DISCIPLINE IN SCHOOL & CLOISTER
Subscriber’s copy.
DISCIPLINE IN SCHOOL
AND CLOISTER
BY
Dr. JACOBUS X....
[Illustration]
PARIS
ISIDORE LISEUX
MCMII
Five hundred copies.
Printed in France
C. Unsinger, Paris
FOREWORD
The subject dealt with in the present work touches one of the dark
patches of our social life. Flogging as an aid to education, a mode of
discipline, or a means of repression is universal in time and space.
The subject has always had a strange fascination for curious minds. The
facts presented here are all drawn from authentic sources. They are
stated plainly, without any attempt at colouring them.
[Illustration]
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DISCIPLINE IN SCHOOL AND CLOISTER
Right up to the beginning of the present century the birch rod was
an ordinary part of a school’s equipment, and only a few years have
elapsed since it was looked on by the schoolmaster as the _ultima
ratio_. Indeed, we would not swear that, in certain out-of-the-way
places where, in spite of the railway, civilization has not yet
penetrated, the teacher is not still known by the insulting but
picturesque name of bum-brusher. Today, at any rate in our French
schools, this method of correction has been abandoned; and yet, is the
time so far gone when it would have been regarded as revolutionary not
to use the whip or rod?
But was corporal punishment really efficacious with vicious and
undisciplined children? Was there no risk of defeating one’s own
object—might not a slumbering vice be aroused in the attempt to train
an ill-formed character?
This consideration had not escaped the wisdom of a theologian, who was
also a medical man, Father Debreyne: ‘Flagellation may have a result
quite different from what one expected. It is therefore very important
to abolish this form of punishment from our homes and schools as being
indecent, disgraceful, and dangerous to morals.’
Should we have a more perverse imagination than our ancestors if we
credited them with malign thoughts; or must we believe that a wind
of sadism has blown over our poor humanity during long centuries?
Assuredly, the intentions of most of them were pure, but how many black
sheep there may have been in the flock!
In primitive times the whip was the attribute of brute force. The
father, having complete authority over his child, delegates this
authority to the teacher, who exercises it with more or less rigour
according to his temperament or temper.
The best policed people have not felt called upon to abandon this
instrument of government. If education was severe in Sparta, where
children were submitted early to the most difficult exercises, it was
hardly any milder at Athens, if we are to judge by this description
of Greek customs. ‘Hardly had a child escaped from the tyranny of his
nurse, when he fell into the hands of the teacher, the grammarian, and
the musician, and these took turns at flogging him to teach him their
art. As he grows up, there arrive the arithmetician, the geometer,
and the riding-master. Under these masters he gets no rest, he rises
early, and is often flogged. A little older, and it is the tactician
and gymnastic instructor who now flog and torture him.’ And there have
been philosophers to praise and poets to sing the happy results of this
brutal method.
However, one voice is raised against this system—the voice of Plutarch,
who considers that we should lead children to do their duty by kind
words and gentle remonstrances and not by blows, for flogging is more
suitable for slaves than the free. It hardens and deadens them, and
the pain and shame makes them hate work. Praise and blame are more
suitable for freeborn children than whips and rods.
Rome had borrowed this method of treating slaves from Greece. According
to Petronius, the following notice could be seen on the fronts of
certain houses: ‘Slaves who leave this house without permission will
receive one hundred lashes.’
The least impatience of the mistress, or the least fault of the
female-slave sufficed to get the latter hung up by the hair and lashed
till the blood came. The picture which Juvenal, SAT. vi, has left of
these scenes is simply revolting. This practice was so common that, in
his _Art of Love_, Ovid recommends women not to give way to anger in
the presence of the lover who is watching them at their toilet. Many of
them, indeed, had the rather unhappy habit of choosing this moment for
beating and biting their slaves, or sticking hairpins in their breasts.
And let us not forget that these pins were seven or eight inches long.
Flogging must have seemed very mild alongside such a martyrdom, and we
are no longer astonished that the satirical Horace thanks his teacher
Orbilius for having soundly flogged him when at school.
It was not always the pupils who lent their ... backs to the rod:
the master’s turn came one day. Livy reports that a schoolmaster was
condemned to be flogged for having committed treason. After he had been
stripped of all his clothing and his hands tied behind him, he was
handed over to the children, who flogged him heartily. The roles were
indeed changed.
From time to time sensitive spirits protested against these methods
of education, although the custom was quite generally received and
approved. There was some merit in protesting when one was quite alone
in the belief.
Quintilian wished to abolish flogging, and the only fault about his
reasons was that they were addressed to barbarians who were not yet
ready to understand. ‘I would like scholars not to be beaten: firstly,
such treatment is degrading and used for slaves; if the victims were
older they would be justified in claiming reparation. Secondly, because
if a child is so stubborn that reprimands do not cure him, there is
every possibility of his being made worse by blows, as are rebellious
slaves; besides, such punishment would be needless if the teacher
understood his work. But nowadays teachers are so careless in their
corrections that, instead of compelling the scholars to do what they
should, they are content to punish them when they have not done it.
