This article is based on an interview with a London lawyer conducted in March 1954.
We believe in tradition and nowhere is this more so than in our ‘master and pupil’ relationship. This arrangement is where we take on a young chap and teach him the ropes and after five years, he is a fully qualified barrister.
Of course, we only take chaps from the Old School; the elite ‘public’ school, St. Tom’s. All the chaps in the Chambers (myself no exception) were at the school. We were all brought up with the same understanding of rules and correct manners.
Our latest acquisition, Rawlins, joined in the summer. He’s a decent chap just down from one of the lesser Oxford colleges. He took a Rugby Blue which might explain why he didn’t spend so much time on his studies. But a St. Tom’s man is a St. Tom’s man and we were delighted to welcome him to our bosom.
Perhaps unsurprisingly with all that rugby Rawlins had lost the habit of hard work and we (I in particular) found it necessary to give him something of a wake-up call. It soon set him on the straight and narrow. He might be 22 years old but even at that age one is never too old to learn. He understood the position perfectly when I instructed him to bend across the back of the old worn leather chair in the room we call the library.
Rawlings offered me his backside without question. He would have submitted in much the same way to his housemaster or headmaster at St. Tom’s. I have a selection of canes that I keep locked in a drawer of a desk in the library. There are typical specimens that one might find in any decent school, alongside a couple of denser more powerful rods that are more at home at a borstal institution.
Since this was to be Rawlins first time over the back of a chair in several years I did not feel it necessary to ‘take his backside off’ as we boys used to say back at St. Tom’s. A stiff swishing across the seat of his trousers – six of the best – with a stout but whippy rattan cane would suffice on this occasion.
Rawlins presented his backside without hesitation. He has a burly build. His buttocks with trousers stretched tight across them were beefy and offered a terrific target. I availed myself of the opportunity to lay on a caning that the young man would not forget in a hurry. The library is a small space but the ceiling is high so there is plenty of room to swing the cane. In my time I have beaten many backsides – a practice that dates to my days as Head Boy at St. Tom’s – so I have amply experience in such matters. I took my position a little to the left of Rawlins submitted bottom and gently tap-tap-tapped the cane across the very centre. His cheeks twitched in anticipation and clenched in some effort to protect him from the pain he was about to experience.
“No clenching,” I barked. It was always bad form to clench. A chap should take his caning stoically. Bend over the chair, spread the legs, keep the head low and the bottom high. Hold on to the seat cushion for dear life, grit the teeth, shut the eyes and wait for the first stroke to land. As the cane bites into the flesh and then bounces back off the buttocks the boy (young man in Rawlins’ present state) should endeavour to utter not a sound. He should remain perfectly still, no marching of feet or swaying of hips and most certainly no wailing.
In response to my order Rawlins relaxed and I continued to saw the cane across the mounds. When I was certain he was as relaxed as he ever was going to be I lifted the cane, let it hang in the air a while and then brought it back along an arc so that it whipped across the under cheeks. Dust motes rose from the seat of his trousers as the cane connected. It was a fine shot (I have a golfer’s eye in such matters) and hit the bullseye. Rawlins was out of practice and unfortunately was unable to remain quiet. He would I am sure deny my accusation that he did not ‘take it like a man’ but the truth remains that he wriggled and stamped after each cut landed. He did not howl but a series of “ahhgghhs” and “ouches” echoed around the library that afternoon.
The beating completed I allowed him to stand. He offered me his hand to shake (what a fine young gentleman). “Thank you sir,” he uttered as he hobbled from the room, leaving me to replace the cane in the drawer and to move the chair to its usual position against the far wall. It is an old worn leather chair, not dissimilar to one that resided (and possible still resides) in the headmaster’s study at St. Toms. It is a very comfortable chair for those who get to sit in it but decidedly less so if like Rawlins one is required to drape oneself across its back.
I have myself experienced this for I too was once a pupil at these chambers. My offences (I was dealt with on three separate occasions) were for slacking. Slacking is a curious concept that one rarely hears outside of a housemaster’s study. Boys were often beaten for ‘slacking,’ especially in the weeks running up to examination time. The thought was to get the boys to buck up their ideas somewhat and get down to some serious work. My slacking at Chambers mostly involved my lack of preparation. No case that goes before a court is unique, there has always been something like it before at a court somewhere in England. It was one of my jobs as a pupil to ensure that my master was fully appraised of all the so-called precedents that might relate to our case. If we could prove that similar cases had been found in favour of our client we would expect to win. Alas, I was often pitted against ‘juniors’ from other firms who were more energetic than I. Often they had found precedents that I had failed to find that worked for them and against us.
Perhaps my opponents were livelier people than I or perhaps they too had in the past found themselves across the armchair or the desk at their master’s office and had learned the hard way. I did learn. The beatings did me the world of good and I would not be where I am today as head of a successful chamber of barristers if my master hadn’t shown me the error of my ways.
Naturally, my beatings in chambers were far from the first I had received. St. Tom’s was a ‘caning school’ and that perhaps is all you need to know by way of explanation. It was a traditional school: traditional curriculum, traditional sports, traditional uniform, and, of course, traditional discipline.
Beatings with birch twigs had only recently been abandoned at St. Tom’s to be replaced by ‘the cane,’ in those days they were often ash plants cut by the school porter from nearby trees. These were often hefty rods which the housemaster and headmaster would administer across our bared bottoms. Although birchings had been discarded because many (who exactly?) believed them to be too harsh a punishment the canings that replaced them continued to be administered on the naked flesh.
