What Medieval Europe did with troublesome teenagers.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26289459

Sounds perfectly acceptable to me.... 

his in local folk clubs in the late 70s.

http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=84803

Gilgamesh of Uruk wrote:

his in local folk clubs in the late 70s.

http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=84803

Come, good people, gather round,
To hand out justice we are bound,
So join us when you hear the sound
Of our rough music in horn.
Bring your pots and bring your pans,
Whatever you can lay to hand,
For anyone may join our band,
Save those we wish to scorn.




A "Skimmington Ride" was described by Thomas Hardy in The Mayor of Casterbridge: great fun for the lynch mob with their "pots and pans", but it resulted in the death of Lucetta Farfrae and her unborn child. Skimmington Rides were, apparently, not unusual events:

http://www.darkdorset.co.uk/skimmington_riding

But re children being sent away from home to learn - the great English boarding schools carried on this tradition. Someone who survived a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp commented that the privation and misery he had suffered at his English public school had been an invaluable preparation for his wartime ordeal.

These two links might be of some interest;

http://www.faqs.org/childhood/Co-Fa/Discipline.html

http://www.faqs.org/childhood/Me-Pa/Native-American-Children.html

The children who were evacuated during the war were hostages to fortune I suppose.  Alright if they were billeted with a nice family but if they ended up with a nasty lot ....  I heard a radio phone-in (when I was living in London) during which a lady who had been an evacuee rang in and said her aunt and uncle had told her that if she was unhappy she was to draw a picture of a sad monkey in her letters home.  Things were okay to start with but something went amiss, I forget what - but the lady sent a note complete with sad monkey to her aunt who duly came and fetched her.

Quote :

The 14th Century Florentine merchant Paolo of Certaldo advised: "If you have a son who does nothing good… deliver him at once into the hands of a merchant who will send him to another country. Or send him yourself to one of your close friends... Nothing else can be done. While he remains with you, he will not mend his ways."

This still goes on:

The World's Strictest Parents: unruly UK teenagers are sent abroad to live with strict families in an experiment to find out the right way to bring up a child

It took great courage in the 1890s to prosecute a teacher for inflicting excessive corporal punishment on a pupil but this case illustrates that though the chances of winning such a case were statistically negligible there still existed judges who saw it for the abuse it often was. However it should be noted that the judge in this case, while finding for the pupil, objected mostly to the fact that caning on the hands and boxing of ears had occurred. On the other hand, he observed, "nature provided a special place for boys to be punished upon and it should be used".



The Times, London, 22 March 1894

AT WEST LONDON, yesterday, T.W. DAVENALL, an assistant master at the Hogarth-road Board school, Chiswick, appeared before Mr. Curtis Bennett to answer summonses for having assaulted Arthur Thomas Waller, aged 13, and Sidney George Briggs, aged 15, pupils at the school. Mr. Haynes appeared for the prosecution; Mr. W.J. Bull, representing the National Union of Teachers, defended.

The boy Waller said that on the afternoon of the 12th inst. he was in the school, and was in the class of which defendant was teacher -- viz., the seventh standard. He was playing with a puzzle under the desk, and was called out to the front of the class. He went out and held out one hand, on which defendant inflicted a blow with a cane. He was told to hold out the other hand, but would not do so. Defendant then caned him on the legs and hip. Witness kicked the defendant, who then thrashed him again, and got him on the ground. Witness got hold of the cane and tried to get it away from him. The cane was broken in the struggle, and when witness got up he threw an inkwell at defendant. The ink splashed all about, but he did not know whether the well had struck the defendant in the face.

Defendant did not hit him again that afternoon, but next morning, when he went to school late, defendant called him out of the class, and because he was not so quick as he desired he caught hold of him by the trousers and collar and threw him on the floor. He picked him up again and threw him in the corner. He hurt his hip, and still felt pain.

Defendant then sent for a cane and thrashed him on the back, the thigh, the hip, and round the legs. He received about twelve blows, and then went back to his class. Cross examined, he said that he knew the defendant was followed by a number of boys who shouted and hooted after him, but he was not one of the boys who called after him. He was standing looking on when a policeman told him to go home, and struck him across the back with a stick.

The lad Briggs said that on the morning of the 13th inst. he was in the class, when the defendant called him out and thrashed him because on the previous Friday he and a number of other lads had run home when they were kept in late. After thrashing him the defendant accused him of being one of the boys who hooted after him on the Monday night. This was not true, and when witness said so the defendant smacked him five times in the face.

Several lads were called who supported the statements by these two. Warrant-officer Cousins said that, by the magistrate's directions, he had examined the boys, and found a number of weals on their backs, and Waller's legs especially were very badly bruised. Great violence must have been used to produce such appearances.