Further, if we constrain a boy with stripes, how shall we treat a young
man who cannot be flogged, and whose honour should be appealed to
encourage him to study? Add to that, that accidents happen to those who
are beaten which decency forbids us to describe, and which are caused
by fear and pain. The shame felt by the victims injures them and cows
them to such an extent that they fly from the light and sink under
their shame. If wise and skilful teachers have not been chosen, it is
impossible to say to what extremes of cruelty they may not go, and to
what extent they will terrify their pupils.’ Bk. 1, iii.
Quintilian addressed the empty air. He spent his efforts in sheer
waste, trying to uproot a prejudice which was to last longer than he.
The Jesuits have been charged with the invention of pedagogical
flogging—they might well reply that they had many precursors. The
history of monastic flagellation is an argument they would have been
justified in urging in support. But they have a respondent of another
opinion. Has not Solomon said: ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child?’
In the _Coutumes de Cluny_, written by the monk Udabric in 1087, we
read: ‘At prayers, if the children sing badly or fall asleep, the prior
or master will strip them to their shirt and flog them with osiers or
specially prepared cords.’
We know nothing of the duration of the punishments, but the following
fact plainly shows that the delinquents were intimidated. On St.
Mark’s Day some scholars of St. Gall’s had incurred the punishment of
a flogging for truancy. The boy who was sent to the attic to fetch the
rods, wishing to save himself and his comrades from the punishment,
seized a burning brand and set fire to the abbey. This simple fact
plainly shows that the children of those days were little rascals, and
one is not surprised to find a priest complaining to St. Anselme du
Bec that he could do nothing with his pupils although he thrashed them
soundly.
It is true he might have had recourse to a more gradual system of
education, like that proposed by a bishop of Metz—at the first offence
the offender was to be warned: at the second, admonished: at the third,
publicly reprimanded: at the fourth, he was to be put on bread and
water: at the fifth, to be separated from the rest of the community
and locked up or beaten, _if his age permitted_: and lastly, if those
corrections were ineffective, God should be asked to cure him, and he
should be taken before the bishop.
Let us be just: if there were some incorrigible children, certain
masters treated them with a brutality which invited reprisals. On that,
we have undeniable testimony. Guilbert de Nogent, speaking of the
master who had trained him, pays homage to his virtue but confesses
that he overwhelmed him almost daily with cuffs and blows, to force
him to learn what he himself could not teach. ‘One day when I had been
thrashed I went and sat at my mother’s knees, cruelly hurt and most
certainly more than I deserved. My mother having asked me, as was her
custom, if I had been beaten again, I, not wishing to denounce my
master, said that I hadn’t. But, in spite of my resistance, she pulled
aside my shirt and saw my blackened arms and weal-marked shoulders.
As in ecclesiastical schools, so also in monasteries and convents was
flogging in vogue. A rule of St. Cesaire d’Arles, dating from the year
508, stipulates the punishment of flagellation for unruly nuns.
St. Benoit, the restorer of monastic discipline in France, who began
his reform in the eight century, prescribed excessive fasts and harsh
and bloody flagellations, even for children. If a brother, after having
been often checked, neglects to correct himself, he must be punished
with strokes. If anyone soils or damages the monastery fitments, he is
to be checked and punished according to rule, if he does not mend. If
a monk is found with anything claimed as his own property, it is to
be taken from him up to two times; if he does not correct himself, he
is to be severely punished. If anyone violates the rule of silence,
he shall be severely chastised, likewise he who receives books or
presents; who reports what he has seen or heard during a voyage; he who
takes upon himself to publicly reprimand persons older than himself
without an express order from an abbot; or even he who shall correct
children with too much warmth and severity. Disobedience of the abbot
was also to be punished in the same way.
St. Colomban enters into the most minute details for the administration
of discipline to ecclesiastics: so many strokes for the monk who has
not prostrated himself when going out of the monastery: so many for him
who, at the beginning of a meal, has not made the sign of the cross on
his spoon: so many for him who has not trimmed his nails before saying
mass: so many for him who has not gathered up his crumbs at table. The
superior allotted the punishment and generally administered it.
Another rule stipulates that the monks who shall have gone out of the
monastery without the permission of their superior, or who, having
been allowed out have not returned as soon as the errand was finished,
shall be excommunicated for thirty days or beaten with rods; the same
punishment for those who have eaten or drunk to excess. Young monks
who have been convicted of theft are never to be promoted to the
clericature.
The monks who, after having been excommunicated, should wish to
re-enter the community of their brothers (Rule of St. Macaire), are
to be flogged in the presence of the abbot and the whole community
in order that, it not having been possible to correct them by
remonstrances, they shall be corrected by rods.
