch, which as we all know has a very limited "shelf life" and quickly reaches its "use-by date", was discarded. But the faithful canes, which had already made contact with hundreds of naked bottoms over the years, were put away in a cupboard: they became souvenirs of the "good old days.". No one regretted more than Moulton-Danvers the retirement of the cane from school life. No one knew better than he how to lay on the cane with the panache and expertise acquired by years of diligent application and practice and no one mourned its passing more than he did.
The Headmaster looked back on that final occasion after which the cane had been retired from service. That last time was now over twenty years ago and in that period no boy had suffered any form of beating at Rigby, much to the regret of the Headmaster and many of his staff, who had seen the withdrawal of the right to cane as a retrograde step. So today, we find the Headmaster and the Board of Governors of the school in their quarterly meeting. On top of the agenda is not unnaturally the change in the law allowing the re-introduction of corporal punishment into, among other establishments, public schools. Mr Moulton-Danvers, as Headmaster, though not a member of the Board of Governors, was always, as a matter of courtesy, invited to attend these meetings, prior to which he had always submitted a quarterly report. The Chairman of the Board an elderly military man, Colonel Peters, suggested that the Headmaster bring the Board up-to-date on the significance to the school of the newly enacted law on the reintroduction of corporal punishment. In Mr. Moulton-Danvers, the Board could not have had a better advocate for the case that the School re-adopt the practice.
The Headmaster began: "Well gentlemen, I am sure that many of you will agree with me when I say that I view this change in the law to be a step in the right direction. Since the abolition of corporal punishment in schools and other establishments around the United Kingdom over twenty years ago, the behaviour of young people and I include here members of the upper classes, boys from well-to-do families who can afford a private education for their offspring and who are pupils at schools such as ours, has gone from bad to worse. There is no longer any self-respect, let alone respect for other persons or property. The good manners for which we as a nation have long been noted, or perhaps I should say more accurately, had been noted, is now a concept of the past. Moreover, boys have become unconcerned about their personal appearance; I see it every day here at Rigby: shoes are not polished; socks are not pulled up properly, shirts are left partly unbuttoned; ties hang loose like a noose around boys' necks."
"In general there has been, over the last twenty years, a great deterioration in the manners and in the appearance of our boys; "slovenly" comes to mind as a word to describe them. And faced with this, what have we their teachers had as a means of correction? Well gentlemen; the short answer is nothing other than words; words whose effect is somewhat similar to water off a duck's back. In fact, the effect of words can well be summed up by the old rhyme: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." Well gentlemen, the change in the law now offers us something a little more potent than words, in that we may, as of now, re-introduce corporal punishment into the school, a move which I earnestly recommend you, the governing body, to consider. Frankly gentlemen, there is nothing like a good bare arse beating to make a lad see sense; and it does him no harm either psychologically or physically, other than the transient discomfort as he nurses his aching backside. I myself was beaten in this very school countless times and am none the worse for it. I am sure that many of you also have had the same experience."
The Headmaster's comments on the new law provoked quite a long discussion. A few of the younger members of the Board were somewhat reluctant to see the cane reintroduced after a twenty absence, but the older more traditional governors were all totally in favour. The general feeling of the board was summed up by the Chairman: "Gentlemen, would it be fair to say that we are on the whole favourable to the Headmaster's suggest that both the cane and the birch be reintroduced into regular use at Rigby. I don't say that we should go back completely to the old system in place for many decades until the abolition of the cane in 1998, where all the prefects were allowed to beat their classmates and there were prefects' courts and that sort of thing: but I cannot but feel that with the knowledge that misdemeanours can be punished physically in the form of a good old-fashioned beating will make the boys look before they leap."
