Carl Wilhelm Rudolf Meyer!

A Danish immigrant, pious, liar - many possible descriptions for this man who flogged his way across a bunch of schools in southern NSW.

Here's a couple of extracts from Peter Meyer's book, "The Teacher from the Snowy River".....

Carl was at Nelligen when, "On 21 November 1874 Meyer informed his school board that he had been appointed to Nerrigundah public school. But this was not the only news the board had to consider. The same meeting heard serious complaints about Meyer from two parents. The first was Mrs Backhouse who complained that two of her children had been so "cruelly ill-used" on the hand and back that one of them (fourteen year-old Catherine) was likely to loose the nail of one of her fingers. The second parent, Mrs Latta, complained that one of her children had been "so beaten about the head and ears that it was quite deaf from the effects". The board chairman, James McCawley, a Clyde River pilot, reported to the Education Council that Meyer's "insulting conduct to parents and children completely frustrates all the efforts of the local board"."

Carl's response...

"When I took charge of the school I found the discipline in a very unsatisfactory state; the pupils were unruly, talkative and disorderly unpunctual and irregular in their attendance and some of them coming to school in a dirty and filthy state. I determined as far as lay in my power, to affect a change without which I do not believe that a school can be satisfactorily conducted. Any person acquainted with school management must know that recourse must at times be had to corporal punishments. I believe I succeeded so far in changing the aspect of the school generally, that you when inspecting the school remarked that the discipline of the school had visibly improved In no instance have I beaten a child about the head or ears with my hands, but upon the palm of the night hand with a cane, the number of strokes never exceeding six. When punishing children I have always done it calmly and dispassionately, several minutes being permitted to elapse between the offence and the infliction of punishment. I have studiously refrained from carrying a cane in my hands as many teachers do".