Word: birches
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Eton's Block & Birch...
...Colonel Bodley's letter re Eton's whipping block [TIME, Jan. 24], there are a few reminders of a visit to Eton . . . The whipping block . . . had the birch rod standing beside it looking like a broom for sweeping garden leaves, but with a very stout handle. My wife said: "That wouldn't hurt much." The reply was "Madam-I would like you to remember there's nothing between the boy and the birch...
When these academic offences are sufficiently serious, the headmaster intervenes and flogs the culprit. He does this with a birch rod [and] the procedure is attended by time-honoured ceremony and ritual...
...prevent the flogged one from rising to defend himself from the headmaster's assault. The school messenger now opens the door of the sixth form room, and the headmaster rustles in in his robes of office. A third prepositor goes to a cupboard, from which he takes the birch rod and ceremoniously hands it to the headmaster. The headmaster approaches the kneeling boy and, holding the handle of the birch with both hands, smites the bare behind of the boy six times. He then hands the birch back to the prepositor and rustles out of the room again...
...World War I, sea battles were painted almost entirely from hearsay, which did not necessarily interfere with their quality as art. Thomas Birch's oil of the set-to between the United States and the British Macedonian in 1812 had a familiar and a handsome air. It was the fish's-eye view typical of the period-splendid, stormy and bloodless...