The monks who shall disturb their brothers or impose on their
simplicity, shall be whipped before the door of the monastery if, after
having been warned three times, they do not correct themselves. (Rule
of St. Pacôme).
The monks who will not forgive those who have offended them and who
strike their brothers, must be treated in a similar manner; but
whatever the offence may be, the number of strokes shall not exceed the
thirty-nine allowed by law. (Rule of St. Aurelian).
And let the victims beware they do not complain, if they wish to escape
severer punishment!
The whip serves also to lead back to the path of duty those monks who
speak too loudly, who are angry, who make others laugh, who rail, who
calumniate—at least, if they do not correct themselves after having
been warned several times. The same treatment must be meted out to
those who are lewd, impudent, and haughty; to those who are liars,
thieves, and blackguards; to those who are wild and stubborn, and who
boldly sustain their faults. (Rule of Saint Fructueux).
Neither young brothers under fifteen nor nuns who have committed a
theft are excused a flogging; nor are the nuns who have struck their
sisters, or are guilty of certain crimes. And so we come to learn how
common were acts of indecency in these communities where only the
divine spirit should have entered.
Licentious conversations with a person of the same or the opposite sex,
as also the more intimate relations, are taken account of by monastic
regulations.
The crime of frequenting women was punished with repeated fustigations.
Those who persisted in casting lascivious glances on women might, after
having been flogged, be expelled from the community, for fear their
bad example might contaminate their brethren. One rule assimilates the
monk convicted with theft with an adulterer, for ‘it can only be lust
which has led him to commit a theft.’
We have an example of the severity with which crimes of this nature
were punished in the story of a nun who was accused and convicted of
incest, by the Council of Donzi, June 13th, 874.
This nun was named Duda; she had sinned with a priest named Humbert.
The latter denied the charge, but the two guilty persons were
overwhelmed by the evidence. It was in fact proved that they had two
accomplices, two nuns named Bertha and Erprède.
The punishment awarded by the council deserves to be set on record:
for three years Duda was to be flogged on the back with rods in the
presence of the abbess and the other nuns, in order to expiate by the
pains of the flesh, the faults which the pleasures of the flesh had
made her commit. For the next three years she was authorised to share
the prayers with the other sisters; however, she was not to be in the
choir with them, but behind the door or in such other place as the
abbess would indicate. The seventh year, she might go to the offering,
but after the others, and at the end of the year she might receive the
body and blood of Our Lord if she were really penitent. She was warned
never to forget the sin, and to move always with downcast eyes, and
to make the sign of the cross whenever she was tormented with impure
thoughts. As to the two accomplices, the council imposed a penitence
of three years and a half, during which time they were to be flogged
for not having divulged their sister’s secret to those who could have
prevented so grave a scandal.
We have sometimes been reproached for using in our various writings
terms which really belong to medicine: it is amusing to see ourselves
justified by a theologian, the Abbé Thiers, who is accusing a colleague
of having erred in that direction. ‘There is nothing to be said against
medical men, when speaking of parts of the human body, using the most
proper and natural terms to explain what modesty forbids us to name
on other occasions: the necessity of their profession compels them
so to do; but that a priest, a doctor of theology, writing a history
which might well be written without the admission of impure facts, yet
admits many which have no bearing on this subject, this, I feel, is
beyond excuse.’
The worthy Abbé Boileau, who is hinted at here, has however denied
having written an immoral work. Has he not proclaimed that the usage
of lower discipline (he could hardly have been more discreet in his
expression) is nearly always not only unprecedented, new, and useless,
but even bad, infamous, and very shameful?
It would be unjust not to admit that it was this custom he combatted
and tried to abolish. Although he was in a position to know of all the
excesses which are committed in monasteries, he has nevertheless not
drawn aside all the veil; there are others who have not had the same
scruples, and those who are in love with truth have reason therefore to
congratulate themselves.
Even had the written word failed to inform us, religious iconography
would have supplied the missing facts. Glance at a 15th century
manuscript preserved in the Bourgogne Library at Brussels: could words
say more? There we see a monk being flogged in the presence of his
brothers, and the field of operation laid bare to their view.
The same treatment was also meted out in convents: for moral offences,
for negligence or slackness in the performance of religious duties, the
superior punished the offender in the presence of all the other sisters
so that the words of the apostle might be fulfilled: ‘Let sinners be
confounded in the sight of all.’
In an assembly of ecclesiastics held at Aix-la-Chapelle in 817, it was
decided that monks should be flogged naked before all their brethren.
It would appear that the penitence was more meritorious when it was
applied _in anima vili_ (_in corpore vili_ would be more in keeping
with the facts).
The constitution of the Carmelites stipulated that the master of the
novices was to flog them gently, after having decently uncovered the
bottom of the back. In some communities, shirts had to be made open at
the back so that they could be opened and allow a fair field.
