were made known to the school. This letter being unanswered, after three weeks he resorted to the press.
These letters and statements subjected the system to a sharp discussion. "C. F." thinks the system not a bad one, if two things are clearly understood, namely, that an appeal will always be heard, and the prefect's punishing be limited to six cuts. The first rule would check abuse of power; the second would enable the prefects to settle many offences "out of court," thus preventing the brutality sometimes disgracing schools. "M. A. Oxon" was at Winchester five years during the "peaceful times," spoken of by Mr. Lechmere, and could testify that the "tortures of tunding" were then not infrequent. For "going out of bounds during playhours," he and others had once undergone a prefect's tunding, in which he received twenty-five to thirty cuts, "laid on with such a will" that his jacket was cut to ribbons, and was never worn again," and his "arms and back were black and blue with wheals. . . . We were not, however, milksops in those days, and we bore with Spartan fortitude, and without a murmur, a punishment which now makes a cowardly, rascally 'garroter' howl and cry to the attendant surgeon for mercy." He had, however, hoped, until enlightened by Mr. Maude, that these tortures were gone by—the relics of a less civilized age. He describes the system as it was in his day, and adds that, while he endured it and was none the worse, he would not like to have a child of his subjected to a similar discipline. "W." gives a chapter of his experience, from which it appears that he was subjected to the bullying of his school-fellows. He states that he can give many instances of "prefect tyranny." "An Older Wykehamist" answers "An Old Wykehamist," and asks, "What's the use of an appeal after a thrashing?" and adds that an appeal before would provoke the ire of the prefects and the jeers of companions. He states that it was only three years since a prefect tunded, at one time, thirty or more boys for some trivial offence, and that he himself had received more than one hundred and sixty tundings, of from four to sixteen cuts each, in seven and a half years' attendance at Winchester!
Mr. Maude writes a second letter, answering the charges of "exaggeration." He reasserts that there is no limit to the power exercised by the prefects, and shows that the right of appeal is of little value. He gives cases showing the barbarity of the system. About fifty boys ere "licked" one afternoon for being absent from an "irregular" roll-call, "the floor of the room looking like a fagot-yard." The headmaster disapproved of the irregular roll-call, but excused the prefects "on the ground of an excess of zeal in performance of duty!" In one case the prefect gave a boy several cuts on the face ("facers"), because he was supposed to be "padded."
Edmund D. Wyckham states that he frequently witnessed abominable cruelty in the "peaceful times" of Dr. Williams; once saw a boy tunded with a cricket-stump and lamed for life. The boys, on
