The Stick

I started my secondary school life at Handsworth New Road Secondary Modern School, after failing my Eleven Plus exam due to my poor maths and spelling ability, and perhaps my appalling monotonous Birmingham whine. The test was guaranteed to weed out any young boys who were not of the middle class, or aspiring to be. We had no preparation for it at school, and no advantages at home, such as books, or interesting discussions on world affairs after dinner. There was no literature at my home, and no newspapers either, except the Sports Argus at the weekend.  So the system worked very well at keeping working class children from places like Winson Green out of Grammar Schools and higher education.

So, in my short trousers, which all boys wore until the age of fourteen, I arrived with all the other boys at the melting pot for local youth; to be prepared for the factories of Birmingham, a form of slave labour. It was necessary that British society get the fodder ready for a life of discipline in the factories as well as teaching them a modicum of reading, writing and arithmetic.

From the first day at Handsworth New Road Secondary Modern School, discipline was ruthlessly enforced with the pain of the cane. For the smallest offence a slim willowy cane was slashed on the offending boy’s hand. I was of course no exception; I ‘got the stick’ on the first day at my new school, for picking up a compass in the Science Lab, after being plainly told not to touch anything.

At the age of twelve, everyone seemed tall to me, especially the Science Master, Mr ‘Slinker’ Priest, although I realised later on in my time at this school that he was a small man. I believe that he would have made a good stand-in for the witch in 'The Wizard of Oz’, if witches were men. ‘Slinker’ and the witch still give me nightmares, even in my galloping old age.

I was long gone when this picture was taken, but this is pretty much how this scene looked in the 1940s.
Handsworth New Road School is on the right. We lived in Preston Road, and the BP on the corner
of Preston Road was where my brother worked for awhile, and sabotaged Slinker Priest’s car.

When I picked up the compass, ‘Slinker’ pointed at me and called out, ‘You, boy, come here’. He made me hold my hands out in front of me, and wait for my very first caning on my very first day at Senior School, trembling.

'Hold your hands still!' he screamed. He pushed up my hands with the end of his long willowy cane and looked down his long willowy nose at me. He rose on the balls of his feet to get a better strike, and hovered there to let me suffer some more in anticipation. I could see my friend Barry sitting in the front row of the long lines of wooden desks. He squirmed on the hard seat, lowered his eyes uneasily and looked at the ink pot stuck into the well of his desk. He made sure not to touch it, nor the very interesting Bunsen burner in front of him. He was happy that he was not being caned, and was fully aware of the pain that 'the stick' inflicted. The whole class of boys watched with interest as the cane 'whooshed' down, hardly hurting at all until seconds later, when the blood that had been momentarily stopped tried to flow through my constricted veins, bringing with its efforts, acute pain.

Corporal punishment was common enough in those days, and what seems barbaric to the enlightened of today was dished out regularly to juveniles at school in the 1940s. Holding both hands under my armpits, for ‘Slinker’ didn't stop at one, I went back to my seat and tried not to cry. I remember exactly why I was subjected to this unlawful common assault, and I thought then and now that it was barbaric. It left me with a memory of pain, humiliation, and a bitter hatred of Mr ‘Slinker’ Priest, who I still see in my mind’s eye as the witch in the 'Wizard of Oz' even today; even though he was a small man.

Postscript: Handsworth New Road Secondary Modern School is now a home for single Indian mothers.