In several convents there were novices who were trained specially
for administering discipline. The Ursulines had a mistress specialty
charged to teach them how to hold the instrument, how to lengthen and
shorten their arm so that the blows got home effectively, and how to
maintain a decent posture.
One of the masters of the art of flagellation, Julien de la Croix,
wanted the lashes to be of unequal length so that they fell in
different places and widened the tormented area.
A daughter of Louis XI, Jeanne de France, invented a scourge which made
five wounds. It was a silver cross, armed with five spikes.
Flagellation was not only applied in monasteries; very soon a number of
bishops claimed the same right over their priests as abbots had over
monks.
Although monks, priests, and deacons were, by special canon, exempt
from abbatial fustigation, the monk Godescal submitted to it with grand
apparel in the presence of Charles the Bald. The bishop of Spire was
flogged by order Pope John XII.
This punishment was frequently used with heretics when they were no
longer immured for life, or burnt alive. Their rank was no safeguard
against this infamous chastisement.
Prince Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse, suspected of heresy, was
publicly flogged outside the church of St. Gilles, Valencia, by the
hand of the pope’s legate. Henry II of England was publicly flogged to
expiate the murder of the archbishop of Canterbury.
The son and successor of Philippe Auguste, Louis VIII, being found
guilty of having continued to claim the English crown when the pope had
taken it from him (after having freely given it him), was compelled to
expiate this rebellion by consenting to pay the pope a tenth of his
income for two years, and to present himself barefooted and with a rod
at the door of Notre Dame, Paris, there to be flogged by the canons.
Report says that he was flogged on the backs of his chaplains.
Henry IV also was whipped, in 1595, but this was on the backs of his
ambassadors, Cardinals du Perron and d’Ossat.
This vicarious flagellation was not exceptional. In the last century
but one there could always be found, and almost anywhere, some worthy
capuchin who was willing to make his buttocks responsible for the sins
of the whole parish, and who, proportionate to the payment received,
would flog himself—or at least give out that he had done so. From
thence comes the famous Spanish saying: _yo soy el culo del fray_:
which in the interpretation may be rendered: I feel as sore and rum as
the friar’s bum.
This symbolic application is met with again in the ceremony of
absolution for excommunicated persons. The pleader (if a man), had to
present himself before the church door with bared shoulders, and before
the bishop or priest who was presiding at the ceremony. Kneeling, and
bare headed, he had to humbly beg for the absolution of his sin; and
then the priest, having made him swear to obey the commandments of the
church, would sit down and, taking a whip or rod, would recite a long
psalm and, at each verse, he would strike the petitioner.
The ceremonial was somewhat more solemn for those who had been
excommunicated with anathema, or for those who had been excommunicated
for grave sins or serious crimes.
Illustrious personages, among others William, Duke of Aquitaine:
Raymond, Count of Toulouse: Foulques, Count of Anjou, etc., submitted
to this humiliating penitence. The last named had married the widow
of Alain de Bretagne and had had her son, the heir to the estate,
drowned in a bath. In reparation for this crime he went to Jerusalem,
accompanied by two servants, one of whom led him by a rope which was
fastened round his neck like a victim for the gallows, dragging him
thus to the Holy Sepulchre, while the other continually flogged him
with a bundle of rods.
A rarely consulted source of documentation is the collection of letters
of remission. Among other prerogatives, the French kings enjoyed the
right of pardon. They exercised this right by divers acts, known under
different names: letters of grace, of remission, of abolition, of
pardon, repeal of bans, and so on.
Among these letters of remission there are two which have particularly
held our attention: one dates from the end of the fourteenth, and
the other from the first half of the fifteenth centuries. The first
concerns a man named Durand Tontif, a schoolmaster at Brienon. It
was this teachers custom at the end of the class, to have his pupils
recite, each in his turn, a _De profundis_ and a _Paternoster_ for the
dead of the district. One day, one of the boys either wouldn’t or
couldn’t recite the psalm and the master, from the height of his chair,
struck the child several times on the head with his birch. In trying
to escape, the poor boy was struck on his ears and face, and was soon
drenched with blood. As he still persisted in not saying the lesson,
the master sprang down from his seat, flung the boy on the floor and
flogged him unmercifully. The wretched boy had been operated on a few
days before for stone in the bladder and was not yet recovered. He
struggled to his feet as best he could and dragged himself home to bed.
He died a few days later from the blows he had received. The brutal
teacher was arrested, but he obtained a letter of grace from the king
wherein it was stated that he was ignorant of the boy’s condition, and
that he had not flogged him from any feeling of hatred but simply with
the object of discipline. Nevertheless he had to give up teaching and
compensate the parents. That was in 1398.
The second story shows that in the fourteenth century masters had
little more consideration for servants than the worst of savages had
for their slaves, and this state of things lasted till the seventeenth
century.
