General

When I was in primary school, children were ‘given the sandshoe’ if they were naughty. The nervous child would lie over the teachers knee & would be whacked with a black canvas gym shoe. When I progressed to middle school, the chosen weapon was the black board duster! A certain ferocious teacher appeared to take great pleasure in throwing it at the head of any pupil who was talking in class. That thing would really hurt as it had a wooden edge, and you would often see children in the playground with a mark on their forehead and you instantly knew what lesson they had just come out of! 

Within our collection we hold numerous school punishment books as well as punishment books for the Netherton Training School [North Eastern Reformatory] and the Wellesley Training Ship (https://northumberlandarchives.com/test/2016/06/30/the-wellesley-training-ship/ 

The cane or tawse (leather strap with one end split into a number of tails) were two of the most popular implements used to punish children and young adults. After looking through some of the books it became evident that punishments were often unfair and inconsistent. One child received eight strokes of the cane on their posterior for stealing while another was given the same treatment for simply being absent from church. Inconsistencies like this were common throughout many of the books I viewed. 

The tables below highlight some of the kinds of mischief juveniles ‘got up to’ and the type of punishment that was dispensed.  All the punishment books in our collection have a 100-year closure period to protect the identity of the individuals. No names of children or young adults will be given. 

Netherton Training School [North Eastern Reformatory] 

YEAR	OFFENCE	METHOD OF PUNISHMENT	NUMBER OF STROKES	PART OF THE BODY
1907	Picking a lock with a knife	Tawse	Six	Posterior
1907	Destroying clothing	Cane	Eight	Hand
1908	Personal indecency in bed	Tawse	Eight	Posterior
1908	Suspicious conduct in bed	Cane	Eight	Hand
1908	Dropping a weaker boy in a pig trough	Tawse	Three	Posterior
1909	Scoffing at Jews	Cane	Six	Hand
1909	Eating food out of the pig bucket	Cane	Four	Hand
1914	Making up his wet bed knowing it to be wet after several warnings	Tawse	Nine	Posterior

Wellesley Training Ship 

YEAR	OFFENCE	METHOD OF PUNISHMENT	NUMBER OF STROKES	PART OF THE BODY
1955	Absconding	Strap	Six	Posterior
1955	Breaking Bounds whist on leave	Strap	Eight	Posterior
1955	Brawling	Strap	Four-Eight	Posterior
1955	Stealing	Strap	Eight	Posterior
1956	Bullying	Strap	Six	Posterior
1958	Out of bounds at night	Strap	Four	Posterior
1958	Smoking in dormitory	Strap	Four	Posterior

School Punishment Books 

SCHOOL	YEAR	OFFENCE	METHOD OF PUNISHMENT	NUMBER OF STROKES	PART OF THE BODY
Matfen County Primary	1901	Talking in class & copying	Strap	One	Hand
Matfen County Primary	1908	Pouring water over a boy’s head	Strap	Two	Hand
Amble St. Cuthbert’s Roman Catholic First School	1934	Careless & untidy work	Cane	Two	Hand
Amble St. Cuthbert’s Roman Catholic First School	1938	Ungentlemanly behaviour towards a female teacher	Cane	Four	Hand
Amble St. Cuthbert’s Roman Catholic First School	1969	Stealing from vending machine using plastic coins from the school	Cane	Three	Posterior
Brown Rigg Camp School	1979	Attempting to punch a member of staff	Strap	Two	Posterior
Brown Rigg Camp School	1979	Grafitti on desk	Strap	One	Hand
Brown Rigg Camp School	1984	Stealing a sharp knife from domestic science room & throwing the knife at a boy, penetrating the skin & drawing blood	Strap	Two	Hand

While working from home I have had the opportunity to get to know some parts of the collection better than I would have if we had been in the office constantly over the last few months.  However, being able to open the doors again and welcome visitors back to do their research is what Northumberland Archives is ultimately about.  It is great being able to re-connect with colleagues and visitors on a face-to-face basis – even if that is behind layers of PPE and with a 2 metre gap! 

