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A Victorian Dad Advises on Parenthood
When children eat their daily gruel,
_They must not be heard.
Seen, they may be. As for talk,
_Not a dickie bird.
Slurping’s out, the sniffles too
_And if your kids thus vent,
Whip them with a birch tree branch
_Severely, don’t relent.
And if they answer back, don’t wait,
_Just send them straight to bed.
Next morning, if you’re lucky, through
_A window they’ll have fled.
But if they will not take the hint,
_Don’t be a pampering fool;
Pack them off for nine plus months—
_A year to boarding school.
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Paul A. Freeman is the author of Rumours of Ophir, a crime novel which was taught in Zimbabwean high schools and has been translated into German. In addition to having two novels, a children’s book and an 18,000-word narrative poem (Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers!) commercially published, Paul is the author of hundreds of published short stories, poems and articles.
This certainly has the flavor of Victorian Britain. I can’t help but think of Dickens and Ebeneezer Scrooge.
That was the era, I was aiming for, Roy, though boarding school (military school in the US, I believe) is the usual way of getting children, problem or nor, off your hands these days.
The British public schools all had whipping on bare buttocks as a punishment for serious infractions. It was usually done with a birch or willow rod (preferably with unopened buds on it, which would really hurt) that had previously been soaked in brine so that your cut flesh would sting. And the whippings were not just done by the schoolmasters, but sometimes by “prefects,” who were older students whose task it was to discipline the younger grades.
No wonder that many English males grew up with a taste for that sort of thing. Think of Swinburne, who was very much into that kind of painful sex-play. On the Continent the practice was called “le vice anglais.”
In my secondary comprehensive school (general high school), caning had been banned, though some of the more sadistic teachers whooped our butts with a bedroom slipper as we bent over, holding the sides of our desks. I can only recall getting ‘the slipper’ once.
The worst punishment I remember was when the woodwork teacher got annoyed with the whole class and made us stand beside out benches with our arms outstretched – first one to put his arms down got slippered. The guy who was first was a quiet, sensitive student, who wouldn’t have said boo to a goose.
This is a unique and interesting subject for a poem. I’m certainly glad that wasn’t my era! Thanks for the read, Paul.
At primary school, at assembly, where they tried to instill religion into us, the deputy headmaster used to pace up and down the stage as we filed in, one of those heavy, wooden board erasers in his hand. If he spotted anyone talking, he’d fling the eraser at them, almost inevitably missing his intended target and hitting some innocent student. This didn’t help in instilling religion in us, but rather we associated religion with fear.
Yes, I’m glad that era is behind us.