A groom’s daughter, aged eight, entered the service of a gentleman,
governor of Langres. She was so ill-treated by her mistress that she
hated her and only awaited an opportunity to get even. After seven
different attempts, (she was now sixteen), she tried to blow the place
up, having particularly in view her mistress’s bedroom. Caught in the
act, she confessed.
The whip has this undeniable superiority—before its omnipotence both
gentle and simple have bowed. That we have already demonstrated. Since
Henry IV, there is a long list of kings and princes who have been
flogged. No-one thought that strange: it was the custom of the times.
It required free spirits such as Montaigne or Rabelais to protest. Most
people remembered that they had been through the mill themselves and
had come out little the worse: their children must go through the same.
There is plenty of evidence in existence, both written and illustrated.
When evoking her memories of childhood, Madame de Maintenon relates
that, when she was ten years old, she was brought up by her aunt Mme.
de Villette. Little girls were not then punished for slander or lying,
or even worse offences—no, the greatest crime in their governess’s eyes
was to mess one’s apron or get it splashed with ink. For one thing,
one was sure to be whipped, for the governess had to wash and iron the
apron. Lie as much as you like, no notice was taken of that—there was
nothing to wash and iron!
We must not lose sight of the fact that in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries a quite different view was held of idle and
intractable children than the present one. Our ideas would have seemed
ridiculous to our fathers: they wouldn’t have understood them. Not that
discipline was always as rigorous as it was, according to Rabelais, in
the Montagu College, where the pupils were treated worse than Moorish
slaves, condemned murderers, dogs even! Such excesses, however, were
not allowed in other schools, and cases are reported where teachers
were charged in the courts for having ill-treated their pupils; others
were dismissed for punching the boys. Still, although cruelty was
generally reproved, no one complained or was shocked at the use of
the birch; in case of need, parents would ask the teachers not to
spare their children, and these latter accepted the punishment with
the resignation born of the knowledge that they were being treated as
children always had been treated. They even went so far as to joke
about it.
It was exceptional for them to protest in a body against a too severe
punishment administered to a boy who had been unruly or had played
truant. They generally accepted the punishment—even if they didn’t
understand the motive.
Thus, in the little town of Die, only the pupils of the four highest
classes were expected to speak Latin; but all are expressly forbidden
to speak dialect; as for French, a boy would only be punished for
speaking it if he were caught in the act, and after having been
previously warned. And what is done at Die is done, more or less,
everywhere.
There are also forbidden games, for playing which one gets it ‘on the
back’ as the scholastic euphemism has it. Games which do not exercise
the body are forbidden; also those played for money or other gain,
such as games with cards or dice. Books, bags, belts, etc., must not be
lost or sold, and no trading carried on in the school. Those who play
about in the privies, or who stay longer than is necessary, are to be
flogged.
Flogging was used in all educational establishments, whether at Port
Royal or under the jesuits. There was, however, a Jansenist named Varet
who was not afraid to write that ‘the severity recommended by Holy
Writ is much better exercised and more in accordance with the spirit
of God, by the refusal of a kiss or caress, rather than by the use of
a rod.’ It wasn’t that he wished to spare them pain, for he adds: ‘If
they have some infirmity or sickness, although in secret you spare no
effort to cure them, try however to teach them to bear their pains with
resignation.’
It would appear that the rigour of the pedagogical rules of the jesuits
has been exaggerated. A number of stories, and some of them only
stories, have contributed to establish this reputation: this one, for
instance, from the _Memoirs of the Count de Bonneval_. ‘The Marquis de
C..., a cavalry captain, had been stationed for a year or two in the
outskirts of Strasburg. He often visited the town and had a mistress
there. He abandoned her in a rather shameful way, and she resolved to
be avenged and as cruelly as possible.
‘She conceived the plan of writing to the rector of the jesuits, in
the name of the Marquis of Louvois. The letter stated that a certain
cavalry officer would call on him, that the king desired that he
should be given twenty-five lashes by the corrector of his college in
the presence of three or four of most respectable monks. The letter
further stated that the victim should lean on the table and cross his
thumbs during the punishment, and that he should give ten louis to
the corrector and thank him for the correction given. It ended by an
order to the rector that he should give a detailed account of all that
happened.
‘While this ridiculous letter was being read by the jesuits and they
were rejoicing that they had the confidence of M. de Louvois, the
captain received one by the same hand ordering him to go on Friday
to the jesuit corrector, who would give him the king’s commands. He
impatiently awaited the day, and went to the college at the indicated
hour, 8 p.m. He was first shown into an inner room and there told the
orders which concerned him. These imbecile monks, who were unable to
understand that these orders, accompanied with so many ridiculous
circumstances, could not possibly have come from the court, pleaded
earnestly with the captain to submit. He was fool enough to believe
them, and indeed prepared himself for the flogging, which was soundly
administered. The treatment was accompanied with a reprimand which his
young lady had dictated. He gave ten louis to the corrector and thanked
him, and the jesuits promised to keep the affair secret.’
