Look what Cath gave me for Christmas:
The caption at the foot of the print reveals that the staircase in question is the entrance to the Birching Tower at Rugby school.
They had a birching tower?
Now my imagination’s working overtime to conjure up an image of the room to which the stairs would lead. I’m picturing something old, large, with wood panelling adorning the walls – empty save for a small table and chair in the corner and the whipping block in the centre. How those girls who’ve misbehaved since the school went co-ed must have trembled as they nervously made their way up those stairs and cried as they came back down after their punishment…
That’s an amazing print, very evocative.
mmm…that just got my creative (and other) juices flowing.
LOL I was so pleased when I found it… and now of course I’m feeling very smug. Glad you like it, Abel
I enjoye how you completed the existance of the birtching tower’s function by describing the rest of the internal structure. Thank you for the image of the crying girl as a finish
I hope many a judicial judge, would use their court systems, in sentencing naughty females, to have their bare bottoms striped painfully by the cane, inside this tower.
I remember that in one of the “Tom Brown’s Schooldays” movies, Tom ascended into the birching tower to take his caning from Headmaster Arnold.
Hi Gloria, yes Stephen Fry played Arnold, you can view clips on youtube. My Friend John Burch was birched on the Isle of Man, not quite a tower, more a Police cell.