My Autobiography by Charles Chaplin (most read book in the world TXT) 📕

one for girls. On Saturday afternoon the bath-house was reserved for infants, who were bathed by the older girls. This, of course, was before I was seven, and a squeamish modesty attended these occasions; having to submit to the ignominy of a young girl of fourteen manipulating a facecloth all over my person was my first conscious embarrassment.

At the age of seven I was transferred from the infants’ to the older boys’ department, where ages ranged from seven to fourteen. Now I was eligible to participate in all the grown-up functions, the drills and exercises and the regular walks we took outside the school twice a week.

Although at Hanwell we were well looked after, it was a forlorn existence. Sadness was in the air; it was in those country lanes through which we walked, a hundred of us two abreast. How I disliked those walks, and the villages through which we passed, the locals staring at us! We were known as inmates of the ‘booby hatch’, a slang term for workhouse.

The boys’ playground was approximately an acre, paved with slab-stones. Surrounding it were one-storey brick buildings, used for offices, store-rooms, a doctor’s dispensary, a dentist’s office and a wardrobe for boys’ clothing. In the darkest corner of the yard was an empty room, and recently confined there was a boy of fourteen, a desperate character according to the other boys. He had attempted to escape from the school by climbing out of a second-storey window and up on to the roof, defying the officials by throwing missiles and horse-chestnuts at them as they climbed after him. This happened after we infants were asleep: we were given an awed account of it by the older boys the next morning.

For major offences of this nature, punishment took place every Friday in the large gymnasium, a gloomy hall about sixty feet by forty with a high roof, and, on the side, climbing ropes running up to girders. On Friday morning two to three hundred boys, ranging in age from seven to fourteen years, marched in and lined up in military fashion, forming three sides of a square. The far end was the fourth side, where, behind a long school desk the length of an Army mess-table, stood the miscreants waiting for trial and punishment. On the right and in front of the desk was an easel with wrist-straps dangling, and from the frame a birch hung ominously.

For minor offences, a boy was laid across the long desk, face downwards, feet strapped and held by a sergeant, then another sergeant pulled the boy’s shirt out of his trousers and over his head, then pulled his trousers tight.

Captain Hindrum, a retired Navy man weighing about two hundred pounds, with one hand behind him, the other holding a cane as thick as a man’s thumb and about four feet long, stood poised, measuring it across the boy’s buttocks. Then slowly and dramatically he would lift it high and with a swish bring it down across the boy’s bottom. The spectacle was terrifying, and invariably a boy would fall out of rank in a faint.

The minimum number of strokes was three and the maximum six. If a culprit received more than three, his cries were appalling. Sometimes he was ominously silent, or had fainted. The strokes were paralysing, so that the victim had to be carried to one side and laid on a gymnasium mattress, where he was left to writhe and wriggle for at least ten minutes before the pain subsided, leaving three pink welts as wide as a washerwoman’s finger across his bottom.

The birch was different. After three strokes, the boy was supported by two sergeants and taken to the surgery for treatment.

Boys would advise you not to deny a charge, even if innocent, because, if proved guilty, you would get the maximum. Usually, boys were not articulate enough to declare their innocence.

I was now seven and in the big boys’ section. I remember witnessing my first flogging, standing in silence, my heart thumping as the officials entered. Behind the desk was the desperado who had tried to escape from the school. We could hardly see more than his head and shoulders over the desk, he looked so small. He had a thin, angular face and large eyes.

The headmaster solemnly read the charges and demanded: ‘Guilty or not guilty?’

Our desperado would not answer, but stared defiantly in front of him; he was thereupon led to the easel, and being small, he was made to stand on a soap-box so that his wrists could be strapped. He received three strokes with the birch and was led away to the surgery for treatment.

On Thursdays, a bugle sounded in the playground and we would all stop playing, taking a frozen position like statues, while Captain Hindrum, through a megaphone, announced the names of those who were to report for punishment on Friday.

One Thursday, to my astonishment I heard my name called. I could not imagine what I had done. Yet for some unaccountable reason I was thrilled – perhaps because I was the centre of a drama. On the day of the trial, I stepped forward. Said the headmaster: ‘You are charged with setting fire to the dykes’ (the lavatory).

This was not true. Some boys had lit a few bits of paper on the stone floor and while they were burning I came in to use the lavatory, but I had played no part in that fire.

‘Are you guilty or not guilty?’ he asked.

Nervous and impelled by a force beyond my control, I blurted out: ‘Guilty.’ I felt neither resentment nor injustice but a sense of frightening adventure as they led me to the desk and administered three strokes across my bottom. The pain was so excruciating that it took away my breath; but I did not cry out, and, although paralysed with pain and carried to the mattress to recover, I felt valiantly triumphant.

As Sydney was working in the kitchen, he had not known about it until