To understand better the educational methods of the jesuits, it is
preferable to consult their _Ratio studiorum_, published in 1599.
This _Ratio_ states that a punishment should only be given in a last
extremity. ‘Let not the master be in haste to punish: let him not push
his inquisition too far: let him pretend that he does not see all the
faults committed, if he can do so without compromising the interests of
the pupils.’
In another passage they are recommended to avoid corporal punishment
as much as possible, and in any case they are not to use the rod
themselves. A special corrector, attached to the establishment but not
a member of the order, was detailed for flogging. The corrector was a
servant, either the cook or the doorman; sometimes recourse was had to
a penniless workman of the district, who was given a few coppers for
fulfilling the office.
In the Toulouse province, at Rodez College for example, another plan
was used. The jesuits picked out a hefty scholar and educated him
gratis, on condition that he flogged his fellow-pupils when necessary.
The victim was fastened to the back of a chair, and the punishment took
place before the teacher and all the class. The number of strokes given
was usually from seventy to eighty, never less than forty; sometimes as
many as three hundred were given.
The victim was forbidden to cry out, and the flogger was ordered to
pause for a few seconds between each stroke so that the pain might be
greater.
During the reign of Louis XIV, public opinion pronounced in favour of
corporal punishment so vigorously that elected bodies thought it not
beneath their dignity to pick up the rods which had fallen from the
hands of too-indulgent teachers. And yet as a general thing, there
was little consideration shown for either age or condition, as the
following episode related by Saint Simon of the oldest son of the
Marquis de Boufflers will show.
This boy was fourteen years old, almost a young man, handsome,
well-built, clever, and very promising. He was a boarder with the
jesuits, along with the two sons of d’Argenson.
The fathers wished to show that they feared and favoured nobody, so
they flogged the boy, though as a matter of fact they had nothing
to fear from the Marquis. They were careful however not to touch
the other two, for they were liable to be called to account any day
by d’Argenson, lieutenant of police. Boufflers was so dismayed and
oppressed that he fell sick, and died in four days. There was a
universal outcry, but nothing happened.
In a society where the birch was looked on as an indispensable teaching
aid, indignation was unlikely to be long-lived, and so it was freely
used in town and country. We will mention one case, because it recalls
the name of a famous novelist. The grandfather of Restif de la Bretonne
gave his son, aged eighteen, three strokes with a whip which fetched
blood through his shirt, because he had spoken several times to a girl
without permission. This same son, now a father of fourteen children,
flogged them with more circumspection: in case of a serious punishment
he simply threatened them with the whip at first, and allowed a week to
pass between the threat and the flogging, so that it should impress the
child more.
This authority of the father over his children is still existent in
rural districts. The Goncourts relate in their _Journal_ that an old
friend of theirs, a doctor, had just married off his daughter. She
quarrelled with her husband. Her father caught her up under his arm,
turned up her skirts and unfastened her drawers, and soundly smacked
her. Then, turning to his dumbfounded son-in-law, he calmly said:
‘There, that’ll quieten her down a bit.’
In a list of the personnel of the Mazarin College, dating from
the eighteenth century, there appears this item: _Chevallier,
floor-polisher and corrector_. This humble official represented an
institution which had been preserved intact throughout the centuries.
‘How changed the times are!’ exclaimed Caraccioli, under Louis XVI.
‘Flogging is almost abandoned; conduct is governed more by honour than
punishment, though the indecent and barbarous method of flogging is not
yet entirely abolished.’
The rod was still a part of school equipment in the second half of
the eighteenth century. Besnard reports that the head of the college
where he studied always appeared in class armed with a flat strip of
whale-bone which had a silver ferrule at each end. He would use this on
the knuckles of inattentive pupils without any warning. He also kept a
rod and whip handy, and freely used them.
The cry of Erasmus’s student: _Væ nostris natibus_, was heard up to and
beyond the revolutionary epoch. One of the institutions which no-one
thought of attacking in the years preceding the cataclysm was this
one of fustigation. The Abbé Morellet states that he was flogged by
the jesuits every Saturday. Voltaire had a painful memory of blows
received. Marmontel, a student of philosophy, escaped a flogging only
by causing the whole college to revolt. La Reveillère-Lepeaux, a
day-boarder at a priest’s, attributed his deformity to the blows he was
always getting on his back. Lastly, G. de Pixérécourt the dramatist,
even goes so far as to say that his liability to gout was contracted in
early youth by his having to kneel on the threshold of the school to
receive the floggings he was always getting.
At Troyes College, a few years before the Revolution, the teacher of
rhetoric wanted to cane one of his pupils; the others were indignant
and cried out—a student of rhetoric, eighteen years old, to be punished
like a child! One voice was raised which thundered out above all the
rest. This young orator, whose first triumph this was, was no other
than Danton. The student whose part he had taken was Paré; the Minister
of Justice of 1792 made him Home Secretary in 1793. College friendships
are useful sometimes.
