Thurs­day 9 Decem­ber 1952

I have intro­duced a new rule this week, at the sug­ges­tion of Mr Wheat­ley, our head of sport, who is a stick­ler for phys­i­cal fit­ness and is wor­ried that some boys seem to put on sur­plus weight in win­ter, when they get less chance to exer­cise out­doors. ëThose of you who have had to vis­it my study will be famil­iar with the unpleas­ant sen­sa­tion of being told to touch your toes while I cane you,í I announced at assem­bly, to ner­vous gig­gles all round. ëWell, from now on, boys unable to touch their toes can expect TWO EXTRA STROKES!í More ner­vous gig­gles. As luck would have it, the very next boy I had to cane, lat­er that day, was podgy lit­tle Bil­ly May­fair, nick­named Bil­ly Bunter for obvi­ous rea­sons. There was no chance of May­fair touch­ing his toes ñ or of escap­ing the two extra strokes, which I made sure were real stingers, deliv­ered full force. I sus­pect the fat slob may be going on a diet…

Wednes­day 1 Decem­ber 1952

.… which made me so furi­ous I lost my rag com­plete­ly. ëYOU… WILL… NEVER… TALK… TO… ME… LIKE… THAT…††EVER… AGAIN… YOU… SNIVELLING… LITTLE… BOY,í I roared, at the top of my voice, accom­pa­ny­ing each word I uttered with a full-bod­ied stroke of the strap. That made thir­teen strokes in all and, even though I had allowed†Crosthwaite†to retain his under­pants, the effect on his ten­der 14-year-old bot­tom can be read­i­ly imag­ined. It was not just any old strap either, but the heav­i­est and nas­ti­est one in my whole col­lec­tion ñ made inScot­land, I believe. I felt guilty after­wards. Am I slow­ly turn­ing into a deranged sadist? But I cer­tain­ly got my point across.

Wednes­day 24 November

A depress­ing day, at every lev­el. I came home ear­ly from my lunch-break and caught my trust­ed sec­re­tary , Celia, red-hand­ed, going through my draw­ers. She insist­ed that she was just look­ing for some blot­ting-paper, but one look at her face told me that was a lie. My first instinct was to sack her on the spot but, for bet­ter or worse, I decid­ed on an alter­na­tive strat­e­gy. If the cane con­cen­trates boysí minds, there is no rea­son why it should not con­cen­trate the mind of a mar­ried woman of thirty-five!

I made her wait around after school, then informed her of my ver­dict, non-nego­tiable: she was to receive ten strokes of the senior cane, hav­ing first removed her under­wear. She found the sec­ond ele­ment of the pun­ish­ment even more objec­tion­able than the first and begged me to let retain her knick­ers to pro­tect her mod­esty. ëMod­esty be damned!í I said, reach­ing for my cane. It felt odd flog­ging a woman ñ hope­ful­ly, for the first and last time. Celi­aís but­tocks were much fleshi­er than those of a teenage boy, and the can­ing made a ter­ri­ble rack­et. But she took it sto­ical­ly and, as she rubbed her bot­tom after­wards, thanked me for giv­ing her a sec­ond chance. But it was a dispir­it­ing inci­dent. I did­nít become a teacher to whack grown wom­enís bottoms.

Tues­day 9 Novem­ber 1952

… nor­mal­ly just slink out of my office, try­ing not to blub. But I was­nít going to let Mor­ri­son off that eas­i­ly. After I had giv­en him six of the very best with the cane ñ and I do mean the very best, every one was a real stinger that could have been heard a hun­dred yards away ñ I made him stand in the cor­ner, with his bot­tom exposed, so that I could admire my hand­i­work. I still use the cane less fre­quent­ly than the strap, as it should be kept as the ulti­mate deter­rent, but when you see a per­fect­ly striped bot­tom, with the ridges raised, it is a fear­some sight. Per­haps I should get some­one to take pho­tographs of such a bot­tom and post them around the school as a warn­ing to oth­ers. It would cer­tain­ly con­cen­trate boysí minds on the fate that awaits them if they incur my wrath.

