“One case Boswell lost was a defense of a schoolmaster who had thrashed his pupils violently. During a London visit he brought it up at the Mitre, and Johnson delivered a ferocious opinion: “You must show that a schoolmaster has a prescriptive right to beat, and that an action of assault and battery cannot be admitted against him unless there is some great excess, some barbarity. This man has maimed none of his boys. They are all left with the full exercise of their corporeal faculties. In our schools in England, many boys have been maimed, yet I never heard of an action against a schoolmaster on that account.†Damrosch, Leo. The Club (Kindle Locations 4169-4173). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition. ”