There are two countries, neighbours of ours, where the rod still has
a place of honour—we mean England and Germany. In America, flogging
has received the development we should expect in the land of Edison.
Some years ago the Chicago papers reported that the staff of the Denver
Industrial School for Girls had installed an electric flogging machine.
The apparatus consisted of a chair with an open seat on which the
victim, suitably unclothed, was placed. The chair was high enough to
allow four beaters, which were fixed under the seat, to revolve, more
or less rapidly, according to the wish of the operator, who had only
to press a button to set the machine in motion. The advantage of the
beaters was that the action was regular and imposed no fatigue on the
operator. Ingenious, but hardly likely to be used outside of America.
A correspondent relates in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, March, 1883,
that he saw a young man, six feet tall, flogged at an English college.
This man had bought a commission in a cavalry regiment and was to leave
in a few days to join up. Having copiously feted Bacchus to celebrate
the occasion, he was brought in dead-drunk, and for this breach of the
rules he was condemned to be flogged. Resigned to his fate, he was
given twelve strokes, and then quitted the college on the best of
terms with everyone.
The head of this college, Dr. Goodford, was convinced that the whip was
the best of teachers, and it was no kindness to youth to spare it. A
tale is related bearing on this point which, if not very credible, is
based on fact.
A pupil who had refused to be flogged had been sent down. Sometime
afterward, attacked by remorse, he went from Yorkshire to Eton to
undergo his punishment. Dr. Goodford had just gone to Switzerland, and
the young man asked where he could find him.
He bought the regulation birch, packed it in his trunk, and set out
to find his head-master. He missed him at Geneva, then at Lucerne,
but at last caught him up at St. Bernard’s. There Goodford, touched
by the recital of his odyssey, resolved to reward such praiseworthy
perseverance. And it was in the refectory of the monastery, in presence
of the monks who stood round gaping with wonder and admiration, that he
flogged him soundly. That done, and with lips pursed up, he gave him a
copy of Murray’s Guide as a present. Quite English, you know!
There is very little caning or flogging in the elementary schools
in England, whereas in the secondary schools corporal punishment is
common. It is the opposite in Germany. Children from six to fourteen
may be caned or whipped. Teachers are warned not to abuse this
punishment, which must be behind closed doors and in the presence
of another teacher and the head-master. If the pupil is a girl, the
regulation states that nothing should be done to offend modesty. Only
sick and delicate children are exempted. This mixture of sentimentalism
and brutality is very characteristic of prudish Germany.
[Illustration]
EXPERIENCES OF FLAGELLATION
_A Series of Remarkable Instances of Whipping Inflicted on Both Sexes._
[Illustration]
COMPILED BY
AN AMATEUR FLAGELLANT
EXPERIENCES OF FLAGELLATION
FLOGGING GIRLS
Discursive readers of weekly and monthly journals, and especially
of those organs which are addressed to the fair sex, are aware that
correspondence is among their leading features. Women’s papers are
usually half made up of questions and answers. One may say of their
patrons, as of the people in the days of Noah, that in these free
and frank columns they buy and sell, eat and drink, marry and are
given in marriage—for there barter-markets are established, whereby
the gentle merchants exchange old music for ostrich feathers and the
like; there cookery recipes by the score are asked for; while the love
affairs avowed and consulted upon are endless. We trust that we may
be permitted, for the edification of the general public, to draw upon
the treasures of a remarkable interchange of opinion appearing in this
way in our amiable contemporary _The Englishwoman’s Domestic Journal_.
It seems that the question had arisen whether or not it was desirable
or proper to flog children generally, and growing girls in particular.
We are not able to state the origin of the epistolary quarrel: our
attention has been arrested by the hot battle with which it closes, and
from it we shall glean the amazing views which certain English parents
seem to entertain respecting home discipline.
As far as we can gather, _A Perplexed Mamma_ began the controversy
by asking what she should do with her unruly girls; and, upon this,
_Pro-Rod, A Lover of Obedience_, and certain other enthusiasts for
domestic flogging, warmly recommended the birch. At the point of the
contest where we come in, this view is ardently sustained by a phalanx
of terrible mammas, sternly brandishing slippers, canes, or birch
twigs. _A Teacher of Troublesome Girls_ writes: ‘I should strongly
recommend _A Perplexed Mamma_ to try the effect of a smart whipping,
and I think if administered to the eldest it will very likely be
beneficial to the younger ones. I do not think the slipper of much use
as an instrument of punishment, unless for quite young children.’ _A
Schoolmistress_ takes the same view of the slipper as an instrument
of virtue, and advocates ‘uncovering the victim, and applying the
punishment to a portion of the frame morally most sensitive.’ These
connoisseurs in justice are backed by _Pater_, who appears to be both
father and mother to his hapless offspring. He says: ‘Two years ago I
lost my wife, having two daughters, aged twelve and fourteen years,
and found them completely defying control. I consulted with their
aunts on the mother’s side, and with several medical men, upon the
punishment of refractory girls and women in reformatories; all agreed
that whipping in the usual manner was the best mode to adopt, and that,
however severely the rod was applied, no personal injury would result,
nor would the health suffer. I therefore adopted this punishment, but
privately in my bedroom.’
