Caned by the headmaster

The memoirs of Dr. Lewis, Headmaster of the highly-regarded Victoria Institution in Kuala Lumpur from 1955 – 1962, show him to have been a master tactician when it came to disciplinary matters:

“Soon after my arrival, I discovered that we had a few boys who belonged to gangs associated with Chinese secret societies… I decided to nip matters in the bud and caned six boys who we discovered were members of Gang 21.

…I discovered that our juvenile gangsters belonged almost entirely to Gang 21 and the 08 Gang, so by playing one off against the other I gained much useful information. The procedure I used was the one my own housemaster successfully used when I was at school, and that was to isolate the culprits in a separate room, persuade them to confess, and to suggest that one of them was informing on the other. But in my case I made sure that they all confessed in writing and so could not retract at a later date. I soon found that members of Gang 21 were eager to tell me which of our schoolboys were members of the 08 Gang and of their evil deeds, and vice versa!

So in due course I was able to discover the names of most of our boys who were in gangs… I was loath to expel such boys, but endeavoured to change their ways by the liberal administration of the old-fashioned remedy always kept in a Headmaster’s office.

Of course many claimed that they had been forced to join through fear, so I decided that the only solution was to create a greater fear, and rather rashly warned that in future anybody found to be a member of Gang 21 would be caned 21 times, 08 Gang 8 times and so on. It must have had some effect for the only one caught thereafter was a member of the 08 gang…

There were three canes in the office… a thick one, a medium one and a thin one. I allowed him to choose his cane so that there should be no animosity between us. Unfortunately he chose the thin one, that is, for him it was the worst choice.

I’ve been rummaging around in the school’s archives, and have unearthed other fascinating gems; I’ll post more before very long.