Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

This is the second time in this website that I’ll be talking about my experience with sadists and psychopaths. The first was about my life as a student in Culcheth. As luck would have it, I crossed paths with the same kind of people in Isis School. Of course, I talk about sadists and psychopaths,³²⁸ but perhaps I should put this in some kind of context. I was never subjected to the worst of sadists nor the worst of teachers, just those with penchant for corporal punishments.

Any search on the Internet for sadistic teachers will provide thousands of examples much worse than what I experienced. So if you have a predilection for sadism, and if you especially love torturing children through corporal punishment, then become a teacher! I also talked about sadists and psychopaths across history in a separate post which focuses in the system as a whole.

The Sadists in My Life

Within this context of this post, I almost feel embarrassed talking about any ‘difficulties’ I experienced in my childhood. But then everyone has their own ‘little’ problems. However, the question is: “Who is interested in ‘My recollections’ – if anybody?”

I am writing it for my own satisfaction – and part of the story is a promise I made to my mother. Also, it is a historical document to some extent, in that I have gathered information, sources and photos here that are not available elsewhere. 

Torture Instruments

Gym Slippers

Marquis de Sade would perhaps have been disappointed if he had been working as a teacher and giving out corporal punishments at the Isis School.

The Isis School, like many other Public, private, and state schools, preferred to use the gym slipper as their instrument of torture. The ‘gym slipper’ is perhaps a confusing term for the modern reader, as it has gone out of use. Other words used were: plimsoll, tennis shoe, among others. The ‘training shoe’ is a relatively new invention, but perhaps resembles the ‘tennis shoe’ of the old days.

Question is, why use a tennis shoe or gym slipper? Well the simple answer is that they are everywhere. Gym slippers don’t have to be bought or stored. They do not require a specific room where the torture can be executed, such as the headmaster’s study.

Thus, the gym slipper was used because it was ‘free’. It could be used ‘spontaneously’ anywhere or ‘frantically’. Such is the case in one of the stories I told in “Punishable Crimes at Isis School”. It is one I’d say is almost comparable to a violent communal ‘rape’. 

Tawses

The production of the tawses in Scotland constituted a large industrial production. Perhaps it even competed with the production of James Watt’s invention, the steam engine. This is obviously an exaggeration – but an exaggeration aimed at making a point.    

Prefects in Media

At least, the prefects didn’t actually thrash the younger boys. This is contrary to what was illustrated as an English Public school tradition in Lindsay Anderson’s film, If (1968). In this film, the pupil Mick Travis is brilliantly portrayed by Malcolm MacDowell. When he is beaten by the prefects, he has to stoically and rebelliously take it and not show emotion. In other words, he skilfully portrays the nature of the corporal punishment ritual. There, the inflictor and receiver of pain both have roles to play. 

The inflictor of pain is following the rule of law and carrying out justice. The receiver of pain is taking his punishment ‘like a man’. In some cases, as with Mick Travis, it is an act of rebellion. He knows the punishment is unjust, so he takes on the role of the rebellious ‘Jesus-like’ martyr who. He mustt seek ‘real justice’ further along the road.

The idea is that once you take your punishment ‘like a man’ and you have ‘paid’ for your crime, then you are a ‘free’ man, and can start anew. I say ‘take your punishment like a man’ because gender discrimination was also extended to corporal punishment; girls were not whacked on their bottoms like the boys. However, this was not the case for all schools in Britain; my mother used to work in a primary school in Scotland, where the headmaster delighted in whipping the naked bottoms of small girls with a tawse.³⁴⁰

Gender Equality in Torture

When I was a boy in the 1950s and 1960s in England, girls were never subjected to corporal punishment. But it seems the Scots believe in gender equality and would thrash young girls as well. This is corroborated by my mother who taught at a Scottish primary school around 1970-1971.³⁴¹

On the left is a photo taken from my mother’s family scrapbook. “The very pompous Major Green who was headmaster used the leather tawse continuously. Sometimes, he used it on very small girls.”

Interestingly, when I searched Google for images of children being thrashed by adults I came across an unfamiliar character ‘Krampus’.³⁴³ The images seemed well-suited to actually show the ‘real’ nature of Major Green, which can be seen in the photo below.

