The Junior Cane

By the time a boy had reached the age of eleven or twelve, his housemaster would eventually decide that a longer and more thickly made cane was needed in order to deliver the same message home. For the more experienced prep schoolmaster, there was no set age for when a boy might start to require a more sturdily built cane. He would judge it according to the individual boy and what was most appropriate for his case. In some cases, a smallish 13-year old might find three or four strokes from a light prep school cane still very exacting whilst the same housemaster might judge a stocky eleven year old to be more than ready to be ‘taken through the paces’ with a few strokes from the much stouter junior cane, which would normally be used for boys in their early teens at senior school.

As one experienced housemaster once explained to me, “It is the boy who decides on when the time has come to apply a stouter rod. He will signal this fact to his housemaster without even knowing he is doing so. He will be less apprehensive as he enters my study, he will take up position with apparent indifference, he will perceive it as mechanical. When he experiences his first stroke from my larger cane, quiet nonchalance suddenly turns to a feeling of shock and panic and, by the second stroke, he soon realises that he is no longer in for an easy ride, by the third, the quiet calm by which he entered my study is quite gone and his remorse is very apparent!”