SCHOOL CORPORAL PUNISHMENT

Video clips: United Kingdom: Harrow School

Lord Lichfield

With comments by C. Farrell

Two video clips about CP at Harrow School.

Clip 1 of 2 -- Lord Lichfield visits his old school

This one-minute clip is from an unidentified TV documentary, probably made in the 1990s. Lord Lichfield (the society photographer Patrick Lichfield, a cousin of HM The Queen) goes back to look at his old school.

Harrow School, near London, is generally reckoned to be second only to Eton in the social hierarchy of elite English private boys' boarding schools, confusingly known in Britain as "public schools". Britain's greatest leader, Winston Churchill, was educated (and caned) at Harrow around 1890.

Patrick Lichfield (1939-2005) was a student at Harrow in the mid-1950s.

He explains in the film that there were three different sorts of canings (known as "beatings" in the private language of English "public" schools).

HERE IS THE CLIP:

IMPORTANT: Copyright in this video material rests with the original copyright holders. This brief excerpt is reproduced under the "fair use" doctrine for private, non-profit, historical research and education purposes only. It must not be redistributed or republished in any commercial context.

Clip 2 of 2 -- The whipping bench

Three-minute extract from a TV documentary in which two new students are introduced to the fourth-form room, the original classroom at Harrow School in 1615 (not 1515 as stated by the guide). The bench across which students used to be birched is shown. The guide is mistaken in stating that this punishment was applied to the "small of the back". It was always administered over the bare buttocks.

HERE IS THE CLIP:

IMPORTANT: Copyright in this video material rests with the original copyright holders. This brief excerpt is reproduced under the "fair use" doctrine for private, non-profit, historical research and education purposes only. It must not be redistributed or republished in any commercial context.

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