Sentenced to munch the carbolic

East Fife Mail March 4, 1992

Nursery education is now available to virtually every child in Fife. It is a world of pre-school fun and learning which parents, and children, take for granted, but it wasn't always like that.

Without turning the clock back too far, the first nurseries in this area really arrived in the late '50s and they have come a long way since then.

I was ‘sentenced’ around the age of three as both my parents worked and an absence of relatives meant I was farmed out from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon. It was a long day, broken only by a nap when 40 or so of us collapsed on to camp beds beneath a blue blanket.

The regime was strict and discipline tight. I'm sure every one of us grew up to be law-abiding citizens. By the time we entered primary school, we'd been incarcerated, served time for crimes we didn't know we'd committed, and we were going straight from now on.

To be fair, it wasn't that bad. The `nursery nurses' were all kind and caring. If you fell and grazed a knee or banged our head there was always someone there to comfort you. But there were definite rules which had to be obeyed.

Certain areas of our language development was curbed, particularly of the Anglo-Saxon derivation. A high-pitched curse from some toddler met with immediate retribution. There was never any physical punishment, like a clout around the lug; no, it was the `wash the mouth out with soap' ceremony.

Youngsters today will probably have heard the phrase, parents may even have threatened it, but how many have actually done it?

Well, most of my fellow prisoners certainly had their chance to munch the carbolic. Denied `Listen with Mother' on the wireless, or the `Woodentops' on early kids' TV, we created our own play worlds and, in the heat of some Plasticine play, someone would yelp out a word from the adult world.

A big person would suddenly pounce, grab them by an ear and whisk them off to the toilet area to bite the bar. It was a regular occurrence and if you were caught before lunch, a plastic cup of water with your mince ensured a frenzied bubble attack.

I was only `done' once, for uttering the unforgivable `Shut up' to another child. I don't know if I was misheard or if `Shut up' really was `bad' (if it was, how come so many adults used to shout it at me?) but, anyway, led by the ear, I found myself confronted with the bar of carbolic, into which I dutifully sunk my milk teeth and gnawed away.

Thankfully, it had been well used and was soft to the palate, ensuring an early lather, swill and spit!

Suitably chastised, I slunk away to sulk about the injustice of this world.

It was a bizarre ritual but, I'm sure one that did us no long-term damage. To be forcibly fed soap might even be character-building!

I'm sure it was a solid foundation for the slaps, beltings, lines, torrents of sarcasm, punishment exercises and downright humiliation which would add that little bit of colour to our future education.

Picture: Boston Public Library