Caning is corporal punishment with a cane, generally applied on the bare or clad buttocks (see spanking), hand(s) (palm, rarely knuckles) or even the soles of the feet. It was a common punishment throughout Europe and North America in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, but has now been banned in most countries.
Caning was practiced as a judicial punishment for juveniles but was best known as a method of discipline in schools. The use of the cane dates principally to the late nineteenth century, when educationalists sought to replace birching with a form of punishment more suitable to contemporary sensibilities.Frequency and severity of canings in educational settings were often determined by the written rules or unwritten traditions of the school. For example, in many schools it was common to find corporal punishment practiced solely by the head teacher, though in English public schools the ability to punish was delegated to prefects. A typical punishment in an English school in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century might consist of one or two blows on the hand.Judicial caning, carried out with a long rattan rod, was a feature of some colonial judicial systems, particularly in East Asia. The practice is still retained in Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei and Thailand. In Singapore, healthy male criminals under 50 years of age can be sentenced to a maximum of 24 strokes of the rotan (rattan) cane on the buttocks; the punishment is mandatory for over 40 offenses, mostly violent crimes, but also some immigration violations and acts of vandalism. It is also imposed for certain breaches of prison rules. The caning can leave permanent scars on the recipient. The punishment was famously applied to Michael P. Fay, an American student who had vandalised several automobiles in Singapore in 1994.Caning is also a common sadomasochistic practice. In nineteenth century France the practice was dubbed "The English Vice", as it was believed that the English, in particular, derived sexual pleasure from corporal punishment. This term is still in occasional use.
Canes can be manufactured for disciplinary purpose in different sizes and weights, determining the potential severity of the punishment. The main types are often known by the age groups of intended victims, especially in the domestic context :
Furthermore the different varieties of ratten used are sometimes quoted because of their intrinsic severity, the common kooboo being considered lighter (i.e. less dense) than the Dragon Canes; other common types bear geographical names: Malacca is Malaysia's continental peninsula, Palambang a city on Sumatra.In some spheres the cane, typically used by a certain disciplinarian, is commonly 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 offenses (at least one mid 19th-century captain had every single junior boy given six cane strokes every morning on various pretexts!) considered to insignificant to require written formalities or orders from an officer (who certainly 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 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.