Beatings are part of life for schoolboys and certainly we took our canings without fuss. This was even the case when we were senior boys. I received my final caning at school only weeks before my nineteenth birthday. This was early in the century when the recent invention of Kinema was just becoming popular. A picture house opened in the town close to the school and immediately it was placed ‘out of bounds’ to all boys at St. Tom’s. There was a fear that we might mix with ‘common people’ and for good reason many picture houses were known as ‘flea pits’ because they were frequented by members of the ‘Great Unwashed’ whose toiletry habits led much to be desired.
In defiance of this ban a few of the senior chaps – myself included – enjoyed a trip to the Kinema. What we hadn’t expected was that two junior masters were also in the audience. Being juniors and no doubt wishing to ingratiate themselves with their senior colleagues they had no hesitation in ‘splitting’ on us.
A summons to the headmaster’s study quickly followed. I was Head Boy and supposed to lead by example. I could have been expelled from school or at the very least been demoted and stripped of my rank. The headmaster fearing a scandal if it was known that the Head Boy had disobeyed the rules decided on a cover-up. No announcement of my involvement was made. Subsequently the four fellows who were with me were beaten viciously with six strokes on their bared buttocks. The marks were visible for week.
In my case, the headmaster decided that for one night only there should be a reappearance of the birch. The school porter was sent into the nearby woods to gather a dozen or so branches. There being no birch available, he collected hazel. An expert will tell us that hazel is harder than birch and therefore more painful when used as a punishment tool. I have no personal experience of this. I was never ‘birched’ but I was ‘hazelled.’
I was required to wait several hours while the hazel was gathered and then cut to lengths of about eighteen inches. Then a dozen or so stems were tied together at one end to make a handle. The spray end was then placed in a bucket of brine. This made the twigs more supple and therefore painful.
Even now thirty or more years after the event I can vividly recall how I was summoned to the headmaster’s study. He jawed me and jawed me on my failings and all the time I could see the dreadful hazel rods soaking in the bucket. At last, the headmaster tired of lecturing decided to get on with it. I was first made to take two straight-backed wooded chairs that were facing the headmaster’s desk and place them in the middle of the study and then put them back-to-back.
“Remove your trousers and any underwear,” the headmaster intoned. Usually we were only required to drop our clothing to our ankles. It took some time for me to comply with the order for I first had to remove the cumbersome boots we wore and with increasingly unsteady hands remove the braces that held my trousers aloft. With that task done and the trousers removed I had to tackle my underwear. Fortuitously I wore the then-modern ‘drawers’ that tied at the waist and it was no effort to slip them down my thighs, past my knees over the shins and off my feet. Had I been wearing the more regular ‘combinations’ which included underpants and a vest as a single item of clothing I would have had to take all my clothes off and stand completely naked.
As it was, I was naked from the waist down. We boys were used to baring ourselves for canings so this part of the proceedings held no unusual fear. The headmaster then barked that I should approach the two chairs and kneeling on one I should lean over the combined backs and take hold of the seat of the second chair. In this position I was in effect on all fours with my naked buttocks on prominent show.
The headmaster placed his birch rod against my bottom. A prickling erupted across the skin. I swallowed deeply. He patted the rod against my bottom and a knot in my stomach tightened every time the birch touched me. It was so unlike the feel of the cane, a single heavy rod that would tap against the flesh, as the headmaster found his aim.
The birch bounced jauntily on my backside encouraging a rash of goose bumps across my buttocks. My cheeks twitched with anticipation as they waited for the first stroke to be delivered. I waited a few further heart-thumping moments and then …. Swish! I remember the noise as the birch flew through the stale air of the study. It swiped against my backside. I felt nothing. Then quite suddenly a warm glow spread across my cheeks. I gasped. It was instinctive. I had no control. I had been caned many times but nothing before had felt anything like this. I then wriggled about in a most embarrassing manner.
I heard the headmaster grunt his disapproval. This wasn’t how a chap – the Head Boy of St. Tom’s no less – was expected to behave. Where was my stiff upper lip? Above my loose flabby chin. Waves of anxiety trembled as the headmaster again placed his hazel rod over my bottom. I shifted uncomfortably.
The headmaster delivered his second stroke. I just about muffled a strong urge to cry out. I groaned and then I squirmed some more. The pain was mounting and I was intolerable after the third lash. Globules of vomit rose in my throat. My cheeks were flaming. High and low, left and right my backside was on fire.
A long pause followed. I waited in silence, my heartrate was off the scale, my temples throbbed even more than my buttocks. My eyes were blinded by tears. The headmaster placed his birch against my naked bottom and tapped it on my boiling flesh. I gritted my teeth. I wriggled and writhed. My back was drenched with sweat. By the sixth and last stroke my bottom pulsed and throbbed with misery. I struggled to keep my teeth from chattering.
When instructed I lifted myself from the chairs, desperately trying and in the main failing to compose myself. All dignity was gone and I rubbed the flailed flesh vigorously. The headmaster didn’t hide his contempt for me.
I bore the headmaster no ill will. He had made the rules perfectly clear and just as clearly I had disobeyed them. I deserved punishment. I was also Head Boy and in a position of great responsibility and that made my behaviour more reprehensible. Justice was done that day.
It wasn’t my keen sense of justice alone that made me take up the law. My father and his father before him had taken silk (as we say in England) so it was somewhat like going into the family firm. I never asked but now I am in a nostalgic frame of mind I wonder if father and grandfather ever went over the back of the arm chair in our library.
Picture credit: Endart.
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Reflections on my cane
Still spanked in short trousers
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More stories from Charles Hamilton II are on the MMSA website
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Charles Hamilton the Second
Male on male spanking stories 