The long walk to punishment

A site containing memoirs of life in Wigan in the 1920s and 30s provides some interesting recollections of school days. Here’s one such:

There was a dramatic distinction between a caning in the class…and the cardinal sin of being, ‘sent to the desk’, the outcome of which had only one conclusion – the painful laying of at least, ‘two of the best’. (why the best I could never understand).

The ‘desk’ was exactly what the name implied, raised about three feet above floor level and partially obscured from classroom view. Not one pupil in the school, however, would be unfamiliar with the picture of those fateful four steps to the sanctum of Owd Stan. Being called to mount same was a sure sign that in the preliminary trial, the miscreant had been found wanting and all hope abandoned.

From the experience of one single visit to ‘the desk’, I am able to quote quite categorically that the humiliation began with the initial decision by the teacher whose ire had been intentionally or otherwise incurred. Becoming the centre of immediate, multiple gaze, there followed the lonely walk down the double flight of stone steps to playground level. The door of Standard Three would then open to a mass turning of heads and knowing glances, a similar picture repeated on passing the pupils of two more classes, and then the loneliness of arrival and waiting at the bottom step for the headmaster’s command, “Stand there…”

There were few preliminaries, his hand instinctively moving towards his thick cane which hung menacingly and conspicuously on the side of his desk. Execution was short – and painful – not to mention the reminders (white stinging weals) of the occasion which one was likely to endure for the next hour or two…

The juvenile opinion then, was that the teacher was always right, any reference at home to a caning at school was suicidal – unless one were stupid enough to invite a repetition….