At the Woodhorn site we re-opened in May, with staff returning a couple of weeks beforehand in their bubbles to start preparation.  The work of the Archives Assistant begins only after our visitor has booked a timeslot to visit and had a discussion with an archivist about the availability of the documentation that they are interested in.  In our bubbles, one team is responsible for retrieving items and the other for returning them, this allows for both secure storage and maintaining quarantine guidelines.  It is more time consuming than it sounds, ensuring the correct item is located involves checking and checking again as any errors cannot be put right on the day. Everything has to be labelled so it is clear who has requested what, and who handled items last, not just the individual document but also the box or shelf it was removed from.  After months of sitting at home, going up and down the stepladders and lifting boxes feels like a much-needed visit to the gym!  The frequent cleaning of workspaces after use by colleagues and visitors is a new and necessary part of our role too.  Safety is paramount. 

The return to the office also means that we too can look at items within the shelves.  We are encouraged to find things of interest and to share information about the county and its people with our social media followers.   The long list of things that have peaked our individual interests over the last few months will finally get reviewed.  So, keep your eyes open as hopefully some that will make its way online soon. 

During 2020-21 a small group of volunteers worked on the Men and Carts documents (Q/S/B/90/3 to Q/S/B/90/12) that can be found in the Quarter Sessions’ records. In 1798, fear of invasion by the French led to the drawing up of lists of names of men between the ages of 15 and 60 who were eligible to serve in the militia [army reserves]. The lists also recorded the number of waggons, carts and cart horses available “for the removal of Dead Stock, and conveying Soldiers and their Baggage …” Over 280 lists for towns and villages across Northumberland survive.

The volunteers indexed these documents, making lists of the names of men (and a small handful of women). The indexes are now being added to the main Northumberland Archives catalogue and staff have worked behind the scenes to attach scans of the documents. So, you can now search for a name in the catalogue and see a copy of the document that it appears in. They could be really useful for family and local historians.

This work was funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund as part of their Cultural Recovery Scheme. During the lockdown, we thought a lot about how we could keep contact with volunteers. We know that volunteering is important to a lot of people and offers a whole range well-being benefits. The work was done remotely; none of the volunteers came into the office, but we did have regular Zoom chats for a bit of social contact!

Having run this pilot project, we see the potential of developing online volunteering. Our volunteers told us that they enjoyed being able to work at their own pace, from their own homes. Remote volunteering also means that people who can’t make it to our Woodhorn or Berwick offices can still do something that engages the mind and helps the archives.

Some of our volunteers were inspired to dig a little deeper by the information that they found in the documents. The following was written by Irwin, one of our volunteers:

Gentlemen and Carts

While indexing Chirton township I came across the name A.M.Lawson de Cardonnol Esqr. with 1 cart and 1 horse. I was Intrigued with the ‘de’ in the name and the ‘Esqr’ [esquire] – obviously a Gentleman, not just a lowly worker.

A little research on the internet revealed the name Adam Mansfeldt de Cardonnel-Lawson. He was born Adam Cardonnel in 1746/7 to Mansfeldt Cardonnel (1696/7-1780) of Musselburgh and his wife Anne (daughter and heir of Thomas Hilton, County Durham). He was also a great-nephew of Adam de Cardonnel (secretary to the Duke of Marlborough). The family were Huguenots who had fled France after the St Bartholomew Massacre in 1572.

Although Adam had a medical education and practised for some time as a surgeon in Edinburgh, his circumstances allowed him to spend a lot of time in the study of antiquities and numismatics [coins]. He was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and the author of several books.

In 1791 he succeeded to the estates of his second cousin Hilton Lawson at Chirton and Cramlington. He reverted to the Huguenot name “de Cardonnel” and eventually added Lawson.

In 1796 (not 1798 as stated in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography) he served as High Sheriff of Northumberland – the person who would, when necessary, command the raising of the Posse Comitatus – as stated in the heading of the pages which we have been indexing!