Alexander Somerville was a self-taught labourer from East Lothian, who as a young man became famous for being flogged in the army almost to the point of death. Later in life he became a journalist. This account of his schooldays shows how the politics of the day, in which economic tensions were running high and the government was afraid of a radical uprising, reached as far as the playground.
But to return to the time of the radicals of 1819, and the rumours that came to Birnyknows school, that ‘they were coming’. The term ‘ragged radicals’ was a common one in newspapers of that time, and the boys who heard their father read the newspapers or talk of the news, brought this name of reproach to the school. It was suggested one day by some of them, that an excellent play might be got up in the Eel Yards, a meadow with some large trees in it, if the scholars divided themselves into soldiers and radicals. As the soldiers were the most respectable in the eyes of the better dressed sons of farmers and tradesmen, and as they took the lead in everything, they made themselves soldiers; and, in addition to that, took upon themselves to pick out those who were to be radicals. This was done according to the quality of the clothes worn, and I, consequently, found myself declared to be radical. The first day’s play passed with no greater disasters to me than the brim torn from an infirm hat which I wore, my trousers split up, all the buttons torn from my waistcoat, and my neck stretched considerably on the way to strangulation. For being a radical who seemed inclined to look upon the treatment I received as too serious for play, I was condemned to be hanged. It happened that the clothes I wore were not of the usual corduroy worn by the sons of farm labourers and always worn by me, save in that year. Mine had been remade the year before from some cast-off clothes given a year or two before that to the brother next to me in age by his master. … These clothes having been old when I got them, and having been worn by me all the summer in the woods herding the cows, and all the autumn, they were not in sound condition. But my poor mother always kept them patched up; and I never once went out then or any time, with an open rent or a worn hole in my clothes. As she spun wool for stockings, and lint for shirts, herself, and my father knitted stockings at night, and my sisters made shirts, I was equal in those articles to any one in the school; and I was only so badly clothed otherwise because the second year was running on between my father and a master for whom he then worked without a settlement of accounts …
When I went home on that first evening of my ragged radicalship, my poor mother stood aghast, lifted her hands, and said, in a tone of despair, ‘What shall I do with those rags?’ They were stripped off, I got an early supper and was sent to bed, while she began to mend them. … So I went to the school [the next day], my mother begging of me, with tears in her eyes, not to get my clothes torn again, else it would kill her to see me in such rags, and to have to sit up every night to mend them. But ‘soldiers and radicals’ was again the play, and again I was the radical upon whom the greatest number of the soldiers concentrated their warfare. They had seen me thrashed by the schoolmaster until I was blistered, without crying or shedding a tear, which made them think I could stand any amount of punishment or torment, without feeling it; in short, I was believed to be a great stubborn lad, who had no feeling in him. Had they seen me after leaving my mother that morning, and carrying her injunction with me, in a heart that was bursting with her words, they would have seen whether I had tears in me or not, and whether they would not come out.
As soon as I made my appearance, the cry of the ‘ragged radical’ was raised; the soldiers charged on me, and knocked my infirm hat over my eyes with my head through the crown of it. Some laid hold of me by the feet to carry me off to be hanged and beheaded, as the real law upon the real radicals had taught them to imitate in play. I made a violent effort to free myself, and the rents of yesterday, which my mother had so carefully sewed, broke open afresh. The hat I raised from where it had sunk over my face, and saw part of the brim in the hands of a lad who was a kind of king of the school, or cock of the walk, with some of my poor mother’s threads hanging from it. He was older than I, and was a fighter. I had never fought, nor had heard of two human creatures going together to fight, until I came to that school. Yet neither had I heard of the divine principle of forbearance and forgiveness, as regards blows upon the body, and the laceration of feelings worse than blows upon the body – my father, who gave me many good precepts, never having contemplated the possibility of my being a fighting boy. … But I was a strong boy for my age, and I had received very bad treatment. My honour and the remembrance of my affectionate mother’s toils made me feel like a giant. I amazed the king of the school by giving him a blow in the face that laid him flat on his back, and amazed the onlookers by giving several of them as much with the same results. Not that I escaped without blows myself. I got many, but they were returned with principle and interest. Some one ran to the schoolmaster and told that I was thrashing ‘Master’ Somebody, for he being a gentleman’s son was called ‘Master’, while I had to submit to a nick-name, derived from the state of my clothes. The school was summoned in at once, it being near the schoolhour in the morning …
The schoolmaster stood with the taws ready to flagellate the moment I entered the school. He inquired who began the fight, and every one named me. He at once ordered me to hold up my right hand, which I did, and received a violent cut on the edge of it, given with his whole strength. He ordered my left hand up, and up it went and received a cut of the same kind; then my right, which got what it got before; next my left, which also got what it got before; and so on he went until I had got six cuts (skults we called them) on each hand. He had a way of raising himself upon his toes when he swung the heavy taws round his head, and came down upon his feet with a spring, giving the cuts slantingly on the hand. He saw me resolved to take all he could give without a tear, whereupon he began to cut at the back of my hands. I drew them behind me to save them, which seeing, cut at the open places of my torn clothes, where my skin was visible; and always as I wriggled to one side to save those bare places, I exposed other bare places on the other side, which he aimed at with terrible certainty. After a time he pushed me before him, still thrashing me on the bare places, and on the head, until he got me to the farther end of the school, where the coals lay in a corner. Here he ordered me to sit down and remain until he gave me liberty to leave that place, which he did not do until evening. The day was piercing cold. The house was an old place, with no furniture nor partition in it. I sat at the end farthest from the fire-place, and near to the door, which was an old door that did not fit its place, and which allowed the wind to blow freely through. It blew through and about me as if it had been another school-master, and was as partial to farmers’ sons, and as cruel to the ragged boys of farm labourers, as he was.