Mr. Bull said he should call evidence to show that the punishment was not so severe as had been described. The defendant had authority to punish unruly boys. Waller was a ringleader of unruly lads, and the defendant deemed it necessary to inflict punishment in order that he should not lose control of the school.

William Richard Matthews, the head master of the school, said the defendant was a lenient teacher. On the afternoon of the 12th inst. he saw Waller grossly misbehaving himself; that was before the punishment was inflicted. At his suggestion a member of the School Board had called on the parents of the complainants and told them that if these proceedings were withdrawn he would recommend that the defendant should tender his resignation. The reason of [sic] that was that if a teacher was brought into a police-court he was a marked man, whether the case was dismissed or not.

The Rev. Lawford Dale, vice-chairman of the Chiswick School Board, gave the defendant a good character as a lenient teacher.

Arthur John Piper, one of the masters at the school, said he saw Waller punished, and he did not think it was severe.

Mr. Curtis Bennett deprecated caning on the hands and boxing the ears, and said they were exceedingly dangerous forms of punishment. Nature provided a special place for boys to be punished upon and it should be used.

There was no doubt that defendant had inflicted punishment which was altogether unjustifiable. He lost his temper and behaved in a way that showed he was unfit to have the control of boys. A fine of 50s. with 50s. costs was imposed in the first case, and a fine of 30s. with 50s. costs in the second, the alternative being a month's imprisonment in each case.

Dr Robert Gregg inventor of the Gregg shorthand system was born in Ireland in 1867 - before Home Rule - but emigrated to America later.  On about his second day at school he and a class-mate had their heads banged together for whispering in class.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Robert_Gregg   He was five years old.   He was hard of hearing thereafter but still managed to invent a very successful form of shorthand.  I'm a Pitman woman myself (not a Piltdown woman) and regret that shorthand is a declining skill.

I did Pitman too, and what I find astounding is that I can still remember a lot of it even though I haven't used it for almost 30 years. All those hours and hours of practicing drawing the symbols in the air and on paper obviously sunk in, although at the time I thought it was a form a child abuse.   Is it still being used today LIR? I thought it had been replaced by recordings and then pcs?

I used to go to "live" dictations (not system specific) to practise on Thursday  nights when I was working in London.  It is true that it is not used as much as it was 20-30 years ago.  A lady I know who was a court reporter initially using Pitman and then machine steno-type told me that most of the courts have gone over to voice recognition now and some of the TV stations use voiceover (rather than machine stenography) to give their captions.  I use it in a very small way to minute meetings sometimes. Palantype - a sort of machine stenography - is still used with work for the deaf when a verbatim record is imperative though sometimes when an abbreviated summary of key facts will suffice a very fast typist is used to take the notes. So you are right, ID, shorthand  is not used vastly these days.  I think it may be used in Child Protection Meetings sometimes.  Some people use it for their shopping lists and for diaries and perhaps on a voluntary basis for  meetings of societies.  I always liked shorthand which is why I am somewhat saddened that it is a declining skill.  I think journalism students use it (usually teeline) while training but I cannot say whether they continue to use it once they have passed their courses and are working journalists.  I started to learn Palantype in the early 2000s but the company doing the distance learning course stopped in 2004 and the machines are expensive bits of kit which I just couldn't afford (I was using a training machine while I did the course) to buy one.  I only got up to about 90 wpm on Palantype - I was and am faster in Pitman - I would probably be 10 wpm or even less in Palantype now.

Why would any modern reporter bother when inventing a "sexier" story is quicker and more successful in career terms? These days I want independent confirmation of the date in the papers, let alone anything more contentious.

The 17th century Puritan Cotton Mather had what we might think a surprisingly liberal attitude (for a Puritan) when it came to punishing children.

"The First chastisement, which I inflict for an ordinary Fault, is to lett the Child see and hear me in Astonishment, and hardly able to believe that the Child could do so base a Thing, but beleeving that they will never do it again. I would never come to give a child a Blow, except in Case of Obstinancy: or some gross Enormity. To be chased for a while out of my Presence, I would make to be looked upon, as the sorest Punishment in the Family."

Mather's obvious affection and respect for children's feelings was however to have an absolutely catatrophic consequence for others. It was Mather who, during the Salem Witch Trials and acting as a trusted spiritual advisor to the court, declared that "spectral evidence" from the Goodwin children should be treated as admissable in court. It was largely upon the testimony of the two small children, who claimed to have been "possessed" by devils, that the infamous 1692 convictions were secured. Thirty were to die by execution or later in prison, a hundred and fifty incarcerated and a further two hundred accused and remanded in prison before the hysteria generated by the children's testimony died down.