I’ve rather fallen out of the habit of posting to the “Historical punishments” category on the blog, but have been jolted into action by a rather fascinating item featured as the “Document of the month” on the website of Stirling council in Scotland:
It’s quite hard to decipher, but comes from the Punishment Register of the Snowdon Industrial School for Girls, dated 1891. It tells tale of two pupils, Margaret Connolly and Mary Hassan, who each received six strokes of the cane on 9th July for “playing a trumpet and making a disturbance in the dormitory.”
On 20th August they were in trouble again, this time with their friend Mary McGinnes, for “pilfering apples in the garden”: another six strokes each duly resulted. It’s this second scenario that catches my imagination: the third girl presumably caned first, before the other two were punished especially hard and sent away with a warning ringing in their ears: “You’ll be birched in front of the Governors if there is any further misbehaviour from either of you…”
The building still exists, by the way:
An austere place. I wonder whether the girls currently studying there ever pause to contemplate the fate of their predecessors, and which room would have been used for the canings?
Professor Pendleton made another note as she studied the punishment ledger of the industrial school. Such documents were rare, and she felt privileged to be able to examine an original. She could have used the microfilm but doing her research inside of the scary old school itself and touching the original ledger was delightfully evocative.
She stopped cold as she read the next entry in the ledger:
“The 23rd of June 1891 Pendleton, Elizabeth caught trespassing in the school. Found guilty by a summary judgment of criminal trespass and attempting to pilfer the school’s Punishment Register. Admitted and sentenced immediately to 12 strokes of the cane.”
“I say there, girl, what are you doing here? Why are you dressed that way?”
Elizabeth was stunned to turn around and find not the polite secretary who had led her into the old office but a stern matron dressed in Victorian garb. Elizabeth looked around the room. The woman’s garb seemed old, but the study itself seemed newer and less worn. It was only Elizabeth, in her smart modern suit, that looked out of place.
The discrepancy was soon rectified as Elizabeth’s dress and lingerie were thrown into the incinerator as Elizabeth showered with the harsh disinfectant soap. Ten minutes later she watched the Headmaster write the entry she had read years later, and trembled in nervous anticipation as he removed the long handled cane from the cupboard.
I think Industrial Schools were like the Remand Homes or Reform Schools that my mammy was always threatening us about – as in – where we would end up if we followed the Feeney Girls etc etc
(Not that she didn’t convince us NOT to do so in her own old fashioned way!)