The term 'Six-of-the-best'

Moody, you raise an interesting point about how much time is required to conduct six-of-the-best. Is 5 minutes a reasonable amount of time? Depends on a number of factors - length of pre-punishment rant, preparation including any undressing required, wait before the first stroke and time between each stroke and finally the conclusion (remain bending over for a minute or make yourself decent or get out of here). Our Headmaster was quick, take off your blazer, loosen your tie, touch your toes and in less than a minute six strokes delivered across tightened trousers followed by a short speech "Don't get caught smoking again otherwise you will be back for more." Maybe not even two minutes from start to finish. Conversely the music master would spin it out for at least ten minutes with long gaps between each stroke. If there was more than one delinquent he would have two or three in the room for punishment in front of each other which could easily last for twenty minutes. Not sure about overtime payments! Interesting idea. A friend of mine from another school was involved with a mass caning where everyone in a whole class was punished, a story for another time.

Referring to my final point, a friend of mine told of a story where a particular master used to rock back on his chair behind his desk during the lesson. One day someone put two drawing pins on the bottom of the back two chair legs and when he rocked back the inevitable happened and the chair slipped and he ended up under the desk and banged his head on the wall behind. This master did not use the cane, but when the Headmaster heard what had happened, he arrived at a later class of the same form in the afternoon and gave every boy six-of-the-best. So back to Moody's point, in this instance this was thirty boys in less than 40 minutes, a little over a minute a caning. Evidently his secretary was present and ticked off her list each boy after their caning and had the next boy ready to bend over, touch their toes for a quick fire caning. I wonder if she enjoyed herself!

Maybe I have a juvenile sense of humour, but I found this very amusing. I guess I would have had a sore bum that day as well for laughing.

@ BashfulBob

Sounds like a double sore bum to me. 1st for being a boy and 2nd for laughing.

I wonder if girls thought they were discriminated for not getting enough attention?


@ PGreenham

Does master mean the teacher or a pupil since in regency times boys were called (young) master ...

In that case it meant teacher, but boys were also addressed as 'Master', a sort of diminutive of 'Mister', and that was still common when I was a boy in the 60's, particularly when addressing an envelope. It was most unfortunate for any boy whose surname happened to be 'Bates' !

There was a character in the 1970s Children's TV series Captain Pugwash called that.

BashfulBob

I share your sense of humour about that event - I strangely envied my friend and often wish I had been present accepting that I would have paid the obvious price of a quick fire six-of-the-best in front of everyone in that classroom

Moody

Yes Master means teacher. Various levels, Headmaster, Deputy Master, House Master or simply just Master