Thurs­day 21 January

What a top­sy-tur­rvy day  It start­ed in the worst pos­si­ble fash­ion when I slipped on the ice in the school dri­ve, fell and sprained my wrist. Matron gave me a pain-killing injec­tion, but as it was my can­ing arm, I could tell I would be bad­ly hand­i­capped if I had to admin­is­ter cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment. The same thought must have struck Brack­en, who was sent to me mid-morn­ing for cheek­ing the geog­ra­phy mas­ter, Mr Con­tour. I could see him sim­per­ing as he stared at my can­ing arm, which was ban­daged and in a sling. What to do? Though I say it myself, I came up with an absolute brain­wave, ask­ing my way­ward sec­re­tary Celia if she would do the hon­ours. From the vigour with which she laid on the stripes – six absolute scream­ers – she is obvi­ous­ly a nat­ur­al. I must use her again next time my arm is sore.

‘This, sad­ly, was the last of Miss Black­stock­’s diary entries. I don’t know why she sud­den­ly stopped keep­ing a record of her days as head­mistress — or even whether she remained as head­mistress. My the­o­ry, after exhaus­tive research, is that she may have mar­ried and moved south of the riv­er. Records at the Maryle­bone Record Office for that year indi­cate that a Miss Black­stock got mar­ried to a Mr Rod­well from East Dul­wich in the spring of that year. That of course would have made Miss Black­stock Mrs Rod­well, as it was vir­tu­al­ly unknown for mar­ried women to use their maid­en names pro­fes­sion­al­ly. What did Mr Rod­well do? Did they have chil­dren? Were they very much in love? One can only guess. But I do find it sig­nif­i­cant that, by 1957, there was appar­ent­ly a Mrs E Rod­well  SCO on the staff of the Penge Penal Insti­tute, only a short bus jour­ney from East Dul­wich. SCO stood for Senior Cor­rec­tion Offi­cer, so it looks as if the head­mistress who had wield­ed the cane and strap with such vigour on errant school­boys may have found a new out­let for her skills. Cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment was still used in some bor­oughs of South Lon­don in the 1950s: not just in schools, but in oth­er, qua­si-judi­cial con­texts. I am doing my best to unearth doc­u­ments relat­ing to the Penge Penal Insti­tute and, if I am lucky enough to find some, shed­ding light on Mrs Rod­well’s role there, I will post them on this site in due course.’