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…

Tues­day 12 May 1952

.… which was sim­ply not good enough. I told him that, as he had obvi­ous­ly not learnt his les­son, I would have to take more dras­tic mea­sures. At the word ëdras­ticí, I could see the first signs of fear in his eyes. He was a†big boy,†tall for a 14-year-old, and prob­a­bly thought he could take a thrash­ing from a female teacher in his stride. He was­nít pre­pared for the sight of my senior cane ñ as big and whip­py and gen­er­al­ly nasty as it sounds ñ and he cer­tain­ly was­nít pre­pared for my barked instruc­tion, ëTrousers and pants down, Hoop­er, and quick about it!í ëBut M‑m-miss…,í he stam­mered. ëYes, Hooper?í ëMr Grange nev­er made us take our pants down.í ëAnd Iím not Mr Grange,í I retort­ed, quick as a flash. ëAnd thatís two extra strokes for arguing!í
Who would have thought that, only a few months into my new job, I would be giv­ing a boy eight strokes of the cane on his bare bot­tom? I was just fol­low­ing my gut instincts. I rea­soned that Hoop­er need­ed to be humil­i­at­ed and embar­rassed, not just sub­ject­ed to phys­i­cal pain. I quite enjoyed the expe­ri­ence, if I am hon­est, lay­ing on eight angry red stripes with firm­ness and delib­er­a­tion. Hoop­er, I am pleased to say, did­nít enjoy the expe­ri­ence one lit­tle bit.

Fri­day 8 March 1952

The end of my first week as head­mistress and the first time I have been called on to use the strap ñ an evil-look­ing black one, bequeathed to me by my pre­de­ces­sor, Mr Grange. Three ner­vous-look­ing boys from the low­er fifth knocked on my door and told me they had been sent to see me by the geog­ra­phy mas­ter, Mr Willis, for run­ning in the corridor.
Nev­er hav­ing strapped a pupil before, I was almost as appre­hen­sive as they were. But I decid­ed that, if my author­i­ty was to be respect­ed, it was no time for half mea­sures. I made each of the boys touch their toes in turn, while I gave them ten hard strokes of the strap over their tight grey shorts. One of the boys had tears in his eyes by the time I had fin­ished, and the oth­er two were red-faced and rubbed their bot­toms furi­ous­ly as they left the room. ëGood,í I thought to myself. ëThey wonít be com­ing back here in a hurry.í

Miss Black­stock­ís Diaries:

Liv­ing in a build­ing that was a boysí school for more than a hun­dred years, from the mid­dle of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry to the 1970s, I have often thought that, if these walls could talk, they would have some extra­or­di­nary sto­ries to tell ñ most of them end­ing with thwack­ing sounds, hot tears and a very sore bottom.
Imag­ine my sur­prise, and delight, when I came across a moth-eat­en old diary in a cup­board in my flat. The entries main­ly date from the 1950s and 1960s and, judg­ing by the con­tent, were writ­ten by the woman who was head­mistress at the time ñ Miss Mar­jorie Black­stock M.A. (Oxon), accord­ing to my researches.
She must have been a remark­able lady, not just to have been made head of an all-boys sec­ondary school, but to be entrust­ed with dis­ci­pli­nary respon­si­bil­i­ties that would nor­mal­ly have fall­en to a male teacher.
Most of her diary entries are about the day-to-day busi­ness of the school and will have lit­tle inter­est for users of this site. But there are some I would like to share, if only because they cap­ture the atti­tudes of the time ñ and what some would call the kinks of the time ñ so faith­ful­ly. The diary makes abun­dant­ly clear that the redoubtable Miss Black­stock not only used cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment, which was pret­ty much uni­ver­sal prac­tice at the time, but deployed the strap, cane and oth­er imple­ments of chas­tise­ment with the utmost relish.
As and when I have time off from my own dis­ci­pli­nary duties, I will be tran­scrib­ing some of the more eye-open­ing diary entries on this page.

To be continued.….