Of course, you don’t have to be a social psychologist to realise that there is a connection between sexual abuse, paedophilia, and corporal punishment.³⁴² For instance, the focus on the buttocks when administering corporal punishment makes this obvious. However, I can’t delve into this further here, as this is obviously a complex study.

Frank Hoyle, the Headmaster

I’d like to introduce our headmaster as early as now before I enumerate to all of you the crimes I was punished for in a separate post. Mr. Frank Hoyle had a monk’s bald head but with the front fringe missing. You might think this was something we would make fun of, but we didn’t, as it was just ‘our headmaster’.

On the days that I entered his study for one reason or another, I noticed he would have a bright red 25-pack of ‘du Maurier’ cigarettes placed on his large oaken headmaster’s desk. This was something that attracted your attention because packs of cigarettes came in tens and twenties, and fives if you were hard-up. Only a very few people smoked du Maurier as they were quite expensive.

So, this seemed to give Frank ‘style’, as they were a kind of ‘upper class cigarette’ at the time. Working class people smoked ‘roll-your-owns’ using Rizla papers and tobacco such as Golden Virginia. This meant they could make a small saving. Smaller, cheaper, and stronger cigarettes, such as Woodbines, were also smoked by the working class. In other words, people’s social class could be identified by what type of cigarettes they smoked, and the type of cars they owned.

Women’s liberation was also defined during this period in relation to cigarettes. Thus, prostitutes³³⁸ and liberated women (like the professional woman Mrs. Cockfoster) smoked cigarettes to exhibit their new found independence.   

Hypocrisies of Adults

Of course, the great irony here is that ‘smoking’ was considered a ‘heinous crime’. That is, pupils caught smoking would be given the severest punishment. Yet, teachers would be happily smoking and chatting in the teachers’ ‘common room’, while perhaps discussing the ‘crimes’ of various pupils.

This is what one may call ‘hypocrisy’. It was something that the ‘bright’ child soon learnt regarding the behaviour of adults. In later life, ‘bright’ citizens would observe such ‘hypocritical’ behaviour amongst their ‘parents’ – that is, the government and various capitalist autocrats.

However, there was often little they could do to challenge such hypocrisy. At turning points in history, ‘hypocrisies’ have been challenged, such as during the English, American, French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions. Unfortunately, although such revolutions may mark some kind of ‘human progress’, the final outcome is never wholly satisfactory; it often results in new ‘hypocrisies’. 

Sources

³²⁸ Just doing a brief search on Google, I came across the sadist ex-teacher Marcus Marcussen, 91, who was jailed for nine years for a string of attacks on boys. https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/sadist-ex-teacher-marcus-marcussen-91-8640608  Read 30 March 2022.

Of course, it isn’t exactly relevant here – but I think that some prison sentences are ‘unfair’. In other words, Marcus will be released from jail when he is 100 years old! I’m not arguing for the fact that brutal criminals should be shown leniency – but looking at this from a ‘mathematical-logical’ point of view.

If a 30-year old man is given a nine-year sentence – this represents roughly 25% of the rest of his life – whereas, in the case of Marcus, it represents 100% – so in reality it’s a ‘life sentence’.

³³⁸ Indeed smoking by women in North America and Europe had long been associated with loose morals and dubious sexual behaviour. https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/9/1/3 Read: 22 May 2022.**

³⁴⁰ This was around 1970/1971.   

³⁴¹ Crossroads Primary School, Dunnet, Thurso, Caithness.

³⁴² Three former pupils of the Antonio Provolo school who spoke on RAI, the state broadcaster, confirmed allegations made in a signed statement last year by 67 ex-pupils who described a regime of sexual abuse, paedophilia and corporal punishment from the 1950s to the 1980s. They said that 24 priests and lay brothers from the Company of Mary order were involved. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/verona-deaf-school-ex-pupils-tell-italian-tv-of-sex-abuse-by-priests-7jq52n3x975 Read: 14 June 2022.

³⁴³ The Krampus is a horned, anthropomorphic figure in Central and Eastern Alpine folklore who, during the Christmas season, scares children who have misbehaved. Assisting Saint Nicholas, the pair visit children on the night of 5 December, with Saint Nicholas rewarding the well-behaved children with modest gifts such as oranges, dried fruit, walnuts and chocolate, while the badly behaved ones only receive punishment from Krampus with birch rods. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krampus