I Received Corporal Punishment At School

At English schools in the 1950 and 60s, the standard punishment for serious or repeated offences was the cane. At my school canings were always given in private, so none of us knew exactly how many strokes other boys got, but we always assumed it was six. Why did six become the standard dose, I wonder? Or perhaps it wasn't so standard, and "six of the best" is a sort of urban myth? Did anyone ever get more than six?

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ArishMell · 70-79, M

It is strange, that "magic" six. I've never got to the bottom of it, but it goes back a long way, since I recall references to it in one of those 1940s-50s boys' story books set in minor public schools of the most highly regarded mediocrity in syllabus and teaching.

"References"... actually lingering descriptions of trousers being "dusted" by the house-master, and screams spelled "Yarooo!" and suchlike; the six strokes being not maximum but standard. Though in one chapter the three boys in trouble had an "impot" I think it was called - "imposition", or lines. Apparently, copying 100 lines from some Classical Latin ode or other of victoriously bellicose doings.

Funny - or worrying. Ask me what I had for dinner yesterday and I'd have to think for a minute or so. Give me a recollection of past physical punishments and I remember school-boy books from half a century ago.

Some cite Jimmy Edwards in the radio and TV comedies, [i]Whacko!, [/i]but he certainly did not invent that six strokes even if the phrase "Six of the Best" were from him, or his writers. It pre-dates those shows.