THE CANE AND THE " CAT "
By D. B. KITTERMASTER
[Mr. Kittermaster was for fifteen years a housemaster at Harrow] ONE of the most time-honoured traditional beliefs of the Public School world used to be that in corporal punish- ment was found the cure and prevention of every kind of offence against discipline or morality or good behaviour. Was a boy lazy or immoral or disobedient or lawless, let him be beaten by his masters. Was a fag inefficient in his duties, or a small boy a nuisance in his house, let him be caned by his lords and masters, the little toy gods of the monitorial clique. Why not? The masters had received the same treatment when they were boys at school, and " What was good for me, my boy, is certainly good for you."
In what way it was good for them not one of them would have been able to explain. The monitorial deities had like- wise received the same treatment from their fellows when they were fags and small boys, and they were certainly not going to lose the chance of meting out the same measure wherewith they had been measured, when it came their way. This traditional belief, it must be thankfully acknowledged, is dying fast today; and flogging and caning, in the Public Schools, whether inflicted by masters or boys, though it is still common enough, is no longer regarded as a panacea.
But the effect of the traditional belief still lives, as can be evidenced by the fury of indignation aroused in the minds of many magistrates, judges, and public men who have lately been fulminating in the Press against the clause in the Criminal Justice Bill which proposes the abolition of cor- poral punishment in prisons. Some observations then on the effect of corporal punishment on its victims by one who has spent the whole of a long life, since the age of 23, in a Reformatory, a Public School, and a Borstal Institution may be of interest here.
Of the effect of the " cat " on adult persons I am not quali- fied to write, though it is hard to believe that there is any justification for the continuation of this savage barbaric method of torture deliberately inflicted by rational human beings on sentient fellow human beings. The only people qualified to express an opinion on this question are prison officials, not judges or magistrates or Members of Parliament. I suppose it is true to say that any psychologist engaged in prison work would condemn the use of the " cat." Violence has a dangerous tendency to breed violence, a consideration which completely outweighs any possible value it may have as a deterrent. It is certain that all humane and reasoning prison officials regard the thing as a disgusting and degrad- ing performance.
But of the effect of corporal punishment on adolescents I am qualified to speak. This inflicting of bodily pain is a short cut in an attempt to end troublesome behaviour : it is a form of quick revenge for outraged authority: it provides an outlet for what one fondly believes to be " righteous indignation ": it panders to one's sense of power, so strong an ingredient in human nature: and it satisfies a certain latent sadistic streak hidden in the composition of so many of us. These things I know, for in my unregenerate days I have used the cane. Moreover, I have seen a man, fresh from flogging a boy, with a sensual light in his eye almost licking his lips after the experience. Is it necessary to add that the man was deeply religious and that the offender was being punished for a sex offence ?
In Preparatory Schools caning is an unmitigated evil, and the harm which it does to the immature mind groping its darkly devious way to maturity is often incalculable. That it remains a common practice can only be explained by the fact that so many masters in Preparatory Schools are ill- qualified for the profession they have chosen, and, in their ignorance, they adopt a course which provides an outlet for their impatience and saves them trouble. Of the ultimate effects of the methods they employ they must, I suppose, be completely unaware. It is true that the effect of a caning on a small boy is often innocuous and transitory enough. But the damage done by repeated canings is often far-reaching in its scope. Many a boy has had it permanently beaten into him that authority is an enemy to be dodged, that the old have unquestioned rights over the lives of the young, that secrecy is a desirable thing, that punishment is " good for us," that revenge is natural and right. Many a boy has had beaten out of him for ever the ability to think independently, fearlessly, and on his own. Many a boy has had his sex instincts prematurely and twistedly aroused by being caned. I have known many boys whose first introduction to mastur- bation, at far too early an age, was effected by the excitatory result of a stick applied to his naked body. One of the most difficult boys that I ever had through my hands was a boy who had undergone a long course of corporal punish- ment before he arrived at his Public School. " Beat me," he used to say to me, " and I will behave myself. Nobody beats you here, so why should I do any work or do what you ask me to do?"
The general effect of the cane in Public Schools is to dry up the springs of rational thinking. But sometimes it is even more serious than that (if anything can be more serious). I knew a boy who was removed from school for stealing. Yet the man who was responsible for his stealing was his house- master. The boy was troublesome and very difficult all round. He was caned frequently, and once savagely, by his housemaster for idleness and unruliness. Always, after each one of these canings, in a completely unconscious attempt to " get his own back " from society, he had gone thieving. The whole story is too long to set down here. Of the system now prevailing in Public Schools, whereby senior boys are allowed to cane junior boys, much might be written. It is enough to say that it is wholly bad, and does nothing but gratify an unhealthy sense of power, and in- dulges a certain morbid sex-sensation, in the executioners, and makes the executed eager for the day when they will be able to do to others as they have been done by.
Probably the greatest misuse of the cane at present pre- valent in this country is in certain Approved Schools. The old bad days of thirty years ago, when I used to see boys• flogged almost to pieces in a Reformatory, are mostly gone. But the abuse of the cane still remains. There are lads in Borstal Institutions (where flogging is unknown) who have been made so case-hardened and anti-social by the repeated doses of corporal punishment they have received in Approved Schools that it is. almost too late to hope for any success in reshaping their hardened outlook on life; especially as they are from the start the most obstinate offenders against discipline, and are of necessity dealt with in Borstal by the somewhat primitive punitive measures which are said to suit the herd, and which do, it is true, keep them quiet for a time, but which fail entirely to disentangle their sadly messed up minds. For very young children, who are like puppies, and cannot think, a short sharp smacking may be salutary. It is perhaps the ohly method available; rough and ready, efficient in its purpose, though even so its purpose may be wrong. But the result, conscious sometimes, far more often unconscious, of corporal punishment on immature minds reacting through their tender posteriors, is so wide in its ramifications, so wholly beyond diagnosis in many instances, often so demon- strably evil, that it should be made illegal in every school and institution in the land. It is an animal, degrading per- formance for all concerned, and it is only the hardihood of our unimagination and of our ignorance that allows the continuation of the horrid thing.
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