A day repairing a fence near the old schoolhouse, now a community centre for the dale’s families. Yet its walls may once have echoed with the rod and the recitation, for Bransdale’s children endured the Victorian discipline of Robert Johnson, their schoolmaster. And in 1874, Johnson met an end so vile that the newspapers thundered beneath the headline1“THE OUTRAGE UPON AN OLD SCHOOL-MASTER AT BRANSDALE.” York Herald, 9 May 1874, p. 7. British Library Newspapers, link-gale-com.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/apps/doc/R3211128880/GDCS?u=ed_itw&sid=GDCS&xid=7271f9c3. Accessed 6 May 2021.:
“THE OUTRAGE UPON AN OLD SCHOOL-MASTER AT BRANSDALE.”
I have written of it before, but it bears recycling:
Johnson was nearly seventy. Bent with a hunch, he lived quietly, assisting farmers with their letters and accounts. In his schoolroom, he would have ruled with the stern hand common to the age, for Victorian pedagogy was sharpened by the cane. Those who later grew into the dale’s labourers and farmers may well have felt both his learning and his lash. Among them, perhaps, was William Baldwin.
On the night of 31 January 1874, Johnson joined his neighbours at farmer Scarth’s “pig weighing.” The ritual, born of slaughter, was an excuse for a night of drink. Johnson drank until he collapsed.
The evening’s cheer turned foul. The old master, once feared, now lay helpless. He was dragged to the hay shed, stripped, smeared with soot and oil, and jeered at while the revel continued. Some swore his throat “ruttled” like a dying man’s. Did the pupils become his tormentors, the discipline of the schoolroom answered in kind, but in cruelty far beyond the rod?
On Sunday he lingered in pain. By Monday he dictated his will. On Tuesday he was dead.
Baldwin was charged with indecent assault, accused not only of soiling Johnson but of parading him before boys. The testimony was judged so obscene that women were ordered from the court. The magistrate dismissed it as a “rough lark… dirty and nasty… but still a practical joke.” Baldwin received three months hard labour2“NORTH RIDING QUARTER SESSIONS THURSDAY, JULY 2.” York Herald, 3 July 1874, p. 6. British Library Newspapers, link-gale-com.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/apps/doc/R3211131871/GDCS?u=ed_itw&sid=GDCS&xid=9fdcc3cb. Accessed 6 May 2021..
Thus Robert Johnson, who may have once chastised boys with switch and sternness, was himself chastised in grotesque parody: beaten not by wood or strap, but by humiliation, exposure, and cold. What the rod had sown in childhood may have borne its bitter fruit that night, in vengeance disguised as merriment.
- 1“THE OUTRAGE UPON AN OLD SCHOOL-MASTER AT BRANSDALE.” York Herald, 9 May 1874, p. 7. British Library Newspapers, link-gale-com.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/apps/doc/R3211128880/GDCS?u=ed_itw&sid=GDCS&xid=7271f9c3. Accessed 6 May 2021.
- 2“NORTH RIDING QUARTER SESSIONS THURSDAY, JULY 2.” York Herald, 3 July 1874, p. 6. British Library Newspapers, link-gale-com.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/apps/doc/R3211131871/GDCS?u=ed_itw&sid=GDCS&xid=9fdcc3cb. Accessed 6 May 2021.
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