To these awful aunts on the mother’s side and this reformatory
_Pater_, succeeds an unabashed _Lover of the Rod_, whose heart is
sad because she has observed of late years a tendency to go to a
perfect idolatry of children. This gentle creature applauds Solomon’s
precept—forgetting, apparently, that Rehoboam turned out a particularly
bad boy—and ‘heartily believes in the good old birch.’ She gives her
advice thus: ‘On the first occasion on which the girls show signs of
disobedience, order all three up to the mother’s bedroom, to wait
until she comes. I would keep them all three in suspense, as not
comprehending your intentions. Then I would provide myself either with
a good birchrod or cane (a cane is very severe), go upstairs, shut
the doors, at once tell the oldest one you are going to give her a
flogging. Doubtless she will feel much astonished and very indignant;
but if you are firm, and threaten to call in the servant to help
you, she will submit. There must be shame as well as pain in this;
but she has deserved them, in my opinion; and one such punishment,
in the presence of her two sisters, will do everything.’ But rod and
slipper are despised by _Another Lover of Obedience_. His method is:
‘When children commit an offence, I do not punish them at the time,
but order them to my bedroom some few hours after. The effect of my
discipline is such that they never fail to do so. When there they
are laid across the bed, their clothes removed, and from fifteen to
fifty smart strokes administered, the amount varying with the offence.
After this I can assure you they are perfectly docile for some time
to come. I have tried many systems, but find this to be the best. I
should advise all to follow this same plan; they will find it answer
remarkably well. Even at the age of eighteen, should my children
require it, I will administer corporal punishment.’ After such an
inventive enthusiast for obedience, who dexterously combines suspense
with agony, we must hold most reasonable the plea of another fond
parent, who thinks that there is nothing wrong in slapping baby ‘with
a satin slipper, to let it know there is a will superior to its own.’
This would seem to be the _elegantiæ_ of the Art, the very esthetics of
corporal punishment—were it not for the same mamma’s declaration that
she ‘detests the moral system.’ Should the baby grow up unimproved by
slipper, a resource is offered her, and those like her, by yet another
_Lover of Obedience_ who writes: ‘the editor has my address, and I hope
will be kind enough to give it any mother who may wish to send her
daughters to me for a few months; I will return them obedient and good.
I have never yet taken charge of young ladies, but would willingly do
so to prove my theory correct.’
With this ogress, panting for the screams and blood of victims whom she
offers to manufacture into slaves, we close our quotations on one side.
We owe it to the _Englishwoman’s Journal_ and Englishwomen generally,
that we should set off against these abominable letters a few of the
indignant protests which happily appear on the other side. Honour to
the _Lady of Title_ who hears with shame and a shock ‘the scenes that
seem to go on in some houses.’ Several _English Mothers_ express their
deep indignation and shame at the correspondence on the pro-rod side.
_Gentleness_ believes that such mothers and fathers ‘must have nigger
blood in them,’ and ‘have learned in suffering what they teach in
shame.’ _Martha_ ‘trusts that if a _Perplexed Mother_ attempts to
flog her eldest daughter the tables will be turned, and she may
suffer herself; then she will know whether corporal punishment is
effectual or not.’ _A Christian Parent_ says very rightly: ‘As for the
_English Mamma_ who has stated that she inflicts twenty strokes with
a birch upon her luckless offspring, she herself, by this admission,
most requires correction, and a sound scourging would be a fitting
punishment for such unwomanly brutality. Patience, gentleness, and
firmness are the qualities required in dealing with children and all
young people; but like produces like, and in each of the above cases
the violent and evil passions of the child are but inherited from
the father or mother. On the parents, therefore, the chief blame
should rest, and to discipline _themselves_ is my advice.’ _S. T. R._
concludes that some mothers are literally brute beasts, and does not
wonder that girls arriving at womanhood escape from such dens at any
cost of self-respect.
There are a few female professors of the art of domestic education
who advocate a little, just a little of the stick. _Trophime_ for
example would always leave the clothes on if the girl be sixteen; and
_Experience_ uses the rod only as a last resort. But the overwhelming
number of mothers, we are glad to say, hurl contempt and anathemas at
these cold-blooded _Lovers of Obedience_ who thus hate their own flesh;
and the preponderance of opinion is entirely with the moral system
which the lady who beats her baby with a slipper so naturally detests.