Corporal punishment was outlawed in the UK in 1987, with generations of schoolchildren having to face beatings from teachers in loco parentis.
One court case from 100 years ago this week puts the hardships children had to deal with into sharp focus.
The Swinton Industrial school opened in 1843 to cater for the local populace.
It was designed for poor and neglected children as a kind of residential boarding school, or home for ‘disorderly juveniles’. To its credit, or shame, Charles Dickens visited there in 1850 and said the building “could easily be mistaken for a duke’s country seat”.
It replaced the old Swinton Workhouse, which housed around 800 inmates age 5 to 15.
A subsidiary establishment known as the Swinton Home was later added at the west of the school site, which provided accommodation for children known then as “mentally defective” and for those suffering from the after effects of “sleepy sickness”, a brain inflammation which struck young people across the country in the early years of the 20th century.
The school would be demolished in the 1930s and replaced by Swinton Civic Centre, currently used as the head offices for Salford City Council.
In August 1915 Strangeways Police Court in Manchester heard that a 12-year-old boy, Edward Harrop, had been beaten so severely that he had to be rushed to hospital.
His crime? He and other young boys were on a day out to the seaside, near Kirkham in Lancashire.
The pupils had been instructed not to swim in the sea, but Edward defied the order and went bathing anyway.
When the school party returned to Swinton Industrial, he would be punished severely by his aggressor, the school Superintendent Joseph Kolter
Kolter was known to beat the boys on a daily basis.
The court heard that Edward was given his tea and put to bed, only to be woken in the night by Kolter, who proceeded to thrash him with a stick.
The 12-year-old was ordered to touch his toes, then lashed with six strokes of the cane. As the punishment began, he fell to the floor, crying, and was reportedly swiped several more times while on the floor, before being ordered back to sleep.
Frightened by the punishment Harrop escaped out of the school through a window and made his way to his mother’s house in Queens Park, Manchester.
The shocked woman found her son crying at the front door and was horrified by his injuries.
She took him to a nearby police station to be examined and from there to Crumpsall Hospital for treatment to his injuries.
An examination by Dr P.S. Green revealed that he had a large bruise on his right buttock, a two inch scar and a weal six inches in length.
On his left buttock were a large bruise, and a weal three inches in length.
On the right thigh was a bruise “the size of a man’s palm”, four abrasions of the skin, several cuts and the abrasions were “black and blue”.
The doctor ordered that a cage be placed over his bed so that the blankets “would not harm him any further” so extreme were his injuries.
The court heard testimony from Mr Kolter who said that Harrop was a very disruptive boy and admitted the he used a cane about a yard long and a quarter of an inch thick. But the Superintendent denied excessive violence, saying the boy had only had six strokes of the cane.
In his opinion the injuries were caused when Harrop escaped through the window and fell to the ground 10 feet below.
He then added that it was under the orders as demanded by the Poor Laws Order that the punishment was inflicted , and that six stokes of the cane was “an average punishment”. He denied hitting the boy whilst he was on the floor, only whilst he was bending over.
The Stipendary Magistrate, Mr K. M. Yates, said that he thought that the punishment that Harrop had received was “excessive” and doubted that the boy got his injuries from climbing over the school wall.
He went on to say that if Harrop had been a naughty boy then corporal punishment should have been carried out as he believed it acted as a deterrent, however punishment shouldn’t be “very excessive as it was in this case”.
He then imposed a fine of 40 shillings, a guineas advocates fee and seven shillings for the costs of witnesses called on the day on the Superintendent.
On reflection, this was an unusually brave action for the Stipendary to take, finding the Swinton school guilty of excessive punishment.
Hopefully the case helped save many other young and vulnerable boys from a similar fate.
