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.