Thurs­day 21 Octo­ber 1952

Will boys nev­er learn? You would have thought that Bagshaw would have thought twice about break­ing school rules after his last vis­it to my study, less than a week ago. I gave him a good hid­ing with my heav­i­est strap and you would have thought he would have learnt his les­son. Not a bit of it! There he was again in the Fri­day after­noon queue of boys wait­ing to feel the wrath of their head­mistress. ëBagshaw, remind me what I said to you after our last interview,í I said, icy calm. ëíThat next time it would be the c‑cane,í he stam­mered. ëAnd?í I said. ëAnd on the b‑bare b‑bottom,í he said, in a ner­vous whis­per. †ëThen what are you wait­ing for, your stu­pid boy?í I snapped, indi­cat­ing the chair over which it was cus­tom­ary for boys to bend. As he low­ered his pants, I was glad to see that the marks of his strap­ping were still there. I like to leave a mark. No point in thrash­ing boys oth­er­wise. And I was about to leave six more…

Sat­ur­day 16 Octo­ber 1952

Tea with Har­ry Baines, my pre­de­ces­sor, who has retired to East­bourne. We com­pared notes about cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment and found we had a lot in com­mon: (a) a con­vic­tion that a sore bot­tom is bet­ter than a pris­sy moral lec­ture; (b) that, if you explain to boys exact­ly why you are thrash­ing them, they will accept the thrash­ing philo­soph­i­cal­ly; and © that there is noth­ing to beat the sound of a cane crash­ing into a tight­ly bent-over bot­tom. It strikes ter­ror into any­one lis­ten­ing out­side, next in the queue, and gives a lot of qui­et plea­sure ñ the sense of a job well done ñ to the wield­er of the cane. At one point, Har­ry stooped to do up his shoe-laces and, at the sight of his broad bot­tom, I could feel my cane arm twitch­ing. Hmmm.

Sat­ur­day 16 Octo­ber 1952

Tea with Har­ry Baines, my pre­de­ces­sor, who has retired to East­bourne. We com­pared notes about cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment and found we had a lot in com­mon: (a) a con­vic­tion that a sore bot­tom is bet­ter than a pris­sy moral lec­ture; (b) that, if you explain to boys exact­ly why you are thrash­ing them, they will accept the thrash­ing philo­soph­i­cal­ly; and © that there is noth­ing to beat the sound of a cane crash­ing into a tight­ly bent-over bot­tom. It strikes ter­ror into any­one lis­ten­ing out­side, next in the queue, and gives a lot of qui­et plea­sure ñ the sense of a job well done ñ to the wield­er of the cane. At one point, Har­ry stooped to do up his shoe-laces and, at the sight of his broad bot­tom, I could feel my cane arm twitch­ing. Hmmm.

Mon­day 11 Octo­ber 1952

.… with­out hav­ing to take tough deci­sions some­times. Mass pun­ish­ment are not my idea of jus­tice but, when I paid an impromp­tu vis­it to 5A, who were being taught Latin by Mr Grimes at the time, and found the entire class in uproar, throw­ing things at each oth­er, I wast­ed no time try­ing to track down the ring-lead­ers, but strapped the whole class there and then, with their trousers at half mast. Twen­ty-three boys, twen­ty-three sore, throb­bing bot­toms, and all over in less than ten min­utes. So much more effec­tive than detention…

Mon­day 22 Sep­tem­ber 1952

I am still shak­ing with fury after an unpleas­ant episode with an obnox­ious boy called Hoskins, the son of the local green­gro­cer. He had been sent to me for throw­ing a piece of chalk at anoth­er boy ñ the kind of infan­tile behav­iour that absolute­ly infu­ri­ates me. I prob­a­bly strapped Hoskins a bit hard­er than usu­al in con­se­quence. The ten strokes hurt and they were meant to hurt, but that is no excuse for what hap­pened next. As the last stroke land­ed, Hoskins let out a four-let­ter word of the vilest kind. I was flab­ber­gast­ed ñ and so angry that I put him over my knee, pulled down his trousers and pants and gave him a good wal­lop­ing with a wood­en hair brush which I hap­pened to have to hand. He was cry­ing like a baby by the end.

Fri­day 28 July 1952

The end of my first sum­mer term. On con­sult­ing my pun­ish­ment book, I see that I have admin­is­tered 151 strap­pings, 98 can­ings and sundry oth­er pun­ish­ments of the kind that make it hard for a boy to sit down after­wards. It sounds a lot on paper but, in a tough inner-city school like ours, it is imper­a­tive that the head teacher shows who is boss.
Tak­ing a well-earned hol­i­day in the south of France, near a lit­tle vil­lage called…