Caning - Cane Types and Terminology

Cane Types and Terminology

Canes can be manufactured for disciplinary purpose in different sizes and weights, determining the potential severity of the punishment. The main types are sometimes known by the age groups of the intended recipients, especially in the domestic context:

"Light" canes (about 8 mm in diameter and 60 cm long, according to some sources) are called junior canes, normally considered sufficient to punish young school children (except sometimes for the gravest offences), and hence also known as school cane. However, in America, where the paddle took the place of the cane for discipline, the name junior cane was rather given to a ceremonial walking stick students parade with.

These terms are commonly used with reference to canes and caning:

• The term nursery cane or junior cane is sometimes used for the lightest cane, as it would be used for children under school age
• The senior cane is a heavier type (about 10 mm thick, 75–80 cm long) than the junior cane and is frequently used for older children (or except for the lightest offences); maybe synonymous is the adult cane.
• The candy cane is a lighter type than the junior cane and is frequently used for much younger children. This practice has become controversial throughout much of southwest Asia, but is often overlooked due to the seemingly innocuous nature of the name.
• The reformatory cane was reserved for the worst, "(otherwise) incorrigible" juveniles. About 12 mm thick and 90–120 cm long, it was often reserved for older inmates and was used in severe cases; a similar term is Borstal cane (mistakenly named after the Borstal, a Commonwealth type of reformatory; in fact caning was never officially a permitted punishment in borstals).
• The Singapore cane, used in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei for the judicial and prison punishment of adult criminals, is half an inch in diameter and 4 ft (1.2 m) long, and can cause deep wounds and permanent scars if a large number of strokes is inflicted in the manner that is used there.

The different varieties of rattan used are sometimes preferred because of their intrinsic severity. Of these, the common kooboo is considered lighter (if the same size) than the denser Dragon Canes; other common types bear geographical names such as Malacca (a peninsular Malaysian state) and Palembang (a city on Sumatra, Indonesia). These esoteric distinctions may be of interest to connoisseurs, but they are not something the average schoolmaster would have been concerned with.

In some spheres the cane, which is typically used by a certain disciplinarian, might be called after him. Thus in the Royal Navy the bosun's cane was frequently used on the backsides of boys without ceremony (as opposed to publicly 'kissing the gunner's daughter', a formal bare-bottom flogging on deck ordered by the captain or a court martial, usually involving birch or cat o' nine tails) on the spot or in the gun room, for daily offences considered too insignificant to require written formalities or orders from an officer (who could and routinely also did order the cane; actually wielding it was considered unsuitable for a gentleman), but more severe than the bimmy. The cane in the hands of a corporal (especially of the Marines on board many fighting ships, often ordered to carry out formal punishment of crew members as well) was called a stonnacky. In an attempt to standardize the canes (but the effective wielding is impossible to capture in written rules) the Admiralty had specimens according to all prevailing prescriptions, called patterned cane (and birch), kept in every major dockyard.

Contrary to myth, bamboo is unsuitable, as it is too brittle and rigid, and easily breaks and cuts the flesh.

While the rattan never caught on in North America (except in one or two isolated cases such as Boston public schools), the rather equivalent hickory stick (made from the native hickory tree) was also once a frequent implement for school discipline, but like the freshly cut, flexible switch and other alternatives it gave way in the US almost exclusively (where corporal punishment persists at all) to paddling with a flat wooden implement.