{"id":4932,"date":"2014-05-19T22:17:55","date_gmt":"2014-05-20T03:17:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=4932"},"modified":"2014-05-19T22:17:55","modified_gmt":"2014-05-20T03:17:55","slug":"morbid-fact-du-jour-for-may-19-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=4932","title":{"rendered":"Morbid Fact Du Jour for May 19, 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Flagellant Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/strong><\/p>\n

During the heyday of the British Empire, Great Britain led the world in many important categories, including the frequency with which its schoolmasters pounded upon the bloodied white bottoms of its privileged youth. \u00a0“Beating has always been common in British schools,” pronounces Ian Gibson is his definitive\u00a0The English Vice: Beating, Sex and Shame in Victorian England and After<\/a>\"\". \u00a0Gibson points out that the driving force behind corporal punishment in schools from spanking to flogging to caning was the enthusiasm of the Anglican schoolmasters who ran Britain’s most prestigious schools, such as Eton and Harrow. \u00a0In fact, there’s a grand scripture-quoting tradition of birching delinquent scholars to revive their love of learning. \u00a0“Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction shall drive it from him.” \u00a0(Proverbs 22:15)<\/p>\n

Virginia Woolf in her biography of artist\/critic Roger Fry (1886-1934) quotes Fry describing the flogging in detail:<\/p>\n

The ritual was very precise and solemn – every Monday morning the whole school assembled in Hall and every boy’s report was read aloud.<\/p>\n

After reading a bad report from a form master, [the headmaster] Mr. Sneyd-Kynnersley would stop and after a moment’s awful silence say, ‘Harrison minor you will come up to my study afterwards.’ \u00a0And so afterwards the culprits were led up by the two top boys. \u00a0In the middle of the room was a large box draped in black cloth and in austere tones the culprit was told to take down his trousers and kneel before the block over which I and another boy held him down. \u00a0The swishing was given with the master’s full strength and it took only two or three strokes for drops of blood to form everywhere and it continued for 15 or 20 strokes when the wretched boy’s bottom was a mass of blood. \u00a0Generally of course the boys endured it with fortitude but sometimes there were scenes of screaming, howling and struggling which made me almost sick with disgust. \u00a0Nor did the horrors even stop there. \u00a0There was a wild red-haired Irish boy, himself rather a cruel brute, who whether deliberately or as a result of pain or whether he had diarrhoea, let fly. \u00a0The irate clergyman instead of stopping at once went on with increased fury until the whole ceiling and walls of his study were splattered with filth. \u00a0I suppose he was afterwards somewhat ashamed of this for he did not call in the servants to clean up but spent hours doing it himself with the assistance of a boy who was his special favourite.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This punishment inflicted upon impressionable bottoms led to a booming sadomasochistic subculture in Victorian England, complete with flagellant brothels.<\/p>\n

Culled from:\u00a0An Underground Education<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Flagellant Yet Truly Morbid Fact! During the heyday of the British Empire, Great Britain led the world in many important categories, including the frequency with which its schoolmasters pounded upon the bloodied white bottoms of its privileged youth. \u00a0“Beating has always been common in British schools,” pronounces Ian Gibson is his definitive\u00a0The English Vice: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4932"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4933,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4932\/revisions\/4933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}